3/29/10

I really intended to do a lot of driving today.  Really.  After getting unloaded in Liberty this morning, I took a nice nap and hung around to complete a ten hour break, then made the short drive over to Houston.  I was sent to a dock immediately and things were looking good.  The loading process took three hours, meaning that I would catch some of the afternoon rush leaving Houston, but I remained optimistic.

We'll make today's story a pictorial.  First - 4pm - Things come to a stop.

Second - 5:30pm - We've moved almost a mile and the shadows are getting a little longer.  Some people have been lucky enough to move along the access road, but now it's backed up as badly as the freeway.

Third - 6:15pm - Another mile behind us as the fourth heavy haul wrecker makes its way up the shoulder, 90 minutes after the first three had gone by.

Fourth - 7pm - The cops are forcing everyone off the freeway and onto the access road. I've never had any law enforcement training, but something tells me that these Billy Bobs should be controlling the flow of traffic on the access road in order to allow people to proceed off the freeway. I'm just a truck driver though. I'm sure that the general free-for-all clusterfuck was a more desirable approach.

Fifth, 7:15pm, we've covered the last half mile to the freeway exit and made our way onto the access road. Quite a bit of the carnage has been removed, but the CB chatter suggests that the driver of the white work truck toward the right of this picture was killed. CB chatter should never be taken at face value, but the freeway closed for at least three hours (I'm not sure when the accident happened nor when the road was reopened). Something bad must have happened.

And finally, 7:30pm, this one speaks for itself.

I couldn't manage to talk myself into driving past the truck stop in Shepherd after that debacle.  I was getting hungry, I had to piss, and my frustration meter was pegged in the red zone.  My delivery appointment is Thursday morning at 6am, so I'll have a manageable enough schedule over the next couple of days.  Probably a little over 1,000 miles from here if I angle up US-67 from Little Rock to Saint Louis.  Good enough.