3/30/10

A while ago, I was sitting on my couch and drinking a beer.  (I know that's hard to believe, but you'll just have to take my word for it.)  As the night wore on and I became somewhat intoxicated, I started watching some YouTube videos that had been e-mailed to me.  One of them showed a guy who had installed a train horn in his car.  He drove around and blasted the horn whenever he saw a chance to startle someone, filming their reactions as he went along.  I found it hilarious.  This morning, I had a change of heart.  I'm not sure how close the train tracks come to that truck stop in Shepherd, Texas, but it sounded like the damned train was rolling right through my bunk.  This was not funny.

After the train horn receded into the distance I thought that I might be able to get back to sleep for a little while.  Then some fartknocker pulled in and decided that, among the 200 empty parking spaces in the truck stop, only the one right next to me would be a good place to work on his truck.  Slamming doors, a revving engine, fine... I'm awake.  So I started driving earlier than I usually care to do so.

The trip up through Texas and Arkansas was fairly uneventful.  During the afternoon I checked my truck stop directory and decided that Poplar Bluff, Missouri would be a pretty good place to spend the night.  Only as I was rolling up US-67 in northern Arkansas did I realize that Missouri was so far from where I started.  I stuck with the plan though and knocked out almost 600 miles by the time I reached Poplar Bluff.  Not bad.  Somewhere around 440 miles to go from here.  My directions say that I can park overnight at my consignee in Schaumburg, Illinois so, as long as no trains come rolling through, I expect to sleep nice and late tomorrow morning.  That's pretty groovy.

On second thought, I don't know.  That train horn thing does seem like it might be fun...