3/9/10

Do you remember the old intro for ABC's Wide World of Sports? You had the 'thrill of victory' dude getting carried off while celebrating a victory (boxing, I think) and then you had the 'agony of defeat' dude crashing off the ski jump. Now you know how I felt this evening. We'll get to that in a minute.

First, let's talk about West Virginia... Yeah, I still have nothing to say about West Virginia.

Before I left the service plaza this morning, I received a pre-plan with a good schedule so things were looking half decent. I say only half decent because the route was going to take me right back up I-77. As an aside, do you suppose those poor mountaineers believed that story about the man named Jed? I wonder.

After dragging my load through the mountains all morning and then fighting my way through Charlotte in the afternoon, I pulled into my consignee for a nice and easy drop. I was delivering in York, South Carolina and my next load was set to pick up in York, South Carolina, so I played a hunch and sent in my empty call before actually hooking to an empty trailer. As I suspected, the next load was picking up at the same place. Making things nice and convenient for me, the dispatch included the number of my loaded trailer. So I got to skip an unnecessary step. I just drove across the yard and hooked the loaded trailer, then hit the road. Beauty.

The drive back to the north was taking me through Charlotte right in the middle of rush hour, but I didn't even get that far before the frustration began. I got to the end of the customer's driveway and edged myself out between the numerous school buses, only to find that traffic on the state highway was at a dead stop. It turns out that the middle of a skinny two-lane bridge is a bad place for a couple of pickup trucks to smash into each other. Who knew?

Once the local peace officer showed up and started directing traffic, things got moving steadily if not quickly. On a positive note, the northbound traffic through Charlotte at 4:30pm was much lighter than the southbound traffic had been at 2pm. I'm due in Whitehouse, Ohio by Thursday morning at 8am, so I decided to get into Virginia tonight and then kick back for a while. I'm not a fan of those big truck stops around Wytheville though and there isn't a whole lot else along I-77. I decided to duck off at the little place in Austinville, since the sun was just setting and I was pretty sure I would find a parking space. There were three open spaces. Beauty.

And now to the real story. I've stayed at this truck stop a few times in the past. There had always been a little food shop inside, serving various stale and/or soggy fried products that nobody would actually want to buy. So what did my eyes behold this evening? They've replaced the food shop with a SubWay? The thrill of victory!

I strolled over, anticipating my enjoyment of a fantastic Italian BMT with double meat to wrap up a productive day on the road. I'm an ordering pro when it comes to this place. Always specify the type of bread first, you see. Some of the fine folks at SubWay weren't blessed with the cognitive retention to remember the type of sandwich if you say that first. To keep things nice and orderly, you just tell them the type of bread you want. Then, once the bread is in hand, you put them to work on the salami, pepperoni, ham, and Provolone.

"We open for business tomorrow, sir. Just getting everything set up tonight."

The agony of defeat.

Assuming that my dispatched miles are somewhere close to reality, I'll have around 450 miles to go from here to my consignee. That should make for a decent day of work tomorrow, even if I do have to go back through West Virginia. At least my trailer is a little lighter this time. On the way down I hauled truck axles, stacked on metal racks. The total weight was 33,000 pounds. I'm hauling back empty racks weighing 25,000 pounds. That just doesn't seem right.