5/8/10

So we all know that I don't sleep very well until the wee hours of the morning, right?  Just the way I'm wired or whatever.  Some time after midnight last night I still wasn't feeling tired, so I fired up a movie that had been lingering on my hard drive for a while.  The next two hours of my life were wasted as I watched a steaming pile of cinematic shit called Syriana.  Just awful.  I would have been better off lying in bed and pretending to sleep.  Once the movie was over, I saw that I had been parked for ten hours.  I sent in my updated hours, reflecting my fresh 11 and 14, and hopped in the sack.  Ten minutes later - new assignment.  No rest for the wicked...

My pickup was a drop/hook at the gigantinormous Wal Mart DC in Baytown.  The drive down there was a little obnoxious since I kept getting shifted from actual highways to access roads for highways under construction and so forth.  It was the middle of the night though, and the trip was short, so it wasn't so bad.  Once I got my loaded trailer and its 40,000 payload all ready to roll, my only intention was to get back through Houston and go to sleep.  I'm heading to Kansas City for a Tuesday morning delivery, meaning that I have tons of extra time and no need to drive tired.

As I approached Houston on I-10, I was starting to feel like someone who hadn't slept in a while.  I wasn't terribly sleepy or anything, but my patience was running even lower than usual and I just wanted to get off the road.  Just then, an SUV started to pass on my left and then slowed down next to me.  Man I hate that.  I came down a hill and gained some speed, at which point the SUV sped up.  Bastard.  I looked over and prepared to unleash a profane tirade (that nobody except me would have been able to hear, of course).  Then I saw that there was a woman in the passenger's seat, motioning to get my attention.  She pointed toward my trailer and said something (that I couldn't hear, of course).  Great.  What now?

I took the next exit and found a place to pull off the road.  I have nothing but super singles on my truck and trailer this time around, so I was reasonably sure that I hadn't blown a tire.  Sometimes a driver might not notice if one of his dual tires blows, but these wide ones are a different story.  Even if one of them goes flat slowly, the vibration will tend to get pretty intense.  I could see in my mirrors that I still had working trailer lights.  Whatever.  There must have been some reason for the lady to be pointing at my trailer.

I hopped out and took a walk around.  Everything seemed kosher on first inspection, so I grabbed my flashlight and took another look.  Ahh, there it is.  One of the springs supporting my air lines had broken off at the point where it was connected to the belly of the trailer.  The air lines weren't dragging, but the spring itself was hanging down on the ground.  At 60mph, it probably had been creating some sparks that caught the attention of the people in the SUV.  It only took a minute for me to get the spring reattached and secured, after which I was wide awake and rolling again.

The construction on I-610 was certainly enough to keep me on my toes for a little while longer, weaving around curves with my trailer about 8" from a concrete wall.  No room to relax there.  I wound up going all the way up to my fuel stop in Huntsville, topping off the tanks, and covering another 50 miles before it was time to hit the sack for realsies.

After an awesome three-hour nap at a roadside picnic area, helped by cool and cloudy weather, I awoke and took stock of my situation.  Essentially, any miles that I drove from that point would be gravy.  I had the rest of today plus two more full days to reach Kansas City.  What then would be the strategy?  None, actually.  I decided just to hit the road and figure something out as I went along. 

Speaking of 'as I went along,' I noticed that our man DW appears to be doing some moonlighting as a business owner.  (No word yet on the content of the video, but I think we can make an educated guess.)

Just to the south of Dallas, I saw a sign for a Love's truck stop.  That should do the trick, I thought.  Love's usually has clean showers and it was close enough to Dallas that my internet connection should support a stream of the hockey game.  I pulled in and found that everything is A-OK.  There's no SubWay here though.  I had to settle for Carls Jr. for lunch, but I do have a fast internet connection and plenty of room for the Fenian Godfather Strength Training Institute to open up after the sun goes down.  Not bad at all.

The pay week wraps up with 2,157 miles plus the layover pay from my time in Tucson.  One more mile and we could have cracked a thousand bucks.  Just one more mile.