7/18/10

Since I have to leave Michigan at midnight tonight, I wanted to stay up as late as possible last night.  This way I would sleep as late as possible today.  I spent some time reading news headlines.  I read a couple of magazines.  I drank some beer.  Anything to pass the time.  As I grabbed the last cold one from my fridge, I saw that it was 1:30am.  I sat down to resume my relaxation when my brain started to do some quick calculating.  Either that beer was gonna have to be it for the night or I was gonna have to hit the road and replenish my supply.  Last call in Michigan is 2am.  I was sort of in-between.  I hadn't drunk much, so I didn't really have much of a buzz, but I feared that I still would get tired after I stopped drinking.  That's kinda how it works with me.  On the other hand, if I had a full fridge and nothing better to do, I would probably start chugging them and then put myself to sleep anyhow.

I decided that I should probably head out, if for no other reason than to get off my couch for a bit.  I put my last beer back in the fridge and then zipped over to the local Wal Mart to survey their offerings.  After scanning the limited selection of cold beers in the cooler, I decided that I might as well toss a few loonies into that economy up north.  With my case of Blue Light in hand I headed for the checkout lanes.  One - ONE - self-checkout line was open.  It had about ten people lined up, waiting to scan their items.  That won't do.  The next open lane had one lady with an overflowing shopping cart, followed by a guy with an even more overflowing shopping cart.  The clock is ticking.  That won't do either.

I went to the third and final open lane and stepped in behind a woman with a cart full of groceries, but nothing to compare with those carts in the earlier line.  She took a look and saw my single solitary item, then offered to let me go ahead of her.  I told her that, in a normal situation, I would politely decline her offer and wait my turn.  This time though, given the circumstances, I was going to accept her generosity.

One more obstacle to go - a 400lb. (no exaggeration) dude was sitting on a bike in the checkout line.  He wanted to buy the bike for $75.  The price was $100.  Arguments between the wannabe jumbo cyclist and the cashier were eating into my remaining ten minutes like termites in an old western saloon.  Tick, tick, tick...  Finally the cashier convinced the guy to give up his dream of being the next Lance Armstrong.  $100 was just too much, it seems.  So she rang up his other few items and told him the price.  As in any case where I'm in a major hurry, of course the fella in font of me would have to take his sweet ass time digging out his money.  Hurry up, man!  I've got beer here!

I didn't even wait for him to drag his ass out of the way before I threw my purchase onto the counter.  Get this thing scanned ASAP, sister.  In the end...

Three minutes and seventeen seconds to spare.  We have a winner.

The funny part is that, after I got back home and drank the one beer that had been in my fridge, I wound up going to bed anyway.  I never even touched any of those beers from Wal Mart.

I managed to sleep, off and on at least, through most of this morning.  I got a call from the weekend dispatcher this afternoon.  He said that the normal procedure for these out of town runs is to send the driver out with an EFS check for $100.  Then the driver cashes the check, pays his expenses, and submits the receipts for reimbursement.  The EFS checks are locked in the terminal manager's office though, and he doesn't work on weekends.  They needed to know if I wanted the terminal manager to drive to work and get a check, or if I could just pay my own expenses and then get reimbursed with my next paycheck.  I can handle the expenses of a day or two on the road, so there was no need for the boss man to interrupt his weekend with his family on my account.

Apparently, in addition to the obviously required hotel room, they pay for my food when I'm out of town as well.  The weekend dispatcher suggested that I try to eat somewhere nice and use the full allowance.  That ain't such a bad deal then.  I figure that it should take around ten or eleven hours to reach Murfreesboro, after which I'll have to take a ten hour break.  If I wake in the evening, then I can get a nice dinner somewhere down there before heading out on whatever assignment brings me back to Michigan.

I'm hoping to catch a little nap pretty soon here, after which it will be time to pack a few supplies and head out for some real-life trucking again.  An overnight run down to Tennessee shouldn't be too bad, but I'll probably catch Cincinnati and/or Louisville during the morning rush.  If you see a day cab with no horsepower pulling a 48' reefer up the hills at around 30mph, be sure to wave.