Background story #1 - In sixth grade, I won the spelling bee at my elementary school. I then went to the district-wide competition. I made it to the final round. I received my word and stepped to the microphone. A•U•X•I•L•L•A•R•Y. Bzzzzzzz! Wrong! And thus I learned a lesson that I've never forgotten to this day - how to spell auxiliary.
Background story #2 - I can't accurately convey to you just how badly I hate country music. The whiny voices, the shitty guitar playing, the generic and boring stories... it makes my teeth grind. Just so you know.
Can we tie these two background stories together with a tale from the road. By golly, I think we can.
When I got to the terminal on Friday morning and checked in with the overnight dispatcher, she asked which truck I was going to take. I hadn't looked to see which ones were outside yet, so I told her that I would let her know once I picked one. She suggested that I take the truck with the sleeper cab on it, since it doesn't get used much on weekends. This would leave the day cabs for the guys delivering milk while I was rolling down to Tennessee and back. No worries, I assured her. The sleeper it is.
The truck itself is quite nice. The bunk appears never to have been used and everything is squeaky clean inside. Aside from that and the fact that the forward cab area is carpeted, the setup is essentially the same as that of our day cabs. Automatic transmission, governed at 62mph, not a lot of horsepower, and so forth. The radio is different though. On the Macks that I usually drive, you can hit 'menu' and then the green button on the right to enter 'scan' mode. Then, once you hear a song or station that you like, you hit the green button again to stop scanning. After far too much tinkering, I never was able to figure out how to scan the stations with the radio in the sleeper truck.
Since I would have to flip through the stations manually, I was a little annoyed from the outset. I decided to find a sports channel on AM or something to help pass the time for a while. One more groovy thing about that radio - it doesn't pick up any AM stations. Excellent. Do you know what you get on FM while you roll down through the hills of Kentucky and Tennessee? You get country music. Lots and lots of country music. Brutal.
After making the turn in Murfreesboro and getting through the demolition derby that was Nashville on Friday afternoon, I checked into the Super 8 in Franklin for my ten hour break. The thought of another morning of country music was weighing heavily on my mind. What can I say? I don't have most of the stresses that normal people encounter. Shit like this is pretty disturbing to me though.
I grabbed my overnight bag and started going through the little zipper pockets at the end. This was the bag that I would take to the numerous Corleone family estates on Saturdays during football season back when I was out on the road. Perhaps I would find something useful in there. I had packed my clothes in haste after the cookout on Thursday, so I didn't really have a mental inventory of what else was already in the bag.
I found a little 3.5mm extension cable that I used to employ from time to time. I would plug one end into my mp3 player or pocket radio and then plug the other end into the line-in jack on my computer. It basically allowed the electronic devices to use my computer's speakers in place of headphones if I felt like listening to something that way. This reminded me that there was one more thing that was different about the radio in the sleeper truck. It had an AM function (that didn't work). It had an FM function. It had a CD player. And it also had an AUX function. You know what AUX stands for, of course. So I was able to use the Pandora and Iheartradio apps on my cell phone to stream some tolerable music or radio stations, then pipe it into the truck's auxiliary jack via the 3.5mm cord that I found in my overnight bag. Crisis averted. No need to drive into a tree after all.
The remaining question would be how well my data service might hold up as I drove back through the hills. It was surprisingly reliable. There would be a hiccup every now and then, but the music just kept coming for the most part.
This knowledge will come in handy once football season rolls around next week. An ironic twist to this 'home daily' business is that I won't be able to watch much football. Out on the road I had a chance to see nearly every game. Now I work on most Saturday afternoons. Rather than flip through the local AM stations and try to find a given town's local Notre Dame affiliate, I can just dial up a station on that Iheartradio application and listen through my headphones. I get 3G data through most of southeastern Michigan, so I'm guessing that I'll be able to keep listening even while I unload my trailers. That'll have to do, at least until I move up the list a bit and get to bid a different schedule. I really don't care which days I work. I don't care which shifts I work. I don't care how much or how little money I make (within certain parameters, obviously). I just like to be able to watch television for three or four hours on Saturdays, twelve weekends a year. As Michael Corleone once said to Vito - "We'll get there, Pop. We'll get there."
Now I'm back in the unfortunate position of having taken a long nap tonight and needing to get to the gym. Tomorrow's pull time is 11:30am so I guess I had better try and get back to bed before too many hours go by the wayside. Only one trailer tomorrow, but it does take me back out to Midland and Mount Pleasant so I'll probably be working for eight or nine hours once all is said and done.
Saturday, August 28, 2010
Friday, August 27, 2010
8/27/10
Usual drill on the Tennessee run today. Just started a little later this time around, leaving me in the clusterfuck known as Nashville while the afternoon commuters started crashing into each other. Good times. Good times.
Now I'm holed up at the usual motel in Franklin, Kentucky where I'll need to get some sleep soon. Cheers.
Now I'm holed up at the usual motel in Franklin, Kentucky where I'll need to get some sleep soon. Cheers.
Thursday, August 26, 2010
8/26/10
It occurred to me today that my perspective has likely been skewed by the fact that my reintroduction into society happened to fall during the summer months. After my workout this morning, I headed to Wal Mart and bought some groceries for an afternoon cookout. I don't have statistics to back it up but I would have to guess that well over half my days off have followed a similar pattern. Days off are probably not necessarily supposed to involve cookouts and beer, but don't tell me so. I might be disappointed or something.
Today's 5am food prep involved marinated chicken skewers with baby red-skinned potatoes, roma tomatoes, and green peppers. I also snagged some flavored rice and stuffing to go along with the main course, as well as some focaccia bread and the necessary toppings for a nice bruschetta. Good deal. My friends may prove to be a disappointment but my appetite will never fail me.
Once all was said and done tonight, I was certainly not disappointed. It has been a long time since I made food for a living but it's a lasting skill, to say the least. As tends to be the case, I hung around my parents' house and did the cooking. A few friends stopped by to partake, as did my brother and his wife. Good times, good times.
I got my normal call from the dispatcher at work this afternoon, giving me the rundown for tomorrow. You know how it goes. My pull time is this. I'm going to this store and that store. In a fun twist though, tomorrow brings another run to Tennessee. Milk cases aren't the only topic of interest in Murfreesboro these days, but I'll be perfectly content to make the drive and earn a few bucks. The rest of you hatemongers can argue about the implications. I am set to leave the dairy at 5am. Hey, that means it's bedtime. Goodnight all.
Today's 5am food prep involved marinated chicken skewers with baby red-skinned potatoes, roma tomatoes, and green peppers. I also snagged some flavored rice and stuffing to go along with the main course, as well as some focaccia bread and the necessary toppings for a nice bruschetta. Good deal. My friends may prove to be a disappointment but my appetite will never fail me.
Once all was said and done tonight, I was certainly not disappointed. It has been a long time since I made food for a living but it's a lasting skill, to say the least. As tends to be the case, I hung around my parents' house and did the cooking. A few friends stopped by to partake, as did my brother and his wife. Good times, good times.
I got my normal call from the dispatcher at work this afternoon, giving me the rundown for tomorrow. You know how it goes. My pull time is this. I'm going to this store and that store. In a fun twist though, tomorrow brings another run to Tennessee. Milk cases aren't the only topic of interest in Murfreesboro these days, but I'll be perfectly content to make the drive and earn a few bucks. The rest of you hatemongers can argue about the implications. I am set to leave the dairy at 5am. Hey, that means it's bedtime. Goodnight all.
Wednesday, August 25, 2010
8/25/10
Variety is the spice of life... or something. I'm sure I've heard that somewhere before. So I was a little interested to see how this morning would turn out, given that it was to be my first day as an oversized freight driver. I pulled into the terminal at 9am and checked in with the dispatcher and terminal manager, then got to work.
The bosses told me to take a given truck today, as the mechanics had said that it would be the most suitable one to use. I checked it over and found that it needed wiper fluid, so I grabbed a bottle from the shop and poured it in. Then I found that the air bags on the rear axle weren't quite as bouncy as they should be. The DVIR from whoever drove the truck yesterday also indicated a problem with the air bags, so I wasn't quite sure why I had been told to take this truck. I came to the conclusion that the mechanics must have worked on it and they wanted me to test it out or something. There were no issues on my half-mile drive to the dairy, as far as I could tell.
I got over to the dairy and set up shop in the corner, next to the construction vehicles. Nobody was exactly sure when the new silo would arrive, but some time between 9am and 10am was the target. In the following picture, you'll see the two silos that were present before today, along with the crane that was waiting to install the third silo.
10am came and went without any sign of the oversized load, so I continued to hang around and wait. It was interesting to see the steps that the crane people were taking in preparation. A flatbed showed up with several giant metal weights. The crane operator then lifted the weights from the flatbed and placed them on the frame of his own machine. I had been aware that the nature of leverage and so forth would require cranes to use a lot of counter weight. What I hadn't known was that the giant weights slid together like pieces of an enormous jigsaw puzzle. One guy stood on the frame of the crane and guided the pieces into place as the crane operator lowered them ever so gently.
11am came and went. I sat and waited. At 11:30am it was go time. I saw the oversized load coming from the Merriman side of the industrial park.
The driver stopped along the edge of a big 'S' curve in the road there and walked over to the construction guys. "What's the game plan?" he asked. The construction guys told him to drive the silo into the dairy. Duh. I'm pretty sure he knew about that part of the deal. I walked over and noted that there was no way in Hell he was gonna make that right turn into the dairy, either with or without my assistance. He should have been told to come in from Middlebelt instead of Merriman. That way he could have made a more gentle left turn into the outbound side of the driveway and had a better angle.
There is an abandoned store at the end of the street, so the spotter guys on the walkie talkies got the trucker dude turned around down there and had him come back from the correct direction (from the right in the picture above, instead of the left). I had already checked in with the dairy people and the construction people, but I walked out and told one of the spotters that I had been sent over to help out wherever I was needed. He relayed the info to the fella doing the driving, but apparently the guy thought he was good to go without any help.
I haven't been a Teamster long enough to get those Jimmy Hoffa no-show jobs, but I guess I can get some no-work pay every now and again. The good old super trucker got 'er in there without my help. He did manage to put a big trench through some of the landscaping along the way, but it seemed that the dairy folks expected this much to happen. From what I could gather, the damage had been worse on previous occasions.
Long story short - I hung around for three hours this morning and got paid for doing nothing. It was interesting to watch, at least.
My milk load was ready by the time the silo was inside the gates and my presence was no longer needed, so I hooked it up and drove away. No issues in the early going, aside from the fact that I forgot about my truck's tendency to pop out of gear whenever it hits a bump. I had only driven the truck in question that one time before. It's still a hunk of shit.
I made the swing around onto I-96 westbound and started accelerating. Once I got up to 60mph it was time to ease of the throttle a bit. That's when I heard the most awful rattling noise coming from beneath my feet. Flashbacks ensued. Once I stepped back into the throttle though, the noise went away. It started again the next time I took my foot off the gas, so I flipped on the Jake brake to see what that would do. The noise stopped again.
I'm clearly no mechanic, but I decided to play the role of one as I went down the freeway. My best guess (or perhaps best hope) was that the suspension issues were screwing with the angle of the driveshaft. As long as the driveshaft was under tension, either from acceleration, from pulling to maintain speed, or from the Jake brake holding it back, there were no noises. Whenever the engine was allowed to freewheeel, I heard the noise. With a load of milk in tow, most of my driving tends to involve either pulling or slowing down. Therefore I decided to leave the Jake brake engaged and go ahead with the trip. I was able to minimize the instances of the rattling noise for the most part.
There was one stop added to the original two for my run. The Kroger in Hamburg was getting 36 cases of chocolate milk from the unfilled portion of a previous order. I hit that one first on my way out west. Ten minutes to get someone to unlock the door, two minutes to open the truck and unload the one pallet. Then it was time to continue out to Jackson. Today's first scheduled drop was at the store on Michigan Avenue. That one has an ancient 'lift truck,' as I believe they're properly called, but its loading dock is fairly level and there's ample space in the stock room. So I took some extra time to rotate all of the milk for the last stop to the rear of my trailer. The loading dock at that last stop can be a mofo and the stock room is tiny, so I wanted to make things as easy on myself as possible.
As with any of those places with tricky loading docks, the biggest rule of thumb is not to stop a pallet on the dock plate. You do that and you'll tip it, as we have come to know. Now that I think of it, there was some spilled milk the last time I hit this store in Jackson as well. Not my fault that time though. Anyhow, I got to the store thinking that the same dairy guy would be there. He's a quirky one, to say the least. Rather than have a debate about the efficiency of one approach over another, I was inclined to just let him pull the milk out of the trailer while I pushed from the back to prevent any tipping. This was my last delivery before a day off, so I wasn't in a huge hurry anyway. Avoiding a spill sounded pretty good to me.
Alas, ole Randy had the day off today. Today's fella in the dairy cooler said that he would pull the milk down the hallway after I got it out of the trailer. That's the standard procedure but, to be perfectly honest, I thought for just a second that I would have preferred the other guy. At least then I wouldn't have to jump this ramp of a loading dock on my own, trying not to dump any pallets along the way. I suppose we're all hypocrites in our own way. I didn't like dealing with the guy who wanted to pull the milk out of the trailer. Then, faced with the prospect of doing the work myself... Anyhow, I got today's nine pallets out without any issues. The pallet jack didn't freeze up on me and the milk didn't tip over. All's well that ends well.
As I pulled into the dairy, I noticed that the skyline had changed.
After dropping off my trailer at the dairy and my truck in the repair lane at the terminal, a combination of factors came together. I was getting an earlier start to my day off than I usually get, which was nice. But I was wicked tired, which was not nice. A nap sounded absolutely wonderful to me. Since I had no desire to get to the gym at 6pm along with the masses, and since I had heard reports on the radio of accidents up and down I-275, I decided to head home for a while and then hit the gym later.
Now here I am and it's later. This sucks. I really don't mind driving out there for a workout. The problem is that I just slept for three and a half hours. Now I'll be lucky to get any rest before tomorrow afternoon. And thus the vicious cycle begins again...
The bosses told me to take a given truck today, as the mechanics had said that it would be the most suitable one to use. I checked it over and found that it needed wiper fluid, so I grabbed a bottle from the shop and poured it in. Then I found that the air bags on the rear axle weren't quite as bouncy as they should be. The DVIR from whoever drove the truck yesterday also indicated a problem with the air bags, so I wasn't quite sure why I had been told to take this truck. I came to the conclusion that the mechanics must have worked on it and they wanted me to test it out or something. There were no issues on my half-mile drive to the dairy, as far as I could tell.
I got over to the dairy and set up shop in the corner, next to the construction vehicles. Nobody was exactly sure when the new silo would arrive, but some time between 9am and 10am was the target. In the following picture, you'll see the two silos that were present before today, along with the crane that was waiting to install the third silo.
10am came and went without any sign of the oversized load, so I continued to hang around and wait. It was interesting to see the steps that the crane people were taking in preparation. A flatbed showed up with several giant metal weights. The crane operator then lifted the weights from the flatbed and placed them on the frame of his own machine. I had been aware that the nature of leverage and so forth would require cranes to use a lot of counter weight. What I hadn't known was that the giant weights slid together like pieces of an enormous jigsaw puzzle. One guy stood on the frame of the crane and guided the pieces into place as the crane operator lowered them ever so gently.
11am came and went. I sat and waited. At 11:30am it was go time. I saw the oversized load coming from the Merriman side of the industrial park.
There is an abandoned store at the end of the street, so the spotter guys on the walkie talkies got the trucker dude turned around down there and had him come back from the correct direction (from the right in the picture above, instead of the left). I had already checked in with the dairy people and the construction people, but I walked out and told one of the spotters that I had been sent over to help out wherever I was needed. He relayed the info to the fella doing the driving, but apparently the guy thought he was good to go without any help.
I haven't been a Teamster long enough to get those Jimmy Hoffa no-show jobs, but I guess I can get some no-work pay every now and again. The good old super trucker got 'er in there without my help. He did manage to put a big trench through some of the landscaping along the way, but it seemed that the dairy folks expected this much to happen. From what I could gather, the damage had been worse on previous occasions.
Long story short - I hung around for three hours this morning and got paid for doing nothing. It was interesting to watch, at least.
My milk load was ready by the time the silo was inside the gates and my presence was no longer needed, so I hooked it up and drove away. No issues in the early going, aside from the fact that I forgot about my truck's tendency to pop out of gear whenever it hits a bump. I had only driven the truck in question that one time before. It's still a hunk of shit.
I made the swing around onto I-96 westbound and started accelerating. Once I got up to 60mph it was time to ease of the throttle a bit. That's when I heard the most awful rattling noise coming from beneath my feet. Flashbacks ensued. Once I stepped back into the throttle though, the noise went away. It started again the next time I took my foot off the gas, so I flipped on the Jake brake to see what that would do. The noise stopped again.
I'm clearly no mechanic, but I decided to play the role of one as I went down the freeway. My best guess (or perhaps best hope) was that the suspension issues were screwing with the angle of the driveshaft. As long as the driveshaft was under tension, either from acceleration, from pulling to maintain speed, or from the Jake brake holding it back, there were no noises. Whenever the engine was allowed to freewheeel, I heard the noise. With a load of milk in tow, most of my driving tends to involve either pulling or slowing down. Therefore I decided to leave the Jake brake engaged and go ahead with the trip. I was able to minimize the instances of the rattling noise for the most part.
There was one stop added to the original two for my run. The Kroger in Hamburg was getting 36 cases of chocolate milk from the unfilled portion of a previous order. I hit that one first on my way out west. Ten minutes to get someone to unlock the door, two minutes to open the truck and unload the one pallet. Then it was time to continue out to Jackson. Today's first scheduled drop was at the store on Michigan Avenue. That one has an ancient 'lift truck,' as I believe they're properly called, but its loading dock is fairly level and there's ample space in the stock room. So I took some extra time to rotate all of the milk for the last stop to the rear of my trailer. The loading dock at that last stop can be a mofo and the stock room is tiny, so I wanted to make things as easy on myself as possible.
As with any of those places with tricky loading docks, the biggest rule of thumb is not to stop a pallet on the dock plate. You do that and you'll tip it, as we have come to know. Now that I think of it, there was some spilled milk the last time I hit this store in Jackson as well. Not my fault that time though. Anyhow, I got to the store thinking that the same dairy guy would be there. He's a quirky one, to say the least. Rather than have a debate about the efficiency of one approach over another, I was inclined to just let him pull the milk out of the trailer while I pushed from the back to prevent any tipping. This was my last delivery before a day off, so I wasn't in a huge hurry anyway. Avoiding a spill sounded pretty good to me.
Alas, ole Randy had the day off today. Today's fella in the dairy cooler said that he would pull the milk down the hallway after I got it out of the trailer. That's the standard procedure but, to be perfectly honest, I thought for just a second that I would have preferred the other guy. At least then I wouldn't have to jump this ramp of a loading dock on my own, trying not to dump any pallets along the way. I suppose we're all hypocrites in our own way. I didn't like dealing with the guy who wanted to pull the milk out of the trailer. Then, faced with the prospect of doing the work myself... Anyhow, I got today's nine pallets out without any issues. The pallet jack didn't freeze up on me and the milk didn't tip over. All's well that ends well.
As I pulled into the dairy, I noticed that the skyline had changed.
After dropping off my trailer at the dairy and my truck in the repair lane at the terminal, a combination of factors came together. I was getting an earlier start to my day off than I usually get, which was nice. But I was wicked tired, which was not nice. A nap sounded absolutely wonderful to me. Since I had no desire to get to the gym at 6pm along with the masses, and since I had heard reports on the radio of accidents up and down I-275, I decided to head home for a while and then hit the gym later.
Now here I am and it's later. This sucks. I really don't mind driving out there for a workout. The problem is that I just slept for three and a half hours. Now I'll be lucky to get any rest before tomorrow afternoon. And thus the vicious cycle begins again...
Tuesday, August 24, 2010
8/24/10
It's good to keep things in perspective sometimes. During today's trip I was pretty annoyed by the pace of things. After my first stop in Saginaw (not Flint), I had to drive 33 miles to Midland. It took an hour. From the Midland stop, I had to drive 36 miles to Mount Pleasant. That took another hour. This pace is clearly not very favorable for me. At least I'm not a Chinaman though. Good golly, Miss Molly. Half a mile a day? That's pretty hardcore.
Aside from the fact that it was a long and tedious affair, nothing really stood out to me about this 24th day of August. Tomorrow should be a little different. I got a call from the dispatcher at work this afternoon. He was lining up tomorrow's work and wanted to check with me before he committed me to my rather unusual assignment. Apparently the dairy is getting a new silo. It will be delivered by an OTR truck on an oversized flatbed. This is where I come into the picture. I guess the OTR trucks can't maneuver within the tight confines of the dairy, so I'll take a day cab over there and be the designated driver for a while. I'm not entirely sure what to expect, but I was told that they have a bunch of spotters directing the action so I'm guessing that it's gonna be a test of driving skill.
After the work at the dairy is done, I'll have a two-stop run going to both stores in Jackson. That one pays $99 and it will count as a second load for me, meaning that I'll get my extra $15 added on. I imagine I'll get hourly pay while I'm at the dairy. I don't know. Whatever. I'll find out soon enough. I'm just amused that, every time I think I've seen everything that this company does, they throw something else at me. One of these days I may decide to get my tanker endorsement and take a crack at that variety of work as well. We have two tankers that rotate from a cow farm somewhere out by Ann Arbor to the dairy in Livonia. For now though, oversized freight is my specialty... or something.
Aside from the fact that it was a long and tedious affair, nothing really stood out to me about this 24th day of August. Tomorrow should be a little different. I got a call from the dispatcher at work this afternoon. He was lining up tomorrow's work and wanted to check with me before he committed me to my rather unusual assignment. Apparently the dairy is getting a new silo. It will be delivered by an OTR truck on an oversized flatbed. This is where I come into the picture. I guess the OTR trucks can't maneuver within the tight confines of the dairy, so I'll take a day cab over there and be the designated driver for a while. I'm not entirely sure what to expect, but I was told that they have a bunch of spotters directing the action so I'm guessing that it's gonna be a test of driving skill.
After the work at the dairy is done, I'll have a two-stop run going to both stores in Jackson. That one pays $99 and it will count as a second load for me, meaning that I'll get my extra $15 added on. I imagine I'll get hourly pay while I'm at the dairy. I don't know. Whatever. I'll find out soon enough. I'm just amused that, every time I think I've seen everything that this company does, they throw something else at me. One of these days I may decide to get my tanker endorsement and take a crack at that variety of work as well. We have two tankers that rotate from a cow farm somewhere out by Ann Arbor to the dairy in Livonia. For now though, oversized freight is my specialty... or something.
Monday, August 23, 2010
8/23/10
This photograph may or may not be relevant to your interests. It will, however, be relevant to this blog post at some point.
Today was Monday. This means that it was my day off. After getting to bed in the early hours of this morning, I intended to waste most of my day sleeping. It didn't work out that way. For some unknown reason I was wide awake at 11am. Bummer.
After I bummed around for a few hours, I decided to make some productive use of my afternoon. I recently had heard some radio ads for a place in Southfield that buys gold. With gold at or near its all time high, I was curious to see if I could make a few bucks. I'll never be mistaken for a precious metals magnate but I did have a few things lying around. One was my class ring from Lincoln Park High School - Class of '94. Another was my wedding ring - Class of '97. One more was my Con-way Truckload service award - Class of '09. Since I can think of no reason that I'll ever have a use for any of them, I packed up the three rings and headed out. I really couldn't tell you the official name of the place, but their website is maxyourgold.com. (For the record - I get no remuneration from what I'm saying here. Feel free to click a Google ad on the side of the page if you want to throw a few cents in my direction, but this is a straightforward report.)
The chick behind the counter informed me that class rings derive quite a bit of their weight from the stone. She then asked if it would be okay to remove the stone from mine. "Do what you gotta do," I replied. She put some acid on each ring, then proceeded to crush the stone in my Class of '94 ring with a pair of pliers. Hardcore. For some reason though, there was no crushing of the pretty blue stone in my Con-way ring. Interesting.
After a few minutes I got some news. "I don't know what this ring is. Seems to be some sort of copper alloy, but it's definitely not gold." Go ahead and take a guess at which ring she was holding. I stifled a hearty laugh at this point in time. It had the little '10K' stamp and everything. "Con..." Heh. They gave me a fake. Awesome.
It turned out that my terribly cheap wedding ring had 5 grams of 14 karat gold. My ex-wife and I were pretty broke when we got married, in case you haven't figured out the math yet. That ring, I was told, was worth a little over a hundred bucks. Next on the list was my high school class ring. It contained 16 grams of 10 karat gold. Just over two hundred bucks for that one. I went into this little exercise hoping to get $200 for the three rings. I wound up with $315.08 for the two that were actually gold. Works for me. (The invoice that I received showed that I was getting roughly half the spot price of my gold, but it's not like I had any means of melting it down myself and putting it on the world market, right?)
Feeling pretty good about my voyage thus far, I stopped for lunch at a local burger joint. I had seen a recent news report saying that Five Guys had the best fast-food burgers in the country. There was a Five Guys location right by the gold place in Southfield so I couldn't resist my curiosity. For whatever it's worth I thought the food was pretty solid. I eat my burgers plain, meaning that I don't tend to buy into a lot of the hype surrounding these places. It seems to me that people get a little too caught up in the toppings. That being said, my plain burger today was plenty tasty and the fries were excellent. They were like a more perfectly manicured version of the hand-cut fries that Mom used to make. One more good thing about today's visit to Southfield.
The next stop on my agenda was a friend's house in Lincoln Park. As I swung around to catch M-10 toward the Southfield Freeway, I spotted a little place along the side of the road - JR Cigars. I enjoy an occasional Nat Sherman cigariilo and I used to stop at one of the JR outlets in North Carolina when I was a real trucker, so curiosity got the best of me today. I pulled into the lot and took a look. Five tins (100 cigarillos) for $45. I'll take it. I haven't seen the price so low since ole Ted Kennedy pushed through a tax hike to fund children's health insurance... for 25 year olds. This trip to Southfield was turning out to be a pretty good one indeed.
After spending some time with my friends in the LP, I had to make a decision. Either I would head out to the gym or I would take the night off and find somewhere to watch the ballgame instead. The ballgame won that battle. I had just wrapped up my last workout this morning, so waiting until tomorrow to blast my chest wasn't going to hurt anything. And the Tigers put a whooping on Kansas City just for good measure.
I have an 11:15am pull for tomorrow, so I'll have to get up a little earlier than usual. Flint, Midland, and Mount Pleasant - sounds like a long one.
Sunday, August 22, 2010
8/22/10
Another Sunday in Michigan...
Since people seem so eager to head up north and pretend to live the simple life every weekend, I can't figure out why they spend so much money on all of the modern conveniences and entertainment when they're down here. If all you need is a campfire and a jet ski, then stop blowing your paychecks on iPods and the rest of that crap.
Sunday is the day when all of these weekend travelers come back home to reality, of course. And there I was this afternoon with my typical run up to Genesee County. The bad traffic doesn't persist all the way back home. Some people go east or west once they hit I-69. That cuts into the volume a little bit. Then some people take I-75 down toward Detroit while others take US-23 down toward Brighton. Once the roads go their separate ways, the traffic seems to be pretty reasonable. On the north side of Flint though, there's that glorious stretch where we're all on one road together for a little while.
I know what you're wondering. Yes indeed, those are actual brake lights.
I was returning to the dairy, having completed my first three deliveries without issue, at the point when everything came to a halt. As I noted above though, things seem to shake out once everyone gets on the appropriate freeway.
Before I got back down to Livonia, I received a call from the weekend dispatcher at work. It turns out that the dairy was having production issues today. As a consequence, one of our guys showed up to find that his load wouldn't be ready for a while. My second load, on the other hand, was ready to roll. So the other driver took my run and I was to take his run once I got back. Fair enough then.
There was one little issue to overcome with respect to the new arrangement. I had taken the time last night to come up with detailed directions to my originally scheduled three stops for tonight. My new assignment, much like the original, had three stops in the Toledo area. The problem was that I had been to exactly zero of those three stops. I decided to swing by the terminal and make copies of the directions to each store before making my drop/hook at the dairy and heading back out. While I was in the office, I took a look and saw that my pay for the day had increased by $17 as a result of the change in assignments.
Armed with a new trailer full of milk and three pages with rudimentary directions on them, I headed southward to finish out the night. Nothing in particular stood out about that second run but I did end up knocking on the door of the 14 hour rule by the time I made it back.
Having earned $308 for the day without any incidents, I was feeling somewhat content. I also was feeling somewhat exhausted. 14 hours is a long time for me to be working when I'm feeling normal. When it feels like I can't lift my arms - long, long night. I decided to skip tonight's leg workout and head home instead. Then I saw a truck driver stopped at a red light. Not only was he wearing one of those Goddamned sleeveless shirts that so many of them seem to love, but his arms were a big old mess. Not a pretty sight. Okay then... turning around and heading to the gym...
It's probably not ideal to hit the weights at 3am on a Sunday night, especially after a really long day of work. There was an unintended side benefit though. It turns out that, at 3am on a Sunday night, I'm not the only fat dude at Lifetime Fitness. Who knew? On second thought that's not much of a benefit, but it did make me chuckle. I do enjoy me a good chuckle whenever I get the chance. I actually managed to get some pretty solid lifting done, then dragged my jelly legs and droopy eyelids back home to call it a night. The ringer on my phone is off and my A/C is set to a frigid temperature. I'm pretty sure I won't be having any trouble sleeping this time around.
Since people seem so eager to head up north and pretend to live the simple life every weekend, I can't figure out why they spend so much money on all of the modern conveniences and entertainment when they're down here. If all you need is a campfire and a jet ski, then stop blowing your paychecks on iPods and the rest of that crap.
Sunday is the day when all of these weekend travelers come back home to reality, of course. And there I was this afternoon with my typical run up to Genesee County. The bad traffic doesn't persist all the way back home. Some people go east or west once they hit I-69. That cuts into the volume a little bit. Then some people take I-75 down toward Detroit while others take US-23 down toward Brighton. Once the roads go their separate ways, the traffic seems to be pretty reasonable. On the north side of Flint though, there's that glorious stretch where we're all on one road together for a little while.
I was returning to the dairy, having completed my first three deliveries without issue, at the point when everything came to a halt. As I noted above though, things seem to shake out once everyone gets on the appropriate freeway.
Before I got back down to Livonia, I received a call from the weekend dispatcher at work. It turns out that the dairy was having production issues today. As a consequence, one of our guys showed up to find that his load wouldn't be ready for a while. My second load, on the other hand, was ready to roll. So the other driver took my run and I was to take his run once I got back. Fair enough then.
There was one little issue to overcome with respect to the new arrangement. I had taken the time last night to come up with detailed directions to my originally scheduled three stops for tonight. My new assignment, much like the original, had three stops in the Toledo area. The problem was that I had been to exactly zero of those three stops. I decided to swing by the terminal and make copies of the directions to each store before making my drop/hook at the dairy and heading back out. While I was in the office, I took a look and saw that my pay for the day had increased by $17 as a result of the change in assignments.
Armed with a new trailer full of milk and three pages with rudimentary directions on them, I headed southward to finish out the night. Nothing in particular stood out about that second run but I did end up knocking on the door of the 14 hour rule by the time I made it back.
Having earned $308 for the day without any incidents, I was feeling somewhat content. I also was feeling somewhat exhausted. 14 hours is a long time for me to be working when I'm feeling normal. When it feels like I can't lift my arms - long, long night. I decided to skip tonight's leg workout and head home instead. Then I saw a truck driver stopped at a red light. Not only was he wearing one of those Goddamned sleeveless shirts that so many of them seem to love, but his arms were a big old mess. Not a pretty sight. Okay then... turning around and heading to the gym...
It's probably not ideal to hit the weights at 3am on a Sunday night, especially after a really long day of work. There was an unintended side benefit though. It turns out that, at 3am on a Sunday night, I'm not the only fat dude at Lifetime Fitness. Who knew? On second thought that's not much of a benefit, but it did make me chuckle. I do enjoy me a good chuckle whenever I get the chance. I actually managed to get some pretty solid lifting done, then dragged my jelly legs and droopy eyelids back home to call it a night. The ringer on my phone is off and my A/C is set to a frigid temperature. I'm pretty sure I won't be having any trouble sleeping this time around.
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