4/27/09

♫ Mama said there'll be days like this, there'll be days like this Mama said... ♫

When the first thing that you see at 5am is snow all over your windshield, this is probably not the best omen. When the second thing that you see is a truck parked in front of you, where trucks are not allowed to park... well, you can see where this is going. One of those mornings.

After I got myself extricated from my parking space at the Flying J, the morning traffic was fairly light but still quite slow on account of the steady snowfall. For those of you playing the home game, you are welcome to follow along here for a map of the next part of our little narrative, if you so desire. My directions said that I should exit I-25 and head east on Alameda. So far, so good. Then they said to go south on Broadway, east on Virginia, and then north on Pearl to the customer. Yeah, all those buildings... those are houses. The directions had an additional line at the end though, indicating that these specific directions are the only way that we should get to the customer. So I ignored a 'No Trucks over 7,000 Pounds' sign on every block and snaked my way through the snowy neighborhood and onto Pearl Street. Good enough.

On account of having followed my directions to the letter, I was facing north when I got to the customer's location. Remember the part about not seeing any loading docks? Yeah, they just needed me to back into the little lot on the north end of the building. And yes, the parked cars were there too.


I'm pretty decent at navigating tight situations, but to make that kind of blindside maneuver would be above my pay grade. By the time I pulled forward between the rows of parked cars, it would have been impossible to kick the trailer around the corner to my right. So I asked the guy if there was somewhere for me to turn around and take a crack at it from the other direction. Then I could use the wide sidewalk in front of that open garage and get a better angle of attack. Plus I would be backing to my left so I could see what was going on.

He gave me some rudimentary directions - "Go up a couple blocks, take a left, couple more, take another left, etc." I did as I was told and found myself on more tight residential streets with more 'No Trucks' signs. By the time I wound myself back onto the main drag, I found that I was on which street? Alameda, of course. So my bullshit directions should have been to go east on Alameda and take a right on Pearl. Simple enough. This would have kept me out of those neighborhoods and left me facing in the right direction when I arrived. Whatevs.

I got backed in without any major delays and kicked back for a bit. I had to push my right mirror against my window in order to make enough room for the dairy trucks to enter and exit their driveway. Pretty tight quarters, I must say. The ass end of my trailer was backed up to the building and the front of my truck was halfway out the gate.

The unloading was done by guys climbing into my trailer and dragging stuff out by hand, so that took a while. Once I was empty, my work wasn't yet finished. I still had to get out of that neighborhood. The aforementioned parked cars on both sides of the street kept me from being able to make a right turn out of the gate. So all I could do was make a left and then look for intersections that were wide enough to allow me to get back out to Alameda. I did find my way out there eventually. As I got a green light and made my left turn, the dipshit coming from my left decided to stop himself right under the light instead of leaving me some room to make the turn. Amidst the rush hour traffic there would be no backing up (for him or for me), so I was going to have to make it work. I went up on the sidewalk on the far side of the avenue and inched forward until I had cleared the moron.

Whew! Finally on a decent road... what? Flashing blue lights? You can't be serious. I know I was off the truck routes, but what the hell else was I going to do?


So I readied my excuse and pulled to the curb. By this time, after I had blocked the intersection to make my slow turn and the cop had everyone staring at the pretty lights, there was traffic backed up in every direction. He nestled in behind me and the other motorists started to go around. I was only about a hundred yards from my damned consignee at the time. At least I could point to their building and try to explain. After two or three minutes, our friend from the PD just cut into traffic and took off with his lights still flashing, leaving me wondering what in the hell was going on. I wasn't sure if there was still a cop back there and a second cop had taken off, or if I just caught a break and he was gone. I waited for another couple of minutes and then started moving forward. Nobody back there. I'll be damned. If you robbed a liquor store in Denver this morning and that cop took the call, I guess I owe you one.

So I did get back to I-25 in one piece after all. I was #2 on the board so I decided to head up to the Sapp Brothers in Commerce City and park until I received a new assignment. Five seconds after I merged into the bumper-to-bumper traffic, the assignment came through. I would be picking up in Golden, Colorado. I had no idea which way to go in order to head toward Golden. The only time I had ever heard of Golden, Colorado was at the end of Coors commercials. My stop location information would likely include a freeway and exit number, but I would have to confirm the assignment via satellite before that information would be sent to me. This wasn't going to happen as long as I was dodging cars on the snowy freeway. I grabbed my atlas and managed to see 'E-13' next to 'Golden' in the index during one of my brief glances. Yeah, 'E-13' is pretty much the whole Denver area. That didn't help.

I got to the interchange with I-70 and decided to go west instead of going east to the Sapp Brothers. Traffic looked pretty heavy on the eastbound ramp. Westbound was moving freely. Once I got settled onto I-70, I seemed to remember a T/A somewhere on the west edge of Denver. I would be able to park there and figure out where I needed to go to pick up my load. The truck stop was only a few miles down and there was plenty of room to park. I confirmed the assignment and took a good look at my map. In tonight's 'smelling like a rose' segment, we learn that Golden is the town right next to that T/A. Beauty.

I made a quick drop/hook at the shipper there and then hopped back on I-70 to head back eastward. The snow stopped at some point and the sun eventually came out once I was around a hundred miles into Kansas. The Tigers knocked off the 160 million dollar man and his evil cohorts. My week is off to a good start mileage-wise. The Sapp Brothers in Junction City gave me a cheeseburger for free, since its shelf life had expired. I guess today wasn't so bad after all.

I'm due in Knoxville, Tennessee by Wednesday afternoon. I imagine I'll knock out a pretty full day of driving tomorrow and then finish off the last couple hundred miles on Wednesday. Between the short deadhead and this loaded run I'll be somewhere just under 1,400 miles for the week once I'm empty. Not bad.