4/5/09

I somehow got suckered into a commitment to bake a batch of my famous lasagna for a friend of mine and her husband the next time I get home. Now I can't wait to get home and have some of my famous lasagna. It wouldn't seem that a few more days would make much difference, but even my standard delicious SubWay Italian BMT with double meat just seemed a little disappointing today. Ahh, the trials and tribulations of a pudgy truck driver with a rather boring life...

The actual driving part didn't do a whole lot to help my patience today either. After around a hundred miles of cruising up I-77, things came to a dead stop. Trained monkey that I am, I reached over and clicked on the CB. "I don't know why the hell y'all are backed up like that. It's just a little construction up 'ere about ten miles ahead." Man, how I hate to hear that. One of these days I'm just gonna start ramming people. If they refuse to keep moving, I'll move 'em. One of these days...

After spending fifty-three minutes covering seven miles, I got back onto the throttle and things started to look up for a bit. I had the run of the hills for the most part since I only have an 8,000 pound payload and most of the trucks are far heavier. Of course though, there's always the one dickhead who wants to ruin the ride. Entering Virginia... Some broad in a pickup truck kept slowing down well below the speed limit until I started to pass, then speeding up a little and keeping me hanging until the next hill slowed me down and all of the traffic piled up behind me. One of these days...

I managed to navigate West Virginia in better than average fashion until I got up to US-35 on the way to Ohio. A good old Landstar driver decided that he was going to vary his speed between 35mph and 50mph on the 55mph two-lane. Good road, good weather, just a dumbass bastard I guess. There was just enough oncoming traffic to keep the rest of us trapped behind him. I don't know how long the backup behind me wound up being but it was definitely a long one. Aren't Landstar drivers all owner-operators? I would tend to think that someone in CDL school could do a little better than that. One of these days...

So I pulled into the truck stop in Jackson, Ohio for some dinner and concluded that I'm probably not in the state of mind to head up the road any more tonight. I have no idea where I would park between here and my final destination anyway. I think there are a few more truck stops along my route but they are on the smaller side. Maybe I could get all the way to Perrysburg but I doubt it. I'm running state and U.S. highways and I lost a lot of time earlier while I was stuck in traffic. I'm due at the consignee by 5:30pm tomorrow so a couple hundred miles in the morning won't kill me.