5/16/09

I guess the load assignments were turbocharged this morning or something. I slept late yesterday so I wasn't in a sleepy mood until really, really late last night. I was still #8 on the board when I went to bed though. Surely I would have plenty of time to sleep this morning until they found some work for me. Yeah, the beep came at 7am. I got up and responded and then saw that I didn't have to pick up until tomorrow morning. Beauty. Back to bed for a few hours.

Once I woke again, this time of my own accord, I took a look at the details of my next assignment. I had to bobtail around 45 miles to the north and pick up a load in Old Forge. My pickup was scheduled for tomorrow at 8am. Guess we might as well play a hunch on this one. Since I was picking up a pre-loaded trailer and most places don't do a whole lot of loading between Saturday afternoon and Sunday morning, I headed over to see if I could grab it today. It was ready to roll when I got there. Beauty. It probably doesn't make a huge difference if the miles went on this week's paycheck or next week's, but with all other things being equal I'll take my cash a week sooner.

The bigger benefit to me was that I got to knock out part of the trip today instead of waiting until tomorrow. That beats the hell out of sitting around all day today and then having to drive longer shifts for the next couple of days. Where are we headed on this particular voyage? I think we'll let Mr. Corleone answer that one...

Yeah, back down I-95 to Florida we go. It would have been nice to get away from this route for a little while. The Beltway was an absolute mess today and Northern Virginia was even worse. It has been a long time since i saw it that bad on a weekend. You take the good with the bad though. The bad is another couple of days on I-95. I am delivering in Miami on Tuesday and I don't seem to have fond memories of driving my truck down there either. The good side of the equation is a week with 3,543 miles and $47 in northeast pay. My total pay for the week will be just a cheeseburger short of $1,400. Good enough.

I got down to Ruther Glen and decided to call it a night. I remember hearing somewhere that I could get three sexy t-shirts at the Flying J for ten bucks, so I thought I would park there. They were full and then some... at 6:30pm on a Saturday. Over to the Petro then... full. What the hell? I was about to head back out to the highway (the Pilot isn't even worth trying) when I spotted an empty parking space at Mr. Fuel next to the Petro. That'll work.

I think I'll try to get an early start tomorrow and knock out a good chunk of miles before the hockey game starts. Hopefully I can find a good fast connection somewhere along the way. Long before we learned to hate the Ducks and long before we learned to hate the Avalanche, we knew exactly how to hate the Blackhawks. Damn that Chelios... err... nevermind.