6/1/09

I may not be on my couch with a beer in my hand as I type this evening, but at least I'm in the right state. Thankfully I'm in the right state and not at Wright State though. They got eliminated from College World Series regional play over the weekend. Plus they're located in Dayton. That probably sucks.

I got over to my consignee this morning after slugging my way through a lot of traffic and a lot of red lights. I had been to the place before so the directions were familiar to me. Then, once I arrived, I promptly turned into the driveway of a neighboring warehouse instead of the correct one. I thought I would try to play it off all cool and threw my truck in reverse to get back to the correct driveway. Then I didn't do such a slick job at backing out into the street. I only held up traffic for a minute though. It wasn't so bad I guess.

After making my drop/hook and checking out with the security guard, I pulled around the corner and into the same driveway that I had started to enter the first time. That neighboring warehouse is unoccupied so it seemed like a decent place to hang out for a bit. I was #2 on the board and marked for home time. I expected to be moving fairly soon.

After a rather lengthy nap during which I never received an assignment, I woke and logged onto the web portal to check on my board status. #0 (assigned to a load). Okay then. No need to bitch about the power saving mode on the Qualcomm today. We know that story already. I fired up my truck and waited for my assignment to come across the satellite. And I waited. And I waited. After several minutes I still hadn't received any messages. Whatever. Maybe the assigned load had been unassigned or something. I shut my engine back off and grabbed my computer to look at my board status one more time. Then my message came across the satellite and the Qualcomm unit chirped at me.

My next pickup would be a drop/hook in Aurora that was heading to Canada. I would run the first leg and get it to Taylor, then start my seven or eight days of home time. The load assignment said that the appointment was for 2pm but the dispatch afforded me an extra few minutes, requiring me to arrive by 2:15pm. I decided to head eastward on I-80 and then go up the I-355 toll road instead of angling directly from New Lenox toward Aurora. I would be going a few miles out of the way but I hoped that it would be a quicker route. In an unusual twist, this turned out to be a great idea. There was hardly any traffic and I was able to get to the shipper by 2pm.

After checking in I was told that my load was not really going to be a drop/hook and that it would be a few hours until I was ready to roll. The CTL guy who was at the loading dock when I arrived said that he had been there since 9:30am. Yeesh. My wait wasn't quite that long but it was well over two hours before they had me loaded. In the interim I got the pleasure of blindsiding into a dock along a concrete wall with about a foot of room on my left. That's always a treat.

The Cliff's Notes version of today is that I spent several hours waiting on a new assignment and then spent a few hours waiting to be released with that next load. By the time I got back on the highway this evening, I was only able to make it to Benton Harbor before my 14 hour clock ran out. The rush hour traffic out of the Chicago area seems to be back to normal - shitty and slow. That's nice to see. I'll have to spend exactly ten hours here and then hit the road bright and early in order to get this trailer to the terminal in Taylor by my scheduled arrival time.

I think I made far too many commitments to spend an hour here and there doing this and that during the next week. My trip up north will probably be the easiest part of the whole time off. I prefer to have plenty of time to kick back and do absolutely nothing while I'm home, but I hardly have any friends as it is. Probably ought to honor my commitments at this point rather than alienate people. I'll manage. Yeah, I know... boo freaking hoo. I guess it has been a long day and I'm rambling a little. Goodnight then.