6/12/09

Some might consider my rather juvenile sleeping pattern while I'm at home to be irresponsible. I consider it to be a form of training. I was most definitely dragging ass by the time I got to my consignee this morning but I made it without incident. Some of you "normal" types might have had a rough time pulling that one off after having been awake all day yesterday. Luckily I've spent my life training for just such a thing... or something like that.

Some of my friends are starting to get the hang of this trucking routine, I think. One called to see if I was rolling last night. After hearing that I was picking up in Plymouth and going to Indiana she asked, "Don't they usually set you up with one to Laredo when you deliver in Indiana?" Very astute observation. Alas, I got no pre-plan this time around. Just the pickup and the overnight run. My first pleasant surprise came when I saw that I had 33,000 pounds of water instead of the usual 47,000. No need to worry about finding a scale in that case. My second pleasant surprise came when I got my dispatch... along with a pre-planned load heading for Laredo. Well I'll be damned. Very astute indeed.

I was hanging tough for the most part through the whole trip but those last forty miles out of Indianapolis were definitely a struggle. I pulled into the consignee's lot at 5:15am (ahead of a 7am appointment) and looked for a place to hide out. I really didn't find any convenient places to park but I did see that their receiving office opens at 5am. Good deal. They had me unloaded quickly and I was off for North Vernon to make my next pickup.

Some of those states in the Midwest are a little quirky with their spoken dialects. The English that is spoken in the bulk of Indiana tends to sound like that of Southern Michigan or Northern Ohio for the most part. When you get up into Wisconsin and Minnesota you have that weird Nordic sounding English. An hour north of Detroit you would swear that the people were all Canadians. Then you get to the fine folks in North Vernon, Indiana. Re-draw the Kentucky border maybe? Nah, just observing one of the interesting things about our vast country. The traditional definition of 'the South' doesn't tend to include the bottom halves of Indiana or Ohio, but it probably should.

Once I was loaded with 13,000 pounds of miscellaneous nonsense from a couple of warehouses in North Vernon, I skipped back over to I-65 and headed southward. My 14 hour clock had enough time left to get me through Louisville so that was the plan. As it turns out, my internal 'quitting time' clock ran out of batteries at just the same time. I had to circle the lot at the Pilot in Brooks a few times before I could find a spot. That's not generally the best scenario when you're dead tired. If you're getting the last spot you're not going to have a whole lot of space to maneuver. I got 'er in there without hitting anything though. Good enough.

By the time the hockey game is over, I'll be legal to hit the road again. I don't think I'm going anywhere tonight though. I'm due in Laredo by Monday morning so I'll probably spend the night here and knock out two long shifts over the weekend.