6/17/09

You are encouraged to root for the following players this weekend (unless you hold a negative opinion of this blog's author, in which case you might as well go ahead and root against them):

Tiger Woods
Jim Furyk
Zach Johnson
Mike Weir
Justin Leonard
Chad Campbell
J.B. Holmes
Rod Pampling
Brian Gay

I didn't miss the free golf vacation by a whole lot during my Masters pool, so maybe I can catch a few breaks this time around.

So, another early morning of driving to finish off a trip today. This is getting a little old, I must say. The alarm clock has never been a friend of mine. I angled across on I-44 and then went up through the northeastern part of Missouri on MO-5, US-54, MO-19, and US-61. Given the length of the drive off the interstate, I wasn't sure how long the trip might take. It turned out to be a fairly quick route so I had time for a nice nap at the Missouri welcome center shortly before reaching Iowa. That was quite helpful to the cause. Not surprisingly, I didn't sleep worth a shit last night.

Before I got to Iowa, I received a pre-planned assignment for my next load. Always nice to see those. This one was picking up in Iowa at 9:30am today (an hour or so before I received the assignment) and delivering in Pennsylvania on Friday morning. The run was listed at 1,092 miles but I was pretty sure that I wouldn't be covering the whole trip. I've been running pretty hard since I left home and my 70 hours are getting to be in short supply. In any case, I had somewhere to go once I was empty so I was content.

At the consignee there was another CTL truck ahead of me, waiting for a dock to open up. He pulled in once another truck left and then I got the next dock when a second truck took off. Once I was empty I started heading westward toward the next pickup. I didn't receive a dispatch right away so I started to wonder if the load planning gang had come up with a different plan on account of my hours. I called the 800 line and found that I was not on the board. Taking this to mean that my empty call was still being processed, I continued westward. About fifteen or twenty miles down the road I finally got my assignment.

At the shipper in Corydon, my loaded trailer was ready and waiting when I arrived. Good deal. I made a quick drop/hook and then sent in the information for the load. My dispatch came through for the full 1,092 miles, with a scheduled ETA of 3am on Sunday. So essentially the computer took my remaining hours and figured out when I could finish the trip within the law. Not surprisingly, I got another message a few seconds later. Yep. I'll be relaying the load in Indianapolis tomorrow afternoon. That makes a little more sense. Relaying in Indy will make pretty decent use of my remaining hours but those truck stops on the loop seem to be awfully crowded whenever I drive by. I would have preferred a more convenient location. I don't know. We'll see.

I'll be empty on Thursday with 1,944 miles on the books for the week. There's a bit of a chance that my week will stall out at that point. I only pick up a couple of hours on Friday, although I do get a decent chunk back on Saturday. Maybe I can get something for the weekend and make it a good week. For perspective though, my dispatched miles for the roughly seven days from last Thursday night (when I left home) to this Thursday morning numbered 3,713. That's a solid week by anyone's definition. If nothing else comes up for the weekend and I'm forced to sit and watch the U.S. Open, I suspect that I'll survive.

I have around seven hours or so to drive in the morning to reach my relay point, so it looks like another early morning is in store. Might as well try to sleep. One of these nights it has to work.