6/29/09

It's about time to go after another group of people who get on my nerves. Tonight - you hippies who make sure all of the public restrooms get those worthless low energy hand dryer things. Just drink your damn soy milk and let a fella wipe his hands for Pete's sake. We can always plant more trees.

I wound up with a pretty long day of work today, which is good in the sense that I don't make a whole lot of money from short days of work. I had been getting used to those 4-5 hour days though. This one was damn near 11 hours of driving once all was said and done. The morning's drive to my consignee was fairly easy. That's always nice. The directions did tell me to make a right turn onto a street called 5th Avenue though. As I passed a yard with trailers in it and approached 5th Avenue, I had a sneaking suspicion that I was driving past my customer. I swung all the way to the far side of the road and began to make my turn onto 5th Avenue. Yeah, that wasn't happening. I got about halfway through the turn and realized that I could go no further. It was a skinny residential street with utility poles guarding both corners. Fortunately, your don is no stranger to wrong turns and the resulting backup jobs that tend to follow.

After backing out of the ill-fated turn and then continuing backward another hundred yards or so, I turned into the yard with the trailers and found that it was in fact my consignee. I was unloaded within a short time and then pulled into a neighboring vacant lot to await whatever came next. I was #2 on the board, behind a guy who hadn't followed the wrong directions and thus arrived a minute ahead of me. He had requested home time though, so he would have been given priority over me anyway when it came time for a load. We sat for maybe a half hour and then each received our next assignment. My colleague was heading homeward (to Ohio) and I was going to Laredo.

I had to drive down to Eddyville for my next pickup, so I angled out of Oelwein on IA-281 and followed it to Waterloo. According to my atlas, I would catch up with US-63 in Waterloo. According to the 'Dead End' sign that wound up staring me in the face, I probably should have checked a more detailed map. I'm not sure exactly where IA-281 officially ended, but I wound up on a somewhat skinny stretch of road with houses on both sides. I could see what looked like a bigger road with traffic lights, one block to my left. Guess we had better make a left before the road ends then. There were no cars parked too close to the corner, so that left turn wasn't a major issue. I caught up with the bigger road and continued westward, catching up with US-63 a couple of blocks later. The cop who wound up behind me as I emerged from the residential neighborhood was kind enough not to pull me over for being where I didn't belong. Good lookin' out, my brother.

I got checked in at the shipper in Eddyville and jumped through their sequence of hoops in order to get loaded and sent on my way. A light load would have been a nice change of pace after the last few. So of course this one is 43,000 pounds. My fuel mileage last week was a groovy 4.9mpg and I'm headed into some less than temperate climates (along with the idling that tends to correspond), so this heavy load won't be doing me any favors. Have no fear though, shareholders of CNW, there's always next week.

I'm due in Laredo by Wednesday morning, meaning that I'll have to complete two ten-hour breaks between now and then. I wanted to get as far as possible today so that I can get as close to Laredo as possible tomorrow. This way I drive as little as possible on Wednesday and leave myself some time to pull a load out of there if I'm high enough on the board after making my drop. I was able to get into Oklahoma tonight before my 14 hours were up. 605 miles total for the day and 10.75 hours of driving. So far, so good. Even with Satan's Driveway waiting in the wings, I should be able to make it well past San Antonio before tomorrow's 11 hours run out. Another quick turnaround in Laredo and we could be looking at a pretty solid week. 100 trucks on the board and we could be looking at a lot of fajitas. Which will it be? Time will tell.