7/24/09

Nothing like a decent Friday to soothe the soul. The Tigers take a pair from the bad guys and my work week gets a shot in the arm. Hell, even the worst investment that I ever made is starting to show signs of life. Yeah, I held onto that sucker all the way down. So what? I was like a battered spouse or something, always hoping things would get better. Things are looking up today though.

My load wasn't ready early at the Con-way yard in Salem, but this was one of those odd Con-way runs with a boatload of time on it so the timing didn't really matter. I had to chuckle as I drove across Illinois on US-50. Most of the route was a two-lane. One of my CTL colleagues and two of the Con-way Freight guys were riding my ass for a while. Then, in one of the stretches where the road had an extra lane, the three of them flew past me and sped along on their way. After that, every few miles or so there was a town and guess where I ended up. Give yourself a point if you said, "Right behind them." Morons.

I had to make the call regarding St. Louis once I got to the interstate. Drop down on the bypass or go right through? I've generally found the suburbs to be worse than St. Louis itself so I stayed on I-64 and crossed the Mississippi up there. There was a massive backup waiting to get onto I-55 and I-44. "Screw that," I muttered as I stayed to the left and started on another ill-advised expedition into uncharted territory. I knew that I-64 was closed and I wouldn't be able to get all the way through town, but I didn't think it would be too hard to find my way to I-44. No repeat of the Raleigh debacle this time around. For reasons of questionable legality we'll have to leave the exact route undisclosed, but it wasn't bad at all. A few strange looks from the local tenants, of course, but I'm used to that. I was probably on I-44 and headed westward before all those people who were waiting on the ramp.

Around halfway through Missouri my satellite unit gave me a chirp. A second chirp means a pre-plan so I waited with my fingers crossed. If I had to go into another weekend without an assignment, I would be tempted to grab my second week of vacation pay. Come on, pre-plan! No second chirp though, so I accepted that it must be some inane message to the whole fleet. As I reached over and hit the button to have the Qualcomm digital voice chick read the message to me, I got my belated second chirp. How about that? Nice big pre-plan for the weekend - beauty.

I wasn't due in Sapulpa until 7pm Central, but the scheduling of my next planned load would have been tricky if I took too long, so I kept the pedal to the metal and got there several hours early. This way I had time for a ten-hour break before the next load was scheduled to leave Tulsa. The plan summary said that I had to pick up at midnight, so either I could get it early and work with what was left of today's 14-hour clock or I could take my break first and then start with a fresh clock. I decided to shoot over to the shipper and try my luck this afternoon, just in case it was a pre-loaded trailer. It was. Beauty.

By this time the Tigers had won their first game of the day and any doubts about the quality of my next paycheck had been erased, so life was looking pretty good. I had a couple of hours still available so I headed back eastward. Massachusetts or bust, as the hitchhikers might say. Once I got back out onto the turnpike I received a message from the safety department. It said that I would be receiving a call from an insurance adjuster about checking out the damage to my truck from the Indianapolis episode. Umm, okay. I wasn't sure what exactly that meant, but whatever.

The insurance guy called a few minutes later and said that he was coming from Tulsa and he needed to know where he could meet me to look at the truck. Okay, I get it now. They're gonna bill the company of the dude who hit me so they need someone to put an official price tag on the damage. Big Cabin was my next option and probably where I was spending the night anyway, so I made an executive decision and told him to meet me in Big Cabin. He showed up a while later, wrote a bunch of stuff, and took a few pictures. Tough job, eh? Then he was on his way and my day was through.

The second win of the day for the good guys was a nice wrap-up to the evening. They gave us a little scare in the 7th but all's well that ends well. One day of sharing first place was plenty. The natural order of things has been restored (for now).

A quick look at the company web portal shows that my week will end with 3,419 miles plus $40 in northeast pay. Last week gave us a little scare but all's well that ends well. One week of sub-par mileage was plenty. The natural order of things has been restored (for now).

The standard approach on a lengthy run like this would be to knock out a long day of driving up front and then take things a little easier on Sunday and Monday. This time, however, I think we're going to have to switch it up a bit. Our Lady's glorious defenders of the past are about to go all MacArthur on the Japanese at 3am. Perfect ending to a pretty damn good Friday, I must say. I seem to have found a couple of sources for the Nippon TV stream. This means that I'm staying up pretty late tonight. This also means I'm sleeping pretty late tomorrow and probably not driving terribly far whenever I wake. I'll have a guaranteed parking space at our yard in Pocahontas no matter how late I get there, so that should work pretty well. Then two somewhat longer days will get me to Massachusetts well ahead of my Tuesday afternoon delivery. Go Irish!