7/8/09

Easy start to the day, eh? Yeah... easy my ass. I only had to drive six miles or so in order to arrive at what seemed like it may or may not have been my consignee. Turns out that it really was the driveway for ole Bob and Jeanne's alpaca farm. There's some sort of agricultural work going on in the field out in front of the farm. Those agricultural guys were my customers. I swung wide to my right and started to make the left into the driveway. Shit. Not gonna happen. The gate also happened to be locked but that was a non-issue at the moment. Gotta get into the driveway before you can pass through the gate. You know what's worse than trying to make a turn and then realizing that it ain't gonna happen? Backing out of the same turn onto the street while people are trying to get to work.

So much for the easy start. Backing out didn't turn out to be quite as tough as it normally would have been. I hadn't made it far enough into the forward turn to give up my dominion over the street, so the traffic had no choice but to sit and wait while I reversed my course. I just had to keep a really close eye on my right side as I cleared a wooden post by a few inches. Then I had to figure out what would happen next.

It took me about five miles of driving before I found somewhere to turn around. As I got situated and started back toward the scene of the crime, I made a call to my fleet manager to see if there were any further instructions. Nope. So I was going back to a driveway that was too skinny to enter and delivering to a customer who wasn't there. Good deal. We concluded that I would try to get as close as I could and wait for the customer to show up, then take it from there. As I got back to the consignee's street, I started looking for somewhere to pull my truck over so I could walk to the gate. The road had no shoulder and I never did see a suitable spot to pull over.

As I approached the customer's driveway from the west, I saw that the gate had been opened while I was getting turned around. Ergo one of my issues had been resolved. All that was left was the matter of the skinny driveway with wooden posts on each side. I paused for a second and then arrived at my usual conclusion - "Ah, what the hell, why not?" The left turn was slightly sharper than 90º on my initial approach from the east, so coming from the west would theoretically make the right turn slightly easier. I swung all the way to the far side of the road and took a look to my right. Then I swung off the road as much as I could while keeping the majority of my tires on the asphalt. It's generally not too smart to drive off the road, since there's no telling how firm the off-road surface is, but I was feeling adventurous. The extra couple of feet and the slightly more obtuse angle gave me just enough room to get into the driveway. Beauty.

A bunch of guys came toward the driveway as I pulled in. It seemed to me that one of two things was likely. Either they had been expecting me and they were coming over to unload the trailer or they were simply wondering what in the hell such a big vehicle was doing on their little dirt driveway. Thankfully it was the former and not the latter. The first guy apologized for having the gate closed when I arrived the first time. I probably could have let him think that this was the reason I had to back out, but I went ahead and told him that I hadn't cleared the turn anyway. Leave the fella with a clear conscience. That's what I say.

Those guys had me unloaded in short order and I received a less than desirable pre-plan in the interim. There was no logical place to turn around a truck and trailer, so they told me to swing around into the empty field in order to get headed back toward the street. I wasn't sold on that idea at first but the boss man informed me that the surface was plenty firm. Armed with the knowledge that the ground probably wouldn't swallow my tires, I decided that I could probably get away with going further off the road than I had previously gone. Thus, I chose to give that sharper eastbound turn a go as I exited. I had to take both steer tires and one drive tire completely off the road to make it, but I managed to get back onto the street without flipping my truck. Small victories, my friends, small victories.

My next load assignment is one picking up at the Con-way terminal in Kettleman City at 3:30am tomorrow so I had lots of time to kill. I drove back over to Casa de Fruta to kill some time in the comfortable mountain air before heading back down into the valley. Since I had already eaten dinner before I arrived last night, I decided to try the restaurant for breakfast today. Not bad at all. Western omelet with roasted redskin potatoes... bueno. As a gentleman of Irish extraction I certainly appreciate the potato in all its glorious forms, so I mean no disrespect to the hash brown. Hash browns serve a noble purpose at fast food restaurants and cheap diners all over the world. A good roasted redskin with peppers and onions is a far better complement to a nice omelet though. There's simply no comparison.

The carousel is closed down presently but you bet your ass I caught a ride on the choo choo before I took off. Then it was back out to the highway to do that bothersome little job of mine. The drive to Kettleman City consisted of 130 miles through lightly populated areas with an empty trailer. I guess we got the easy finish to the day instead of the easy start. It's pretty warm down here but not quite as hot as it was yesterday. I'm not too uncomfortable just yet. We'll see when it's time to go to bed. Both the state of California and the Con-way Freight company prohibit idling the truck. Of course the three other trucks here (two of them CTL trucks) are idling away. If I have trouble sleeping... well, hang on, that just sounds stupid. I always have trouble sleeping. If I have more trouble sleeping than I normally have on account of the temperature... that's more like it... I might end up firing up the engine and joining their rather noisy expression of defiance.

Tomorrow's trip will take me straight up I-5 to Redding. Hopefully it will be ready before the scheduled 3:30am, since I'm being given until 11am to cover 380 miles. Can't absorb too many slowdowns or potty breaks on that kind of schedule in a 55mph state.