9/23/09

Ahh yes, it's that time of year. Scoreboard watching and 'magic numbers' are the order of business. The Twinkies are still being stubborn but the Tigers are hanging on. Another win tonight has the magic number down to 9. And Verlander is going tomorrow. Beauty.

Today's drive was plenty frustrating, but at least the shenanigans from the desk jockeys appear to have abated for the most part. The brilliant dispatcher from last night's episode gave me an ETA of 2:19pm in Taylor today. What this meant was that I had to get cracking as soon as my ten hours were up. I should have had around a half hour to spare, it seemed, but it's always best to leave some margin for error. Out to the road at 7:15am then...

Chicago was Chicago, so there's really not much to say about that. As I sat parked in a traffic jam, I started crunching some numbers and concluded that my ETA might be a little dicey after all. Since I had been lectured about the absolute need to communicate any delays by last night's brilliant dispatcher, I made a call to the Taylor terminal to keep them in the loop. Useless call. Moving along... Next I sent a 'detained' message to Joplin, advising them that I was stuck in traffic and I wasn't sure about my ETA. No response from anyone there, but maybe someone noticed or something. I don't know. Whatever.

Once I got through Chicago, things shook out and I made pretty good time for the rest of the trip. There was no time to stop, of course, since the lady in Taylor who took my earlier phone call wouldn't let me ask the dispatcher if I could have a little extra time. Whatever dude. Food is overrated anyway. Being fat has its advantages, I suppose. Fortunately, my fuel gauge didn't reach the empty mark until I was close to the terminal. I rolled in at 2:15pm and made my drop, then got on the board at #3.

By the time I got back out to my truck, I was up to #2 on the board. Not much sense in going home at that point. I had a new assignment within a couple of hours and it was time to head back out. My next pickup was a drop/hook in Kalamazoo, headed for the Philly suburbs. I still had four driving hours available for today, but the 14-hour rule would come into play if everything wasn't quick and easy. So obviously there would have to be a lot of red tape at the shipper, leaving me only an hour and a half to drive once I had my loaded trailer. Par for the course.

I didn't have a firm idea on how I wanted to use that last hour and a half tonight. I could go straight down on US-131 out of Kalamazoo and then catch the Indiana toll road. Or I could run I-94 over to I-69 and drop down from there. Or I could take I-94 back across Michigan and drop down on US-127 or US-23. I'm not sure which route is the shortest. I imagine that the routes are all within a reasonable range of each other. The biggest issue for me was trying to find a way to get my full hour and a half in and then have a place to park at the end. I settled on the route down I-69, since there would be a few places along the toll roads that I could try for parking.

Yeah, I said toll roads, plural. I'm inclined to think that I would have maintained my anti-toll crusade if not for the Mackinac Bridge deal on Monday. Making it through a whole calendar year might have been something worth doing, but in any case I'll be taking the Ohio turnpike this time around. The consignee in Pennsylvania has overnight parking and there would be no way to get there by tomorrow night if I screwed around crossing Ohio. I feel the need. The need, for speed.

As I approached the exit for I-69, traffic came to a dead stop. Nice. Nothing like watching your 14-hour clock tick away while you roll along in low gear. Then, just for shits and giggles, the ramp for I-69 was completely shut down. Okay then. Guess we'll be taking I-94 after all. After I got out of that mess, I peeked at the clock and saw that I could make it to the little rathole truck stop on the east side of Jackson before I ran out of hours. There were a few other truck stops and rest areas along the way but, as I mentioned, I needed to maximize today's drive so that I could reach the consignee in one shot tomorrow. Jackson would be as far as I could go tonight.

Five miles before my exit... dead stop. Freeway closed. Yeah, for realsies. They only have two seasons in Michigan, as the saying goes... The detour off the freeway turned out to be no more than a quick 'off and back on' kinda deal, but it took quite a while for everyone to migrate to the exit. Three miles later the day was finally over. 9:07pm equals 9pm in the driver's logging world, right? Good enough for me. It was a pain in the ass, but I'm pretty sure I covered enough ground tonight to do the trick.

I think I'll angle down toward Blissfield from here and catch US-23 tomorrow. Then it will be a long day on those good old turnpikes. Certainly racking up some miles though. I'll be at 1,992 on Friday morning once I get rid of this load. One good old nor'easter for the weekend will have me doing just fine. And better yet - no alarm clock tonight. Beauty.