9/29/09

Freaking rainouts. Always gotta go and disrupt my baseball viewing plans. Quite a boring night last night after I had spent the whole afternoon looking forward to the showdown. That's okay though. I got two games for the price of one today and the Tigers got a split. Usually a split is nothing exciting, but it knocks two games off the calendar without getting Minnesota any closer to the lead. Today's stalemate means that Detroit stays two games ahead with five games to play. Beauty.

The drive over to this afternoon's consignee took about five minutes. The unloading process took about ten minutes. The drive back to the truck stop took about five minutes. Yeah, as you can imagine, I was pretty worn out after all of that. I got on the board at #2 and watched the end of the Twinkies' win in the first game of today's double dip.

After a couple of hours I received my next assignment. I had to deadhead to Panama City, Florida for yet another load of paper. First though, I would have to swing by another customer in Dothan, Alabama and swap my old trailer for a newer one. The shipper is the same paper company that gave me all the trouble in Virginia, but apparently the Panama City location won't even take a trailer that is more than ten years old. The trip to Dothan was nice and easy and the security dude knew that I was coming, so everything went smoothly in terms of making the swap.

I headed back southward on US-231 and took a look at my truck stop directory to see where I might be able to park for the night. The pickings were pretty slim indeed. I could take a stab at the truck stop in Youngstown, Florida but, if that one was full, I would be SOL. There was nothing else listed between Youngstown and Panama City. 'Screw it,' I concluded. Let's roll the dice and see what happens. Every parking space in the back was full but there was a little gravel lot on the south side of the place. One truck was parked over in the gravel lot when I arrived. I became truck #2. Two more trucks have parked over here since then, so at the very least I won't be the only one getting arrested if this is an unacceptable location.

I'll have about thirty miles or so to drive in the morning, then I'm headed for Oklahoma with a scheduled delivery on Thursday evening. Given the way my last run went, we'll have to wait and see how that delivery schedule plays out. For now though, the miles have been pretty solid to start the week and it looks like I'll be empty on Thursday and set up for a good weekend.