12/7/09

With all due respect to Horace Greely, the last thing that I wanted to do today was to "go west." The temperature readout on my dashboard said that it was 5º outside and a pretty fair amount of snow had fallen overnight. The Rockies are nice in the summer and all, but not so much at this time of year.

As I sat waiting for my 7am appointment to roll around, I received my next planned load information. Eastbound and down. Good deal. The pickup time was listed as yesterday at 6:30am so I guessed that there was something unusual about the assignment. Once my trailer was empty I received the rest of the information. It was a relay leaving the Bosselman's truck stop in Grand Island and going to Fort Madison, Iowa. The relay time that I was given was 2pm, so I headed over to the truck stop and put my feet up for a while.

Around noon, the inbound truck pulled up next to me and we made the swap. It turns out that this assignment was the result of the other driver's misfortune and none of my own. He got the pleasure of picking it up at the molybdenum mine in Henderson, Colorado. Then he drove to Grand Island and found a mechanical problem with his truck. I'm not entirely sure why the relay was scheduled for 2pm today, on account of the fact that he had been in Grand Island since Friday, but I was glad that he spotted me early. This allowed for a more workable schedule on my end.

The forklift guy at this morning's consignee mentioned that a big snowstorm was coming up from Kansas into Nebraska today, so I hauled ass out of town and tried to stay ahead of it. I was glad to find that I-80 was clean and dry all the way across. My first look at the atlas had me thinking that I would come out of Lincoln on NE-2 and stay in IA-2 through Iowa. My truck stop directory didn't show any parking options along that route though, so I wound up on the interstate all the way to Des Moines. Then I dropped down on IA-163 to IA-92. The truck stop at the corner of IA-92 and US-218 had plenty of parking when I arrived. Beauty.

I'll have between 60 and 70 miles to cover in the morning ahead of an 8:30am delivery appointment. The snowfall here tonight has been light so far. Here's hoping for no unpleasant surprises as far as road conditions go. The temperature got steadily warmer as I proceeded eastward today, so plowing and salting should be plenty effective, assuming they actually do that in this neck of the woods.

This run was 479 dispatched miles, so the week is off to a decent start thus far. I'm due to request home time on Friday. Four more days to try and avoid the Rockies. We'll see...