The bad beginning
02:00. Groan.
My alarm clock woke me.* My satcom didn't. The significance of that didn't register on me at first. That was the first strong indication that I hadn't gotten enough sleep.
I bustled blearily around the sleeper for a few minutes, eventually getting dressed enough to drive. It was about then I realized that I had no load information. No customer name. No address. No route.
Why, I wondered.
A quick look at the satcom showed no new messages since the good news last night. Odd. The dispatcher knew I'd accepted the load. Why hadn't he sent instructions?
Or had he?
With a sense of mounting dread I rebooted the truck computer. After the usual three to five minutes, it came fully online. And beeped. And started scrolling up useful messages.
And I'd only lost about an hour.
That was my first miscalculation.
The long and winding road, that leads me--to where?
The second became obvious within minutes, when I compared the truck's GPS-driven estimates of my ETA with my own quick-and-dirty figures from last night. The computer had me getting there a lot slower. Why? I wondered.
Because I'd been planning a trip to the wrong city.
I was going to have to cross a portion of Alabama on “ordinary” four-lane roads. Once I crossed into Georgia, though—well, Lake City, GA, is just south of Atlanta. And in Georgia, all Interstates lead to Atlanta. I was golden.
Except I wasn't going to Lake City, GA.
I was going to Lake Park, GA.
Lake Park, GA, is nowhere near Atlanta. It's over by Valdosta. Another direction altogether. And about sixty miles further than I'd figured on.
And there are no Interstates crossing South Georgia.
Sixty extra miles, and almost all of it on highways that were noticeably slower than the Interstates I'd been counting on. Well, at least I knew what the problem was.
The rest of the morning was a blur. Mostly a dark blur. Only a few things stand out at this point.
One was a deer. A buck. Nice rack—nothing the record books would be interested in, but nice. If I were a hunter I would have drooled a bit. As it was, I smiled a little.
Not much. The reason I remember the buck is that he didn't really register in my mind until I was well past him. I saw him clearly, but I didn't SEE him. The corner of my eye made a note, and eventually the brain got it. And absently filed it. Keeping the truck going was taking far too much attention.
The other thing I remember is the moment when it sank in that the non-Interstate was slowing me down a bit more than I'd estimated.
Translation: I was going to be late.
I spent the next hour or so looking for a place with two important things:
- a parking lot big enough for this monster, and
- a phone that worked, so I could warn my dispatcher I wasn't going to make the delivery on time.
Perhaps it says something about my work ethic that it was only after I found such a place and parked that I realized a bathroom would also be nice.
Fortunately, they had one.
And so on...
Daylight came at last. And so did my destination. I dropped the load (late, but they at least knew that was coming), headed to my next stop, and picked up another load. Then I drove another long stretch of non-Interstate four-lanes toward the only truck stop I could reach in the time I had left.
I drove right past it, as it turns out.
Well, actually I sat on the highway beside it. In the right-turn lane at the stoplight, looking at the parking lot on my left. Then the light turned green and I made the right turn I had to make.
It took me about fifteen minutes to get turned around and get back. At which point I was within fifteen minutes of being unable to legally drive. I HATE cutting it that close.
Oh, well. At least I'll get enough sleep tonight.
(continued tomorrow)
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*It didn't once—and I got the only “no excuse” service failure in my glorious career because of it. I've been more paranoid about settings and batteries since then...
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