The romance of the open road, part 2

It's raining outside, just a little. A cool pre/post-thunderstorm breeze tickles the window beside me, playing at making me cooler without actually doing it.

The parking lot is almost empty at the moment. It's a small one, but nice. I'm facing north, with shade trees within sight to the south and west. Grass, breezes. The pervasive rumble of idling engines, but so far I haven't noted the faint odor of stale urine that seems to be a given at these places. Even the odor of old diesel seems absent here. Perhaps an illusion.

I'm told the center of town is about a mile away--not a bad walk, if I decide I need to go somewhere. The neighborhood seems to be a neighborhood, for a change (most of these places are either isolated or on the edge of grungy industrial districts, as I believe I may have mentioned). All in all, a pleasant little place.

I hope so. I expect to be here for at least the next two days.

Remember that accident I mentioned the other day? The one that backed up traffic for something like seven hours? It made me late enough for this delivery that nobody will be there to unload trucks until Monday (it's Friday, by the way). My dispatcher says he worked long and hard looking for another way to get this load delivered and found none. So until the boys come to work Monday morning, I am a tourist on unpaid vacation. Without a car.

This hasn't happened to me in a while. Used to be (he said, in his best ancient, wheezing "Uphill! Both ways!" voice) I would occasionally have to sit for a day or two. Usually because I'd run out of hours for the week and had to chill for 34 hours and restart my calendar. But that was when I was out for three and four weeks at a time. My wife is not well enough for me to do that so casually, so I made other arrangements. I'm seldom out for more than seven days at a time, these days. This is going to be an exception.

Amusingly enough, the Interstate of our last tale locked up twice more on the way here. Once it took about half an hour to clear it up. The second one was a five-minute stop and a slow parade past the pileup.

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It occurs to me that I haven't taken my own advice. If there was ever a time for a nap just in case something wonderful happens, it would be now. Talk to you later.

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That "nap" totalled to about twelve hours, with two brief interruptions. Apparently I was much tireder than I thought. Easy to do, between the invisible stress (I mean, how hard IS it, to sit and steer for hours? Right?), the cold I had over the weekend, and trying to sleep in a steam ba--I mean sleeper cab.

I knew I was wiped, but not THAT wiped. I'm going to have to pay more attention to myself.