Update on "rumbly sonic thingies"

Back on the 2nd, I quoted an old journal entry about some "earnest bug-looking trucks" doing mineral surveys with "rumbly sonic thingies." Extremely scientific of me. The correct term, I have learned, is "vibroseis." And the trucks look sort of like this:

More odds and ends

Talked to my wife tonight--after three days of trying.

Once upon a time, those bargain phone cards could be a bargain. Tonight I just shoveled change in the phone long enough to make sure she was all right, and it was noticeably cheaper.

But we discussed that a couple of days ago.

On that subject--remember the banks of phone booths I mentioned as a staple of truck stops a few years ago? This (nice, well-equipped) truck stop has a room full of phone booths like that. No phones, though. They use it to store cleaning supplies. I finally found a pay phone in the lobby of the restaurant.

But we covered that, too.

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On the "getting around" front, the scooter came in a little handy today. A couple of things about nice, big new warehouses:

• Modern warehouses are BIG.
• Many companies have become security-conscious to the point of paranoia--especially at the (BIG) new warehouses.

The result? Well, in this case, the only bathroom I was allowed to use was on the other side of the building. With the front very carefully fenced in, "going" meant going around three sides of the warehouse.

Did I mention the warehouse was BIG?

The scooter only speeds me up to a trot, but even that was quite welcome. I may keep the thing with me.

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It's been a while since I did a long drive through a Midwestern state (Illinois, in this case). I remembered the lack of hills from drives toward Colorado in my childhood, but it's not something that really registers when you're just remembering it. I'm not used to that kind of flat. At least it didn't surprise me.

I also remembered the oases of trees in the middle of the great flat fields, where the owners had sheltered their houses from the winds. What I didn't remember were the little lakes every mile or three, each with its little dock, its motorless pontoon boat, and its cluster of RV's, trailers, or tents. I suppose they're for reservoirs for the irrigation systems--they looked more like big ponds than little lakes. And it's Saturday--if you've got the water anyway, why not camp next to it on the weekends?

But for someone who grew up in more irregular and wooded country it seemed odd--an endless stretch of cornfield, an interstate less than a hundred feet away--and there you are, camping in the wilderness. Oh well, I've set up a tent in my back yard before...

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And speaking of camping out, the fiberglass tent is cool enough to sleep in now. G'night.

Small ironies in the modern world, continued

(The following post has been floating in my "drafts" folder for two years now. I just now found it, and publish it now for your amusement.
(Disorganized? Me? Nahhhh...)

I just finished talking to my wife. It wasn't voluntary.

(The finish, I mean. Honest.)

Remember last night, when I mentioned the rest stop I was overnighting at had wi-fi but no pay phones? This truck stop has phones. But they don't take especially good care of them anymore. After all, when one quits, who notices?

My company's terminal in Georgia has a special semi-soundproofed room with lots of phone desks, so drivers can make all the various phone calls the trucking life calls for. Most larger truck stops have something similar--a series of soundproofed booths, or a restaurant with phone jacks at every table, or something of the sort. The smaller ones still have more space for pay phones than the average service station/convenience store.

You will note I said "phone desks." "Soundproofed booths." "A restaurant with phone jacks." "More space for pay phones." That was quite deliberate.

The phone room at my company's terminal has about three working phones. In a room with about twenty-five desks. The rest either have been removed, or have stopped working and were just left there. Every time I stop at that terminal, I have to search the room to figure out which one(s) I can use.

The truck stops aren't quite as bad, since paying customers do ask about the phones from time to time. But working phones are becoming rarer. Many have been quietly removed. And the ones still in place are occasionally kind of flaky.

Like the one I was using to talk to my wife. I didn't know until after I'd called that the cord had an intermittently faulty connection. Right after we'd covered the important information, and I'd said I had time to talk and started telling her about my day, I suddenly heard a dial tone. She will not be happy.

And I can't afford to call back and explain. Literally. Remember all those el cheapo long distance cards you used to get at convenience stores? Well, maybe you still can. The ones I find at truck stops are a bit more limited. Only a penny a minute!, they say. They don't immediately mention the connect fee. And they are careful to wait 'til way down in the fine print to mention the (much bigger) surcharge for using the card from a pay phone.

How often do you use one of those things anywhere else? Never mind.

The upshot is that a five dollar phone card is good for maybe three calls, of whatever length. Unless you're calling someone far away and intend to say everything you need to say for a week in one marathon session, communication gets expensive.

Maybe I can apologize tomorrow night.

I've got to get that cell replaced.

Small ironies in the modern world

I lost my cell a few days ago, and haven't been in a position to replace it yet. So I drove all day and stopped at this rest stop for the night.

Texas rest stops have wi-fi. But this one, at least, doesn't have pay phones. I was able to post my adventures to the whole world. But I couldn't talk to my wife.

Progress progresses.

Gustav, past tense

Sitting at a picnic table at a Texas rest stop, watching the traffic go by. Interstate in front of me, local access road behind me (not much traffic there), and beyond the access road is

Jb's D- PLACE
FULLBLOOD
SIMMENTAL CATTLE
---
QUALITY FAMILY FISHING
MEMBERSHIPS
OPEN

Do I pick the classy places or what?

It's just barely possible this entry will actually get posted the day it was written. Texas is one of the states that have decided travellers would appreciate free wi-fi at its rest stops. In my case they're certainly right.

Of course it went down as soon as I tried to use it but I'm hoping it'll come up again soon. The caretaker was in the storage room when it quit, and he let me look at the router. No power. Its power strip was hooked into a lamp timer. If I was interpreting the thing right it cuts the router off for a few minutes once a day, probably for a reset. We'll see.

(It's working! It's working!)

I've covered about 500 miles today, between Tuscaloosa, Alabama and Orange, Texas. Baton Rouge and New Orleans were just south of me somewhere in the middle. Strange how little you see of a disaster from any noticeable distance. Other than a few broken trees and some really messed-up billboards (one had fallen on somebody's mobile home--a crane was carefully removing it), the only real signs of Gustav I had were:

• Traffic was much heavier going toward that part of Louisiana than away from it. The evacuees started returning early this time, it appears.
• I saw quite a few trucks--from pickups to flatbed tractor-trailers--carrying portable generators of every size known to man.
• During those five hundred miles I counted twenty-six convoys headed into the area--from various tree-surgeon companies. Something like 100-150 cherry-picker trucks with their support crews. And that's just the ones I saw.
  

I think I'll leave it there. I just can't think of a clever remark to go with that...

Odds and ends

Sitting in a Subway(tm) waiting for the truck to cool down. I just fueled, so I've got a shower waiting for me if I want it.

(I want it, of course. But is it worth it, when I'll probably spend part of the night sweating into my sleeping bag? I might wait 'til morning and see if I'm awake enough to find the soap...)

Not especially disposed to lecturing tonight for some reason. I'm sure there are those who will want to know what's special about tonight and bottling it, but that's another story. Meanwhile I need to say something here, don't I?

How 'bout a few of the "uncategorized" little notes I've made while trundling around out here? For example:

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The lady who rode carefully by me this morning on one of those new "superscooters." With training wheels.

I kid you not. At first I thought she had one of those Harleys or Gold Wings you see now that have been converted to trikes, but it wasn't. It was a superscooter. And it had its standard rear end, complete with rear wheel. And two more rear wheels. One to each side, with suspension.

I had vaguely heard of such things, but had never seen one before. I gather they, like the trikes, are aimed at people who want the sensation of riding a motorbike but don't trust their sense of balance. Judging by this lady's demeanor, she wasn't really enjoying the experience as such, though. I suspect she was more interested in a SMALL car. The fuel crisis marches on...

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Some time back (I WISH I'd made a note of where) I wandered into a rest stop and discovered something I could have sworn was impossible. A hot-air hand dryer that works.

It took me a moment to figure out how to use it. It had a depression in the top, as if it thought it was a water fountain. You put your hands into the depression, and a narrow, high-speed stream of air roared DOWNWARD onto your hands. It was warm, yes, but it worked mostly by blasting the water off your skin into the bottom of the depression.

I think it was developed by the same guy that did the Dyson vacuum cleaner. It would have to be someone that off-the-wall, I guess. It worked, anyway. The first time I went into an ecologically aware restroom and didn't leave wiping my hands on my pants legs.

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Seen on a billboard advertising a casino near Memphis:

A 50's pinup-type photo. Actually fairly modest, as such things went even in the 50's. But the caption:

"Ample Space to Park Your Big Rig"

Ewwwwwww...

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From a journal entry I made to myself in February:

While picking up a load in Texas, I saw a couple of pilot trucks leading a "Work Convoy" down the road--then up the drive and into the parking lot where I was waiting at a dock. The "Work Convoy" was three odd-looking vehicles--four-wheel drive on what looked like tractor tires, with a great big diesel engine in the back and a big platter-looking thing underneath. They would trundle earnestly along for a hundred or two feet, and then stop, lower their "platters," rev up the diesels, and make the ground hum beneath them. After a few minutes of this, they would pick up the "platters" and trundle earnestly along again.

I finally couldn't stand it any longer, so I asked one of the drivers what he was doing. "Looking for minerals," he said. "Especially gas and oil."

As best I can tell, these things have replaced the old "dynamite and seismograph" method of underground mapping--for some purposes at least. The "platters" are apparently subsonic transducers, and need the kind of horsepower the engines in the back supply to power them. Think of a fishfinder that works through solid rock.

I tried to get a picture of them but I was using my phone. I haven't figured out the camera yet. I may have to find a picture online...those great big rumbly sonic thingies and the earnest-bug looking vehicles that carried them...

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Interstates in Texas and Arkansas (and other broad flat places) are sometimes laid out on a very wide right-of-way, with an access road parallelling the interstate on both sides. Every so often, a cutover allows entrance and exit.

If you've got the room it makes a lot of sense, but for someone who hasn't seen it before it can be a little odd. Or even disorienting, especially at night. Imagine driving through the darkness on an Interstate and suddenly seeing headlights DIRECTLY IN FRONT OF YOU. A few seconds later you realize the interstate is curving slightly to the left, and the headlights are on the access road, which has curved just enough to put him in your line of sight. Sure, that makes sense. But for that first second or so...

The other thing it does is make access "ramps" VERY short. As in, less than a hundred feet. As in two truck lengths? Slowing from 65 to 35 or less before hitting the end of one of those...

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Sign on a warehouse snack machine: "At Work & Play, Let Saftey Lead The Way"

So who's Saftey, I wonder?

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Hmph. That should do for now. G'night.

Getting around

After a few days at home, I came back to the terminal and spent the day waiting for a load. Looks like I'll have one for the morning, but today was very, ah, relaxed.

Waiting for a load, you have to just hang around. If you miss the satcom message, you may be out some money. On the other hand, there are days when you can't go anywhere anyway. Either you have a load and you can't deliver it today (as happened in Thomasville (see previous post)), or you've been working hard lately, and you're running out of hours.*

That last hasn't happened to me lately, but it was not that uncommon when I was out for three or four weeks at a time. And if you can't haul anything, you might as well play tourist. If you can. We've discussed how close the average truckstop is to the average sightseer's haven. Thomasville was barely within walking distance--MY walking distance.

I have a folding bicycle I picked up years ago. It looks funny and it isn't too fast, but it folds up almost to suitcase size. Back when I was doing the 3-to-4-weeks thing I was seriously thinking bringing it along. I wouldn't have used it much, but a few times it would have been so nice.

I was actually starting to look for a place to hide it in the cab. But then I ended up on my present assignment. And now, unless something strange happens (like an Interstate backing up for nearly twelve hours...see previous), I'm not out for more than a week at a time. I hardly ever run out of hours.

And though I do have to sit for a day every so often, it doesn't happen enough to justify hauling around thirty-plus pounds of folded-up two-wheeler.

So this week I'm trying something else. Some time back we got one of those silly little scooters you find at Wal-Mart's and the like. And I discovered, to my great surprise, that it actually does let you get around faster. Sort of. A bike will leave you in the dust, of course. But on level ground it's faster than walking. And downhill it's kinda nice. And uphill? Well, it weighs, what, five pounds? You pick it up, trudge up the hill, and you're still ahead of the game.

It's tiny, it's light, and it fits in the cargo bin on the truck. All I lose is dignity. We'll see whether it's worth the trouble.
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*If you're lucky you run out of hours on a weekend, when there isn't much to do regardless. Sunday is a good day for a restart.