To me way, hey, blow the man down...

Sitting in a loading dock in an almost brand-new factory, in a very old place. The Blue Ridge Mountains.

Watching the gray clouds charge across the sky above the ridgeline, like a silently thundering herd of--well, something-or-other. Buffalo, maybe? They're shaggy enough.

There's plenty of wind down here, too. The truck shudders under the impact--almost as much as it does under the forklift that's busily rolling on and off the trailer.

The wind made the trip here interesting. I drive something that's big, tall, and slab-sided. The trailer, especially, makes a wonderful sail. (Or it would, if you could get any USEFUL work out of it.) It sometimes feels as if this thing was designed to be blown off a road. And the lighter the load, the worse it behaves.

I was empty coming here. On a day like today, you have to constantly watch it.

Of course you have to watch it anyway. As big as the rig is, you can't wait until it's really started moving to stop it. As I said earlier, jerking a semi is a great way to make it flip over, go into a skid, jacknife, or otherwise declare its independence. The only safe way to drive this thing is gently.

You feel a shift. Barely. The truck drifts a bit to the right. You immediately give the wheel a nudge to the left. A tiny one.

The steer tires push sideways against forty to eighty thousand pounds of mass, and for a half-second or so you can't really tell which one's winning. Then the drift stops.

The truck moves slowly back toward the centerline. Give the wheel another nudge, to the right. Do it NOW. If you wait until you're back in the middle of the lane, you'll be making the fellow passing you VERY nervous in another two seconds.

If you're doing it properly, half of your job when you're at speed is anticipation. You feel a dip in the road, or the cab tilts a fraction as the wind noise rises, or the asphalt's "texture" changes as the steering wheel twitches a tiny bit--and you're already compensating, telling the truck to come back from a place it hasn't gone yet. If you wait until you can see what it's doing, you'll be hearing the rumble strip on the shoulder--or the horn on that nice Lexus beside you--the one driven by that really scared lawyer. He looks like one, anyway.

A car is quick on its feet. When you turn the wheel it goes where you tell it. Right then. It spoils you.