(For those of you who've been checking the blog lately--I've had some trouble finding time at home to update. These brief notes were written more or less on the dates given, but it took me a while to get them typed in. I'll try to do better...

Sat for two days this weekend. Then drove all night.

Hill-country two-lanes in the dark. That was fun. No cloudy white rocks in the road, but having to consciously order your eyes to focus as you look around in morning rush-hour traffic can be downright terrifying. If I hadn't already picked out a place to stop I would have been looking hard for one.

Bit of a scare

The good news for today is, I didn't kill anybody.

There was about a two-second timespan when I thought I was about to. I was passing an abbreviated entrance ramp on a section of Interstate that was heavily under construction, when a motorcycle slid casually out into the lane in front of me. He'd been doing about 40 to my 55 when he started to merge. He decided that was a fine speed to continue. And he didn't even look behind him before he swung into the traffic.

I think the sound of my air brakes got his attention. I was about twenty feet behind him when he finally looked back, looked forward again, and casually started accelerating. By that time I had almost slowed down to his speed. My heart started back down to normal speeds about ten seconds later.

I'm glad my trailer was empty. On a wet road that could have been dangerous (less weight on the back means more chances for a skid), but here it just meant less weight for the brakes to fight. I don't think I'd have overrun him if I'd been fully loaded, but I'm just as happy not testing the theory.

And I do wonder. Was I that hard to see?

Good people still, redux

I have a thing about sitcoms.

I don't think most of them are funny. There's something in me that cringes at seeing someone publicly humiliated. Even in my childhood, when Lucy stood in the ruins of her latest fool stunt and cried like a baby, while Ricky, Fred, and Ethel stared at her and the audience pointed and laughed, I wanted to leave the room.*

The only real exception I recall was the Dick Van Dyke show. As often as not, the stories were flashbacks, as Rob and Laura told their friends about their latest misadventures. And that made a big difference to me. If they were over it enough that they thought it was funny...

As my regulars know, I can't post every day right now So I don't always write things down the day they happened. This time that was a good thing. Yesterday's entry would have been a lot less funny if I'd written it then.** As it is, there was time for me to see some humor in it. And time for a few more things to happen.
*****
Like the first call to the company this morning.
When they told me another driver, for another company, had found my wallet and contacted them. He's going to mail it to me.
*****
Like the guy who drove me to the terminal.
Headquarters diverted a team truck to the rest area I was marooned in, and one of those drivers took over the driving duties.*** Mexican, I gather. His English was just good enough to get by on (which made it far better than my high-school French ever was), so our conversation couldn't get too deep. But he tried. Recommended a few restaurants at the exits on our way, told me about his son's upcoming wedding. Even bought me lunch. "Today is for you, tomorrow for me," he said. I got the impression he was translating a proverb.
*****
Like my friends at home,
who organized two expeditions to the DMV office this afternoon.

The first was a scouting run, so I'd know what papers and what kind of cash I'd need. That friend couldn't finish the job because his son needed a ride home from school. So a neighbor took me back to fill out the forms and pay the government--with cash loaned to me by a third friend.

Which means I will get a few more miles in this week.
*****
Oh, and the friend with the car, who came back to bring me to the terminal tonight.

And the wife who understood that I couldn't stay and work at the same time, however much she wished I could.
*****
Gosh. It's hard to be bitter and cynical with people like that around. What a bummer.
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*Have I dated myself yet?

**Today's entry wasn't written today, either, but let's not go there.

***Just to the terminal. Somebody came over in the wee hours and traded trailers with me, and took my load to the customer.

Don't drive in overalls

(warning--long)
When on the road, my PJ's are sweatpants and a sweatshirt.* El cheapo gymwear. That way I can walk across a parking lot at 2 am without fumbling for something to cover up with.

Tonight I changed early. I was in a mood to forget my day wear.

I had a pair of bib overalls at home. I wear them to work outside--it's nice not having a waistband digging in. It occurred to me, that would be even nicer sitting down. So I decided to try them on the road this week.

Mistake. For me, anyway.

The waistband isn't there to dig in, no. But bending over--or sitting down--means your back gets longer, while the outfit's back doesn't. Can you say "wedgie"?

I knew about this. Coveralls are worse. That may be why I thought the farmer suit wouldn't be a problem. Live and learn.

And then there was the wallet.

Sitting on a wallet is no fun, when you're doing it all day. So I don't carry mine in my hip pocket any more.**

That, by the way, is why the stereotypical trucker has one of those big wallets chained to his belt. When he's walking around, it's in whatever pocket he prefers. When he's in the truck, he tosses it on the floor. The chain means he can always find it.

Me, I just keep a standard wallet in a front pocket. If the pants aren't tight it's comfy enough. And I'm not into tight clothes.

My overalls aren't tight. But when I'm sitting down, the cloth gets pulled snug over the legs. Sigh. So I moved the wallet to one of those handy pockets on the bib. It was quite comfy there. Maybe too much so.

See, there's another thing about overalls. It involves restrooms.

You pull into the first rest area you've seen for an hour or two. You've been looking for one at least that long. So you hurry (oh, yes!) through the door beneath that most beautiful of signs (being careful to choose the one most beautiful to you). You find a stall whose door is blessedly open, check (quickly!) for the other important things.

And then you go through a ritual noticeably more complex than the usual "slip the buckle and reach for the snap." It involves two fasteners at the shoulders and one or more buttons at the hip, and it takes up extra seconds you really aren't sure you have. That by itself is almost enough to disqualify bib overalls as trucker wear.

But we were talking about wallets.

You see, when you are, um, dealing with the emergency, the "bib" part of the outfit is hanging in front of you. And all those handy chest pockets are upside down. They're all zippered and snapped, of course. If you zipped the zippers and snapped the snaps.

If you didn't--

--well, you might be so, ah, relieved that the emergency is past, that you don't notice a problem until some time later. At the end of the day, for instance. A hundred or two miles from the last place you stopped.

Have I mentioned that driving a commercial vehicle without an appropriate license in your possession is a SERIOUS offense?

So here I am, at a rest area, a hundred or two miles from the nearest terminal. Waiting for morning, when the company and I will try to work out how to get the load to the customer, and the truck to someplace suitable, and me to someplace where I can get legal again.

I'm in my PJ's. As I said earlier.

I still like overalls. But I think I'll save them for home time from now on.

I know I've got some khaki's in that suitcase...
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*T-shirt and running shorts in the summer. And you really wanted to know that, didn't you?

**This makes my wife happy. She says that makes it harder on pickpockets.

The Blue Screen of Death

The first hint of spring in the mountains was a faint sweep of transparent red. Like a watercolor of the winter slopes in their grays, where someone wet a brush and added just a touch of some magenta-looking paint, then swept it over the trees. Just enough color to see, not thick enough to hide what's beneath.

Buds on the trees, I think.

When I got up and started the truck this morning, the computer screen came up blue. Microsoft blue. With a long explanation of its motive for dumping its memory to disk and shutting down.

Page fault in an unpaged area, if I recall.

It shut down, restarted, and did it again.

The third time it came up, but nothing worked. Except the routine that locked out the hard reset. Because the machine hadn't locked up, you see.

So I got to the shipper, parked the truck, went into the cargo section and unplugged the black box. (I'm not supposed to know how to do that...) After waiting a few and plugging it back in, it was fine.

See? I didn't get away from PC problems. I just have a nicer view while I'm trying to forget them.

Just looked out the window

--and saw a snow-covered valley high in the mountains to my right.

Then I looked again. It was a cloud bank, just a little ways below me.

Just another day driving through the mountains...

Pictures! I need pictures!

My load today was old newspapers, bound for a recycling plant. The trip was okay. The interesting stuff happened when I got there.

The lady at the guard shack gave me very explicit instructions.

"Follow this road to this point and wait your turn."

Well, sure.

"Don't open your trailer doors until you're partway up the ramp."

Um, okay.

"Then back the rest of the way up and move all loose objects to the back of your cab."

Say what?

"Then lock your cab, exit on the passenger side, and go downstairs to the drivers' lounge until they call you."

Uh. Right.

Well, it's their plant. I went where I was told, saw where I was going--and suddenly I understood.

So I waited my turn. I backed partway up the long steep ramp, stopped, and went back to open my trailer doors--now that none of the twenty tons of loose paper could just fall out. I backed the rest of the way up, onto the metal platform. I moved everything that would move into the lower bunk on the back wall of the sleeper cab. Then I went downstairs.

And they tilted the platform, truck and all, up to about a sixty-degree angle and let the paper slide out.

It looked like a cross between a 50's movie rocket launcher and a kid with a toy truck. And it emptied the trailer like a kid with a can of Pringles.

I have GOT to get me a camera!

Isn't it nice we're having weather?

Snow falling past a streetlight in the dark is an impressive sight.

I was on my way to North Carolina this morning. I woke up to temperatures in the low 20's. An hour or two on two-lane Ohio farm roads kept me sweating, though. Beautiful, but terrifying.

Oh, if I'd had a sports car! A motorcycle would have been fun, too, if I were into them. And if I liked bundling up.

(If you like such things, Ohio State Highway 94 is a lovely drive, in a smaller vehicle than mine...)

Then an urgent call. Scary. But it turned out to be good news, oddly enough. I was sent to another rendezvous, to trade trailers with another driver. And this time I was headed straight home!

Which, I suppose, is why Southern Kentucky got hit with snow. And sleet. And freezing rain. And more snow.

It's a proper Southern snow, too. Wet and mushy and slushy, half-melted even as it falls. Which means if it gets cold overnight, we get thick crunchy foamed ice. Even Yankees can have trouble in Southern snow. It's not all our fault.

I have no idea what tomorrow will be like. But it's sure pretty tonight.

(03/13/09--I did make it home. The roads weren't even bad. Let us be merry...)

Yet more odds, ends

06:00
It appears that 52-53 degrees is a very nice temperature for sleeping in one of these trucks. Warm enough to avoid the shivers, cool enough to avoid cooking. The fiberglass tent was actually rather comfy.

07:00
I've talked about GPS navigation. But you can't always rely on your written directions, either. This morning I almost followed mine into a row of tenements, seven blocks south of the customer's address. I can only assume somebody transposed a couple of digits in the address before feeding it into a computer.

I had to loop around and let the GPS guide me here. Those of you who read this regularly will know how thrilled I was at that. I sent new directions to the office. Hope the next guy gets them.

09:30
Now I can truly say I've been to a sleazy warehouse. The lot was gravel on top of asphalt--where you could see it between potholes. And one side was a puddle bigger than my truck--I was nervous, because I had to back though it to dock and I wasn't sure how deep it was.

Cleveland rocks.

More odds, more ends

Finally tried a local (to Kentucky) drink called Ale-8-1 (pronounced "a-late-one"). It's more or less a caffeinated ginger ale. All right, I guess, but not my cup of, um, pop.
*****
Lexington, KY. Near the Thoroughbred Retirement Farm. Lovely green meadows with widely scattered horses. A pretty sight in general.

It's warm and sunny. Which is why I'm here, I guess. Shortly another driver from my company will arrive. He and I will swap trailers. And I will start back north.

Warmth is for other people, I guess.
*****
Sure enough. Most of the day was warm. Then I passed through a front at about sundown, and watched the outside-air temp gauge drop 20 degrees in an hour. Still tolerable, though, even at 10:00 pm. Scary, that.

Odds and ends

Regional differences occasionally come home. I've now seen three different truck stop signs advertising cold pop. To a Southern boy this is a strange phrase.

I suppose a Yankee would be equally confused when somebody asks him "What kind of coke do you want?" And he learns that Dr. Pepper is a perfectly good answer. And so is ginger ale...
*****
I spent the day driving the streets of suburban Chicago to save fuel. Or is it to avoid tolls? Either way, the company benefits. And since I'm not paid by the hour, it's okay for them to waste my time.
*****
Now I'm sitting in a truck stop, watching a steady stream of headlights in front of me on the interstate. I can do this because I found a place where it's safe to park nose-first and back out in the morning.

That's right. I don't think I've mentioned why that's usually a bad idea, have I? Well, it's pretty simple. I have mentioned that these trucks are almost blind in a lot of directions. And that backing one is a major and scary operation once you have to turn even a little bit. Just think of the way you have to turn backing out of a parking space. Then imagine doing it when you can't see a thing in the direction you're backing.

Basically I don't go forward into a parking space unless I can back straight out of it.
*****
When I told you a few days back about interesting substances you can find at truck stops, one of the more amusing ones was kind of off-topic. Another of the "latest things" out here is something called "NJOY." It's a gadget that simulates a cigarette without using smoke.

I kid you not. Apparently it's battery powered, and generates a flavored, nicotine-spiked vapor that (supposedly) gives you the pleasures of smoking without any smoke--first- second- or third-hand. As a non-smoker, I am not qualified to comment further...
*****
In fact, the thing I am most qualified to speak on at this point is the pleasures of sleep. I got a shower in tonight, so I am doubly interested in researching that topic. Being clean can be so relaxing. So I think I'll relax now.

G'nite.

Where'd you go?

O-kay. So it's not spring everywhere yet.

By the time I got to Chicago it was in the 50's. At bedtime I'm looking at high 30's, with an impressive amount of wind. I just now put a few things on the steps outside to refrigerate overnight.

Tomorrow I deliver this load and take a new one south again. I-65 is starting to feel like home to me.

Oh, well. At least it'll be warm again.*

At a rest stop on the way up here I saw a truck with a TV camera perched on the right fender. Looked like a standard security type (the new tiny ones, of course), in a weatherproof housing, securely bolted in place so it looked backward along the right side of the truck and trailer.

Apparently someone wanted to know what was in his blind spot. One of them, anyway.

Yeah, those signs plastered all over trailers are for real. If you can't see my mirrors, I really can't see you.

With my driver's side mirrors I can see behind me, but not to the side. As you pass me, once you're much past my rear wheels you might as well be in another dimension till you reach my window. And it's worse to the right--"tunnel vision" becomes a reality in a truck cab.

Modern semi's sport all sorts of mods to help you see a little better. Extra windows in the passenger door. A bewildering array of wide-angle mirrors. Even TV cameras like the one that started all this.** We're taught to lean around, trying to get a glimpse of the road beside us as we prepare to change lanes.

And it still isn't enough.

The only thing that seems to be reliable is constant attention. You keep a sort of map in your head, of every car and truck around you. Where each one is. How fast it's going. Is it catching up? Is it changing lanes? Et cetera. That way, when one disappears, you have an idea where it should be, and you assume you're stuck where you are until you see it again.

Not restful. And therefore not really reliable. Your mind will wander. And then you'll be glad for every fancy see-behind-you gadget you've got.

Just so you know. I wasn't ignoring you. Honest.
-----

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*In a month or two I'll rue those words...

**At least one company has something similar on just about every truck in its fleet. Reviews are mixed.
I've been told you have to fiddle with it more than you want to. Some say it can be distracting. Others tell me drivers fixate on it and stop paying attention to all the other ways of keeping track of your neighbors. But I've also heard that when it's useful at all, it's useful indeed.

The scary thing in the mirror

Spring is a wonderful thing.

To a Southern boy it still looks like winter.* But I had to wear short sleeves today, all the way to Indianapolis. I may not get up shivering tonight at all.

That's a good thing. It's been a long day. Not so much the hours as the timing. The wee-hours delivery last night meant a late start this morning, and the new load was due in the wee hours again. So I got parked about 10:30 tonight, and considered myself lucky at that--the customer took the load early or it would have been really late.

But 10:30's sleepytime these days. And I have a trailer to pick up as soon as I can in the morning. So I roll at 08:30.

Oops. Make that 09:30. Happy Spring Forward.

Other than the timing, it's been quite pleasant. The only real low point was in--was it Louisville? And it wasn't serious, just a little worrisome.

I was in the right lane in moderate traffic, when four cars came up an on-ramp. This is why I prefer a middle lane in the city if they'll let me have it. BY the time I saw these cars, moving left was out of the question. The two I saw in my mirror might have objected. So I slowed a little to give them some space.

Three of them took it. The fourth just sat by my front fender, slowing exactly as much as I did.

I've talked about this before. But it bears repeating. If you find yourself near the front of a semi, slowing down is not the best move. I put the hammer down sooner this time, but that car still spent at least fifty yards on the shoulder. And he's probably still muttering about that trucker who "ran me off the road!" Sigh.

The last time I bought a car** I left at least one salesman a little scared and a little bewildered. Each car he showed me got the same test drive--we went out to the Interstate and started comfortably down the on-ramp. At about 30 I floored it.

Top speed doesn't matter much to me. And I couldn't care less about how fast I can pull away from a red light. But 30-60, now...

If you see that truck behind you, remember. It's big and scary, but any half-decent four-wheeler can pull away from it. And once you're going faster than the semi, you're home free. Honest.
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*We don't go by snow, for some reason.
**Yes, once I had money.

Foreign substances

It's a good thing this load delivers late.

I came to work today and was promptly told to report to the Safety Office.

Ulp.

With visions of unknown violations dancing in my head I reported. The lady looked me up in her computer, filled out a form, and told me to go catch the shuttle van to a nearby clinic.

Random drug screen.

Whew.

Until caffeine and sugar are added to the Controlled Substances Lists, drug screens hold no terror for me. Hand me that cup, I'm good. So I was relaxed enough to enjoy the ride. And to be amused that they were specific about me catching the shuttle. I would be watched every step of the way, apparently.

I honestly don't know how much of a problem drugs are in the trucking industry these days. I know they used to be. Amphetamines (used mostly just to stay awake) were so common that one hit song from my youth took them for granted.

No more speed, I'm almost there.
Gotta be cool now, gotta take care.
Last car to pass, here I go...

And my wife likes to tell me about being on a Greyhound back in the 80's, when the driver said they'd have to stop for a while because he was too tired to drive. Whereupon a trucker got up and said, "I've got something that'll wake you up..."

Even now, the temptation is obviously there. Truck stops are full of stay-awake helps, from energy drinks to wonder-herb pills.* The latest thing seems to be shaving-cream size cans of pure oxygen.**

I find a lot of this humorous, but it does suggest the DOT isn't being entirely paranoid. When the amphetamine substitutes outnumber the, um, male performance aids, you know drivers are worried about something.

So I'll donate body fluids and take my clean bill of health. Can't hurt.

And this load does deliver late...
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*I've got a little spray bottle of caffeine and B vitamins in my suitcase, just in case. I haven't had to use it yet.

**often with some "refreshing scent" added...

...well maybe not gloom of night.

Me and my big mouth.

Last night I waxed eloquent about the joys of heading back southward. So of course I arrived to 30-degree temps and the first major snowfall Atlanta's seen in, um, a long time.

I stopped short of Atlanta, and I won't be taking the truck down there this week. Just as well. I was there for the first Snowjam, back in 1982.* I can skip this one, I think.

Can't sound too self-assured, of course. I haven't had to move one of these trucks in really bad weather yet. The company I work for doesn't send me very far west,** and so far I haven't been in a proper Northern snowstorm.

Fine by me. I've met a fair number of truckers who've told me they'll never put chains on their trucks unless forced to. If the roads are bad enough to demand chains, they shut down and wait till things get better. I'm with them.

We're legally required to carry chains in several states during the winter months. So during those months I have two or three hundred pounds of metal under my sleeper. But unless I get caught on top of the wrong mountain at the wrong time, that's where they'll stay. There are too many things about these monsters I'm still learning. Truly treacherous road conditions I'll leave to those who've had the practice.

If I'm going to laugh in the face of danger, I prefer to be sitting in a very safe place.
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*When over 5 inches of fell one afternoon, and every employer in the city sent everybody home at the same time--just as the snow started falling. Atlanta was full of stories that day. I might tell mine sometime, somewhere--but it doesn't involve trucking, so I guess I'll skip it for now...

**There are companies that don't consider me an over-the-road driver because of that. Real truckers cross real mountains...