(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...

Passed a pickup towing a trailer today. The trailer had a logo (and pictures) for a most interesting product:

The Tombstone Hearse Company

Apparently a real biker can have a real biker's funeral now.

Just thought you might like to know...

(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...

Picked up a trailer in the dark this morning. Thought I'd checked it over pretty well. When I stopped to fuel, I looked it over again, and found one tire had a bald spot the size of my hand, worn down clear past the first steel belt. All the tread gone. A blowout waiting to happen.

I mentioned once that you can back one of these rigs in a complete circle without moving the back wheels. What I didn't mention is that doing that is a good way to grind the tread off those back wheels, if you're not careful. I presume that's what happened here.

We're legally required to inspect the truck and trailer at least once a day (the company requires us to do it twice). This is one of the reasons...

(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...

A storefront in a strip mall, advertising itself as a "GAME$ OF $KILL ARCADE"*

Gee. I wonder what they do in there...
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I didn't have time to find the coding for the ancient "cents" symbol. But the last word had one...

(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...

Snow in Georgia. In April.

The rest of the way north, fine. But Georgia?

All right, it was just flurries where I was. But it's the principle of the thing...

Yo-yo dieting

(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...

Hail tinkles.

When the pellets are small, it's not a scary sound at all. Kind of like a kid dropping marbles. I might be able to sleep through this if it doesn't stop before I'm done writing. We'll see.

Somebody took over the big-screen TV in the truck stop lounge and spent the evening playing crazed action-adventure flicks. One of them was TRANSPORTER 2. Gosh, I wish I could drive like that. Not that I would, mind you, but...

And I want that car. At the very least, I want to know who painted it. The things it went though without the finish getting dulled, much less scratched.

But most of all, I want the tractor-trailer that almost ran over him. Because it didn't. The driver saw him rolling toward the McGuffin in the middle of the street, and slammed on the brakes. And the truck stopped. Right there.

Just in case you didn't know, tractor-trailers don't stop like that.

In fact, one of the things you have to worry about every time you pick up a load or drop one is getting used to the new brake situation. Empty, your rig weighs (typically) about 35,000 pounds. Fully loaded, it can be up to 80,000. There's nothing quite like pressing gently on the brake pedal as the intersection comes up to meet you--and realizing that the gentle push that would have stopped you smoothly with an empty trailer isn't doing much to slow down the extra twenty tons or so that's back there now.

Going the other way is just as bad. You press a little too hard--and the (nearly weightless, it seems) trailer's wheels try to lock up. And there you are, with your tractor slowing down (too quickly) in a straight line, while the trailer is doing its best to pull a bootlegger turn behind you. Adjust your braking technique FAST, please.

And if you don't have a trailer at all? Well, I've seen pictures of a tractor on a test track with the brake pedal to the floor. It was doing a nose-wheelie. Well, actually it was starting a front somersault.

I haven't seen an "after" photo. I think I'll pass.