The Imp of the Perverse

I may be home tomorrow night.

My wife would like that. She loves Halloween, and she won't be going anywhere if I'm not there. Until yesterday I didn't think I'd make it, so I didn't mention the possibility to her.

Good thing.

I got up this morning and threaded my way through an unfamiliar city to my delivery site. Where I was told I didn't have an appointment.

An hour or so later they found it. Two hours after that they got me in a dock and started unloading. Took them maybe thirty minutes.

Then I drove for most of an hour on wet, windy two-lanes to the next shipper. They got me loaded in an hour. I smiled as I reported to my company.

They sent a message back. The weight on the bill of lading didn't match what they had in their computer records. And I wouldn't be allowed to scale the load until the discrepancy was resolved.

That only took another 45 minutes.

So I went down the road another hundred miles and stopped for fuel. The company pays for the fuel, of course. Just give the pump a taste of the company fuel card and punch in a few numbers (truck number, mileage, that sort of thing). Simple.

The pump said see the cashier.

The cashier said I was driving the wrong truck.

That one only took ten minutes to straighten out. But it was getting dark.

I like to read science fiction. Some of it is written by religious types. Some of them have a sense of humor. One of the cuter jokes I've run across in such people's works involves solemn discussions of a demon they call the “Imp of the Perverse.” The father of conspiracy theories. The enforcer of Murphy's Law (or so he claims). The one who whispers in your ear, “This can't all be coincidence, now can it?”

His goal is to convince you that some secret organization—or maybe the universe itself—is out to get you. That you're so important that Reality itself is being twisted around just to make you miserable.

On days like this, the Imp has a fairly easy time of it.

But I did get unloaded. And loaded. And fueled. And I drove through the rain and the gusting winds without killing myself or anyone else.

And I covered enough miles that I can legally drive the rest of the way tomorrow. As late as four o'clock I wasn't sure I'd manage that.

So I called my wife, to give her the good news.

She isn't picking up. Asleep, I guess.

Sigh.

Changes

I've spent a lot of time in the Appalachians lately.

The first part of my “straight shot to Indiana” took me through the Pocono's. Not terribly straight. I-40's worse crossing from North Carolina to Tennessee (or vice versa, of course). But any time an Interstate highway has a 50mph speed limit...

And entrance ramps with stop signs at the bottom...

But in time things leveled out. And suddenly I was gawking (all over again) at how flat things were. I'm not used to having a clear line of sight to the horizon. I've talked about it before, but I've been running the hills a while now. It's all new again.

Unboring. I like it.

How the rain can cure drowsiness

Yeah, the fall scenery got me again. But I've got an excuse.

I've been driving past parti-colored mountains for a while now. Obviously (to those who've been reading this) I haven't gotten blasé about it. But it's become familiar.

Today, though, it was up close and personal. Walls of copper and gold, sometimes closing in until it seemed I was in a tunnel decorated by a mad scenery painter. Even in the mist and rain it was beautiful.

When I got a chance to look at it.

After all, I was driving a tractor trailer on a two-lane road winding through the hills of New Jersey. In heavy traffic. In the rain.

If your heart is lazy, try coming around a downhill curve to find a line of traffic stopped at a red light below you. Carefully apply the brakes, and feel the surge as your ABS releases them again.

Watch the car at the back of the line come closer as your brakes catch and let go again. Try to comfort yourself by remembering that if they weren't doing that, be back of your trailer might be trying to pass you right now.

Oh, yes. You might also remember that this is the first trailer you've had in weeks with a working ABS.

Heart woke up yet?

It wasn't as bad going back. Uphill is less scary. Mostly. And I was loaded, albeit lightly. Weight in the back helps. But I used a fair bit of fuel, time, and adrenaline picking up this load.

Oh, well. It's what they pay me for, I guess. And tomorrow's a straight shot to Indiana. Interstate all the way.

Guess I'll rest up for it.

Parking-lot scenery

Hope I'm not boring you, the way I keep harping on the fall color.

It seems to have hit its stride, finally. A bit subdued this year, though. Or so it seems—that may just be the clouds and fog and drizzle. Maybe when the sun comes out...

It was still lovely today. And last night, I sat in the passenger seat and watched the color fade until the streetlights were all the light there was.

I don't get to do that often.

Usually I pull into a truck stop at the crack of dusk. In the summer there's more light, of course, but I still don't see much. Just acres of asphalt, dozens (or hundreds) of trucks, the pervasive rumble of idling engines, and the faint smell of diesel fuel and stale urine.

The scenery, generally speaking, is thataway. To see it, you would have to park nose-first, and back out in the morning. This is usually a Bad Idea.

I've discussed the perils of backing one of these things, especially backing it in any kind of a curve. Much of the danger involves visibility—seeing where you're going is a real challenge when all you have is a bunch of mirrors at greater than arm's length.

Now imagine doing it when you can't see out your side windows either.

Even in a car it's daunting. Think of backing out of a parking space at a busy mall, with delivery vans parked on both sides. You can't see anything until you clear their bumpers—at which time you're right in the middle of the lane.

Got that?

Now imagine your minivan is 75-80 feet long.

That's why we back into parking spaces. You can see to back in. You can't see to back out.

The only time you can park nose-in with a tractor-trailer is when you'll have an absolutely straight shot backing out. No row of trucks behind you. No cross traffic. Nothing you can hit, nothing that will hit you. A rare and glorious thing.

And it is glorious. Your cab is by your neighbors' back doors, far from passing eyes and rumbling engines. No need to draw the curtains—everybody that might see you is back there.

And if you're lucky, there's a view.

Like last night. I wasn't that lucky this time—I backed in the normal way, and before me is a vista of parked trucks. But what the heck, the drive here was gorgeous.

G'nite.

Odd facts

Where do you go with 20 tons of whiskey?

In Mississippi, apparently, you go to the State Police.

This is not something I ever though about before. As a lifelong teetotaler, I wasn't all that curious about the interstate transportation of spirits. So I was a bit surprised when I pulled into the parking lot of my consignee's warehouse and found that the parking lot was being repaired at the state's expense.

It appears that the State of Mississippi's “Office of Alcoholic Beverage Control” is the only wholesaler in the state for this particular product. Makes it easy to collect the taxes and keep dry counties dry, I suppose.

The things you learn on the road...

Miscellany

The last time I stopped at this truck stop I was glad to go again.

It may not have been the scuzziest place I'd ever spent the night next to, but it was in the running.

This morning it was more pleasant. Looks like someone bought the place while I was elsewhere, and they're trying to fix it up. The motel rooms upstairs have been stripped to the walls, and the fixtures in the bathrooms have been mostly removed. (The ones still in place make me understand why...) Lots of signs of the kind of violence that precedes renovation.

Downstairs, the convenience store and the restaurant have that earnest air that seems to come with a new broom used hard. The too-sharp corners and too-uniform colors that mark fresh coats of paint. New shelves in the store, new tables in the restaurant, and not quite enough of either to fill the spaces. You walk in, and your reaction isn't so much “Ah! Excellent!” as “They're trying hard. Hope they make it.”

And I do. Nice people. And the place IS much improved.

*****

A little later, I roll along. Blasting past a backhoe as it lumbers down the road, cell phone firmly pressed to the driver's ear.

Sigh.

*****

Had to stop and do some paperwork. My little book said there was a truck stop at this exit, but I couldn't find it. The only likely-looking candidate was a service station off to my left. Got there and saw a little convenience store, a set of gas pumps, and a teeny-tiny parking lot, with a little two-lane wandering off into farm-country limbo beyond it.

If I'd kept going I might have ended up anywhere. With no place to turn around. So I turned left.

Onto another two-lane to apparently nowhere.

I stopped the truck, kicked in the emergency flashers, and took stock. To my right, a tiny strip-mall, with a tiny parking lot and two tiny driveways to get to it. UPS could get in there, but not a lot else. To my right, a fair-sized church, with a fair-sized parking lot. With a fair number of cars in it.

Still, it was a fair-sized lot. Plenty of room to reverse course there, if I was careful. So I got out and hunted around for the church office. At length I found a desk occupied by your basic nice Southern church secretary. She asked me what she could do for me, and I explained my predicament.

Her eyes got bigger, and her smile did, too. And she said, “Thank you for asking!”

Going by her reaction, I have to assume this has happened before. And that they usually get taken for granted. Kind of embarrassing, really...

Ups and downs

Well, that was quick.

Yesterday the temperature dropped something like twenty degrees between dawn and dusk. It fell below forty sometime during the night. With clouds and drizzle.

Somebody muttered about freezing rain. That, at least, we were spared. But some of the mountains were white with frost this morning, as if they'd been dusted with fine sugar.

The rest of the hills were starting to color. I begin to see where olive drab came from—it's a crude approximation to the color the mountainsides are right now. Summer green just starting to turn to autumn reds and golds and browns, caught partway.

The real thing is much prettier, though.

Only half a day to drive today. My load cannot deliver before lunchtime tomorrow. (You ever hear of “just in time” inventory? I am caught in it...) So here I am in Kentucky, sitting and thinking and moving my pen.

I-40 between Asheville, NC and Knoxville, TN is a strange drive. A twisting winding roller coaster. Deceptive, too.

My father once told me of a mountain highway where he stopped to check his engine. It was laboring, for no reason he could tell. He opened the door and got out of the car—and almost fell.

The road ran steeply uphill, you see. But without a horizon to go by (at night, in all those hills) he couldn't tell.

That's how those houses work, you know—the ones built crooked on a mountainside, where balls roll uphill across the floor, and water leaves the tap at the weirdest angles. It's also why airplanes that fly into clouds fall out of them, if you don't have the right instruments and know how to use them.

You only think you know up from down. Without a clear view to a far place, you soon lose track.*

I wasn't anywhere near that kind of trouble. But I kept coasting faster on level ground, or losing speed downhill. Even in daylight.

A little spookiness does help the day go by...
-----
*Someone could probably write a sermon about this if they were so minded. I'm sure someone has...

(Sorry for the gap here. This blogging on paper and typing it up in my copious free time is harder than I thought. I'll see if I can get more caught up sometime next week. Meanwhile, here's four new entries (from October 8 to the "present"). Enjoy.)

Night terrors

For the third time in this career, I have known lingering terror.

All three times, the source was the same. I had to drive all night.

The first time, my trainer made me do it. Part of the schooling, of course. But there I was, alone in the dark (he'd turned in, and was back there in the sleeper). Driving through the cold fog, with another cold fog in my brain. Seeing the vaguely huge white boulders loom out of the fog and hurtling through them--sure each time that I'd find them all too solid.

When I pulled into a rest area, my trainer poked his head out and remarked that he'd expected me to give up a while ago. I said I would've if I'd had a place to stop.

The second time I had a load I couldn't deliver on time if I slept through the night. No hallucinations that time--but driving though rush-hour traffic when your eyes won't focus on the car next to you can be just as bad.

And then there was today. Again, a load that (due to mixups at the customer) I could not deliver on time if I slept first. As with the other times, I was perfectly legal. I had been off duty the appropriate amount of time and everything. But for me, having enough rest doesn't help at 5am--not if I've driven all night.

Again focusing was a problem, though that wasn't as scary this time. I was on an open highway, and traffic was light.

But falling into a dream for one or two seconds, then jerking yourself back to awareness and, with desperate care, planting yourself firmly n the middle of the lane again--that's terrifying.

Realizing that your last thought had nothing to do with what is around you. Seeing the next thought drift away again, and jerking it back frantically. Deliberately shifting your posture, changing your breathing, anything to keep from lulling yourself into slumber--only to find that each new rhythm is a new road back into the dream...

I started hitting every rest stop I passed. A quick walk would help a little. A snack would help more--elevating the blood sugar is not to be despised. But I was very glad to find the pace I'd chosen for my break.

And I took precautions. Tomorrow starts tomorrow, not tonight. They can't pay me enough to do that twice in a week.

Suddenly the drug problem becomes a bit easier to understand...

Short night's journey into day

The color in West Virginia hasn't caught up to central Pennsylvania yet. It's still mostly green. The reds and golds don't add to the brilliance of the hills so much as take the edge off the green. Now I know where the idea for olive drab came from.

Of course I didn't know any of this when I got started this morning. I couldn't see it.

Driving through rain can be kind of scary. I think I mentioned that yesterday.

Well, so is driving in the dark.

So is driving through the mountains.

So there I was, driving through the rain. In the dark. Through the mountains. With twenty tons of sloshing liquid in the trailer behind me. At least I didn't have to worry about my mind wandering too much.

That early on a rainy morning the real challenge is to see anything. Dry asphalt of any age doesn't really earn the name "blacktop"--it's more gray than black. But wet asphalt in the dark is practically invisible. And the painted lines on the asphalt don't show up as well wet as dry, either. Your high beams help, but you can't leave them on all the time. And other drivers have this disturbing habit of coming into sight just as you see that curve ahead. You know, the one you can't see any more when you switch to low beams.

This truck has driving lights. Brighter than your low beams, aimed downward so you can leave them on without blinding the oncoming traffic. Once you remember to turn them on the road gets a bit less scary. But you still can't see anything that isn't road. Driving though black mountains not-silhouetted against black sky.

Eventually you notice the sky isn't black anymore. It's more a very dark gray. The only reason you can tell is that the mountains are still black. With a little squinting, you can see silhouettes now.

Somehow that makes driving easier. Not much, but some.

Light gray, then. The silhouetted mountains become a bit more complex. As if there might be trees on those summits. You can't prove it, but you can believe it again. And if you look very hard, you can see the road.

And after a while, there are trees on the slopes above you, dark black on light black.

And a little later, they begin to take on shapes. You can tell where one tree stops and the next starts. Or at least you could, if you dared stare long enough.

Then, finally, there is color. Not much, yet. There won't be much, not today. Olive drab under gray clouds. Dim and dull and absolutely beautiful.

Things you don't do, vol 1

Rain without ceasing all afternoon.

Drizzle, downpour, and everything in between. At least once I had to slow down, lest I outrun my vision--the rain closed in until I couldn't see taillights a hundred feet ahead.

Could have been worse. I could have been hauling the other load.

I pulled into the dock this morning and went in to talk to the shipping manager. He pulled out a bill of lading and several other pieces of paper, and I sat down to read them.

I started to worry when I saw the first paper he wanted me to sign. It said I'd vouched for the way the product was loaded into the trailer--including the way it was secured and braced. Technically, I'm responsible for making sure a trailer is safe to move, but I usually don't have to swear on paper that I've checked.

So I looked at the bill of lading itself.

Then I looked at the placards I thought I was using for a writing surface.
Nope. They matched the bills. They were warning placards, and I was supposed to display them.

I was about to sign for a hazmat load.

"Hazardous materials" is a term that covers a lot of ground--anything from laundry bleach to high explosives (or worse). The federal government's rules for handling such materials on the highway fill nice thick paperback books. You can find one of those books in any commercial truck. At least you'd better be able to.

I have to have the book with me, but most of the time it's not very useful.

I can't haul hazmat, you see.

Carrying hazardous materials requires a special endorsement to your Commercial Driver's License. I don't have it. My company knows I don't. And they don't assign me loads that require it.

So what was I doing here, picking up fifteen tons of corrosive substances?

I explained the problem to the nice gentleman, who was no more interested in breaking the law than I was. He went through his files again and (whew) found the load I was supposed to carry. So I signed a completely different set of papers and went out to drive in the rain.

This load is noticeably heavier. But it's not nearly as scary.

Adventures in posture

Color has actually arrived now. Up north, at least.

I started running into it in Virginia, just above the North Carolina border. Just touches of red and rust and yellow, taking the edge off the green of the hills.

When I stopped for the night, just before getting on the Pennsylvania Turnpike, the scarlets and golds were taking the lead. It's not "peak color" yet, even here, but it's worth looking at already. Another couple of weeks, maybe, and I'll owe my wife a drive through North Georgia.

I'm parked where I can see the hills, instead of acres of trucks. A rare thing, that--usually it isn't safe, pulling into a parking place nose first--but every once in a while you find a place where you can drive straight in and back straight out. Nice when it happens. It's almost dark already, so I relax and enjoy while I can still see something.

Relaxing has been a major part of my day today. It can be work, you know. Relaxing, that is.

Modern semi-tractor tend to have rather nice seats--very useful when you're sitting in them eight or ten hours a day, every day, for a week or more at a time. The seats in my truck slide back and forth, of course. You can also adjust the back angle, the height, and the firmness and shape of the chair itself (thanks to the truck's compressed-air system and half a dozen or so inflatable cushions in the seat). Very nice.

Complicated, too. It took me a day or two, when I started driving, just to figure out how to adjust the thing--there are half a dozen buttons down there. And I'm just now figuring out how to adjust it properly.

For most of my life, I've thought the most comfortable sitting position is more or less upright. To me, a recliner is for lying down. It's certainly not for driving.

I still hate lying back with my hands on a steering wheel. But after two years I've finally figured out that I get fewer backaches if I dial the seat-back a few notches back. I think it's because I can't put my feet flat on the floor if one of them is on the accelerator. And if your legs are stretched out, you have to lean back a little.

I figured that out today. That's what I was thinking about, when I wasn't keeping an eye on every other driver on the road, or sneaking quick glimpses at the colors around me.

The life of a trucker is an exciting one.