Wrapping it up

That truck stop was even cuter by daylight. A couple of inches of snow didn't hurt, either.

I woke inside a picture postcard. Most pleasant. And since I didn't get parked until the wee hours of the night, I couldn't drive until late in the morning. So I could get out and stroll around.

Winding footpaths. Picnic pavilions. A little pool with a waterfall fountain (a memorial garden dedicated to state road workers). According to the signs I ran across, there used to be a petting zoo, but they closed it down some years back.*

This is a rest area?

By the time I was legal to drive, the parking lot was slush, but the rest of the place was still nice. Duty called, though. So I went back to the last customer and picked up an empty trailer, then headed for Newark.

Eventually I got loaded and headed west. Didn't quite get out of New Jersey before I decided it was too dark to drive casually. Found a truck stop and parked in the (once again) gathering snow.

Now I'd better find a phone. This is my anniversary, y'see. Skipping the nightly "hi honey" call tonight would be a BAD idea.

G'nite.
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*Somebody decided they'd have to have a vet on-call, and the budget didn't cover that.

Looking around

I've never been in a charming rest area before.

Most of them are strictly utilitarian. I've been in a few that were nice. One or two that were scenic, after a fashion.* And a few that were downright impressive. But this one is...well, kind of cute.

The drive was tree-lined, with streetlights rigged to look like old gas lamps (with wreaths, candy canes, etc., at this time of year, of course). Until I saw the standard slab o'asphalt in the back I thought I'd made a wrong turn.

Once I'd parked,it was a bit more ordinary. But still pleasant.

Of course, it's in the middle of a small down in Delaware** and doubles as a park-and-ride for the commuter buses (lots of big cities around here), but still. A nice place to rest.

I can use it. I should sleep well tonight.

I spent eleven hours behind the wheel today. The legal limit. It would have been ten or so, but I had to take the Beltway around Washington, D. C. at 5:00 pm. By the time I'd dropped my trailer I had exactly enough driving time to get here.

Fortunately, "on duty" time isn't the same as "driving time." I don't lose driving time when I'm fueling. Or cleaning the windshield. Or the mirrors and side windows.

The windshield is important, of course. Even in the summer. But the other night I remembered how important the other glass is.

I was backing into a truck-stop parking space. At a certain point, one of the parking-lot lights suddenly backlit the thin layer of dried road salt, etc., on the right side window. Just like that, I could see where every droop of dirty water had tried on that window. And the back corner of my trailer simply disappeared. Marker lights and all.

Disconcerting.

I got it parked safely, but it was a waker-upper. These things are blind enough already. When I fueled today I spent some extra time on the glass. Closing the barn door after ONE of the horses got out isn't quite as dumb...
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*Most of the scenic ones aren't set up to welcome 18-wheelers, for some reason...
**Smyrna, Delaware, if you're interested.

Heavy thoughts

Waiting patiently in the night, a victim of post-Christmas catchup.

This is my third load since coming back yesterday. All of them were already late when I got the assignment. I might get this one to its destination on time, though. I'm 22 hours late picking it up, but there might be time to get it where it's going.

If I push. And if nothing goes wrong.

It could have been worse. I didn't really expect to get there till tomorrow morning. I was running two-lanes most of the way, and that usually slows you down seriously.*

This morning's load was a bit of a surprise. The bill of lading listed the load as weighing 47,000+ lbs. When it's that heavy you start worrying. I mean, the truck will usually pull it, but is it legal?

The tractor and trailer together typically weighs about 30-35,000 lbs. 47,000 lbs of cargo is enough to push some of the heavier trucks over the gross-weight limit.

Right now I'm in a Freightliner Century Class tractor. That's one of the lighter sleeper trucks out here. I was fairly sure I would be under gross. But with that much weight, balancing the load is a lot tougher.

Heart in my throat, I scaled the rig. And found it five tons lighter than I was told.

Five tons.

Do these people know what they're shipping?

Not that I'm complaining, mind you...
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On Interstates I hope to average 60, and plan for 50. On two lanes I hope for 45 and plan for 30. Little towns every 10 miles can slow you down a lot.

Seeing things

Backing into a dock, when four does dashed past me, up the hill to my left and into somebody's back yard.

Just like that.

This morning, watched a couple of geese glide in to a landing just outside the window. The catchment ponds people are putting in for the green crowd do have their uses.

I complained once that I spend a lot of time driving past things I want to see. But some of the everyday things do pop up.

The things you take for granted

The coffee was a dollar. The pastry was fifty cents. I paid a dollar fifty. Over the counter.

Apparently there is no sales tax in the Seneca nation. When was the last time you saw that?

I'm sure they get their pound of flesh somehow, but...

Omens?

Passed through Accident, Maryland this morning. Drove extra carefully.

Lights in the darkness

I'd forgotten how spooky one of the big sirens can be.

I'm in a fairly small city in the Appalachians. Apparently it's small enough to have a volunteer fire department. With one of the old air-raid type sirens to summon the faithful. Urgent and plaintive and oddly beautiful.

I don't envy those who answered it. It's below freezing already, and lows in the teen's are in the forecast. I'm already looking forward to waking up shivering, starting the truck, and waiting for it to get warm enough to sleep in. Then doing it again in a few hours.

Getting here was good for working up a sweat, though. Two lanes over the mountains. Hairpin turns on a road a foot wider (per lane) than the truck. Not the worst I've driven, but scary enough. Especially in the dark.

When I wasn't being terrified I was enjoying the scenery. This is about the only time of year you can enjoy scenery in the dark. Come around a pitch-black curve and There! In the distance! A multicolored spray of brilliant dots, sprawled over what seems like half an acre--and is, sometimes. Flickering or winking or glowing steadily--or maybe all of the above. Firefly season for men, in the depths of winter.

Christmas lights seem more impressive to me out here. In the city, rich people's displays seem (usually) a bit--tame. Orderly. As if they hired someone to put the lights up (which maybe they7 did) and the contractor did too neat a job. The lightshow equivalent of McMansions.

The less affluent displays are friendlier, but--well, CRAMPED. Fitting a properly exuberant set of Christmas lights on a city-lot-sized front yard makes it look like work. Or something.

But out here...Half an acre of lights in the middle of a mile of blackness. Or a candle in the window--the only light you can see. Or something in between.

Always a pleasure.

Your weight and fortune here

Got home tonight. I wasn't quite sure I would.

My pickup yesterday was scheduled for late last night. By the time I found a safe place to park it was past midnight. So it was 10:30 this morning before I got started north.

When you're looking for a place to park in the middle of the night, truck stops are iffy. My company had a terminal in this city, so I spent the night there. They did have--one--space when I got there. What they didn't have was a scale. So the first stop I made this morning was at a truck stop, to weigh the load I picked up last night.

Uh-oh.

I've talked about the weight rules before This time I had no problem with gross weight. They hadn't overloaded me. But they had loaded most of their product in the nose of the trailer. Even with the fuel tanks 3/4 empty, I couldn't get enough weight off the drive wheels to pass a DOT scale with confidence. On a Freightliner Century Class--one of the lightest full-size semi-tractors out there.

Mind you, I was something like a hundred miles from the next DOT scale. By the time I got there, I would probably have burned off enough fuel to be legal. But I was supposed to drop this load off at my home terminal before I went home. And if I could barely get a Century Class to pass a weight test with near-empty tanks, how would the next guy get it across a state line?*

So I called my office. After some thought they said come on home. They knew who would be taking the load the rest of the way. They'd told him there was a problem. He'd said he'd handle it.

O-kayyy.

So I started north. Not fueling, lest I make myself irreversibly illegal.

There are three weigh stations on the Interstates between Jacksonville, Florida and Atlanta, Georgia. The first two let me pass. But the third was too far ahead. And you can only trust the fuel gauges so far. After dithering for nearly a hundred miles, I finally stop and fueled up. Twenty whole gallons. More than that I was afraid to buy.

Then I drove on, wondering if I'd been too generous at the pumps. The last weigh station was about thirty miles ahead. This gave me entirely too much time to figure the weights and fuel-burn rates in my head, and get a different answer every time. (You may have deduced before now that I'm a second-guessing kind of guy.) But at last I saw it ahead of me. I held my speed, thinking light thoughts. Closer. Closer.

And the little box on the windshield beeped cheerfully and the green light blinked. I yet live.**

An hour or so later I pulled into the terminal and dropped the trailer. I'm only a day late for my home time. Oh, well. It could have been worse.
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*You've seen those weigh stations. And we know where they are--they're marked on the trucker editions of most road atlases. But the one place you can almost guarantee you'll find one is on an Interstate close to a welcome center...

**Many states have installed equipment in the road near their weigh stations that will weigh the truck as it approaches the station. You can subscribe to a service that lets you mount a transponder in your truck to talk to that equipment. If your truck is light enough, you'll get a signal that basically says, "You aren't the overweight truck we're looking for. You can go about your business. Move along."
If the weight is at all marginal you'll be signaled to pull into the station, where they'll check you out with the more accurate scales there.