Simpler is better? redux

Should be safe to sleep in another hour. Especially if I run the a/c for a little while first.

Sundown. Backlit sky. Cooler breezes starting to move. Thus my optimism.

I'm sitting at the smokers' bench outside the truck stop. Otherwise deserted, fortunately. It would be cooler inside the building, but a choice between a Martin Lawrence movie and country Muzak isn't really a choice at all.

I'm less than a hundred miles from my home terminal, but a combination of a flat trailer tire and a storm far to the north has seen to it I dare not go the rest of the way. (The storm knocked out the computers at the company HQ, making it impossible for me to get certain paperwork done. Without the paperwork, I could not drive. So I sat for half the afternoon, after sitting at a tire shop for half the morning. Sigh.) If I had kept going, I might have made it in before my hours ran out. Or I might have had a company official logging my arrival, just late enough to be in violation of Federal Law (insert ominous music).

What can I say? I'm chicken.

A few other interesting things have happened this week,* but most of them were interesting only to me. Or inadvisable to talk about. So, noting how much this opening is like the one for June 14, I will make a similar observation to match.

Not so maudlin, this time. Honest.

When I first found out I was alone again, I thought about just moving into a truck. Apparently there are a fair number of truckers who do just that. Save on rent, save on all kinds of other living expenses. See the world, with occasional breaks where you actually have the time to get out and see pieces of it.

I've changed my mind.

I've talked about running into truckers who just wanted to talk early on. But this week I've had to work not to turn into one of them.

In that older post, I said that I'm basically solitary. And I think it's mostly true. But apparently I'm less so than I thought. Part of the reason I came out here was to keep from climbing the walls in there. Because things were bothering me. And I didn't have anyone to talk to about them.

I still don't have anyone to talk to about those things. And I've calmed down enough I don't really need to now. But it has occurred to me that I don't really have much of anyone to talk about the fun things with either. Not any more. The blog helps, but--well, maybe I'm old-fashioned. Typing isn't the same.

For the past few weeks, one of my taglines has been something like: "What does it matter how often I come home now? There's no home to come back to." But I've found out that doesn't work for me. One week has been enough to make it clear.

I don't socialize much. And I like my time alone. But apparently there are limits.

A friend talked me into finding a small place to sleep in (and keep some of my stuff) when I'm here. Guess I'll be using it more than I thought.

Who'd've thunk it?

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*(One of them will be back-dated once I'm at a computer where I can stick a picture in...)

Simpler is better?

It's too hot to sleep in the truck just yet.

Not too bad outside, but we've discussed the "fiberglass tent with no open windows" thing before. Oh, well. Eventually it'll be livable.

The show on in the TV lounge here is one I've seen before, and I didn't much like it the first time. I shorted myself on sleep last night, so I'm not up to a session with the flutes. So I sit here.

Used to, when things got this quiet, I had a fallback. Something I needed to do and sometimes resented. Not any more.

Time to call home.

No need.

New fact about trucking. It's not for a broke man with a sick wife.

I knew that going in. I didn't want to do this, because I didn't want to leave her alone that much. But at a certain point I kind of ran out of choices. So I got my CDL and hired on to a company that sent me away for three weeks at a time. A few months later I managed to get that down to seven days out of every ten.

It was still too much.

It's a good job, in its way. I actually still enjoy it. But if you decide to try it, think about what you'll be leaving and going back to.

Bachelor? You may well be deliriously happy out here.

Got a big family? Might not be too bad. A bunch of people to come back to, and to watch out for what you leave behind.

In between, there's a lot of room for worry and frustration. And pain.

I'll get over it. Everyone tells me so. And meanwhile my life has become, in some odd ways, simpler. But right now, there isn't a home for me to call.

And it's still too hot to sleep.

It's not always the truck

A quick follow up to the previous post.

They got the trailer fixed at about three thirty in the morning. I got it to the first stop on my schedule just before I ran out of hours. While the customer's warehouse people were pulling their share of the load off my rig, I spoke to the manager. As I had feared, there wasn't a place to park the truck on their property.

The driving rules allow you to drive after your hours are up, if you have to look for a safe place to park. But it's not a loophole you want to use too often. Not that I had a choice this time.

Fifteen minutes later, I parked the truck and crashed.

Um, let me rephrase that.

I parked the truck and immediately went to sleep.

Four hours later somebody pounded on the door.

It was a driver from the customer's own transport company. He'd come to take my trailer and make the rest of my stops. He'd been looking for me for about an hour. Seems I'd forgotten to tell anybody WHERE I was stopping to rest.

Not good. If I hadn't been thinking any straighter than that, it was a good thing I HAD shut down when I did.

He left, and I crashed again (see above). Spent most of the day sleeping, eating, or thinking about eating or sleeping. That evening my dispatcher found me another load.

He sent me to pick up an empty trailer around 6:00pm. I found one and returned to the truck stop, a little grumpy. Having a good night's sleep was one thing, but the load didn't pick up until midnight tomorrow!

Muttering, I turned in again.

Around midnight, the night dispatcher called to see if I'd picked up the load yet.

I'd lost track of the date.

There is a reason I try not to drive at night. Daytime sleep just doesn't seem to to do the job for me. But there I was. And I did have hours.

So I got him to make sure the customer would still be there. Learning that they were still open, I got there as quick as I could. Picked up the load around two. By now I couldn't take a break and still get the load to my relief driver in a reasonable time. So I drove all night again.

Got to the terminal. Got my stuff out of the truck. Had a friend pick me up, and we ran a few errands. Errands that didn't require much thought.

Typed this. And I think that's all I'm gonna do today.

G'nite...

Sympathy for a Luddite

There's a noisy engine to my left. The passenger's-side window is open, in hopes of a breeze. Luckily, there aren't any bugs out tonight.

It's ten o-clock at night. I should be in bed. Instead, I'm in limbo. A cell on speakerphone plays faint Muzak withing arm's reach. On the other end (or so I'm told) someone from Breakdown will someday pick up. We'll see.

After three weeks of funeral arrangements, frantic preparations to move, and trying to adjust to the hole in my life where "home" used to be, I returned to the road today. Or tried to. There wasn't a whole lot of choice--"paid leave" isn't a word in OTR trucking. So I got to a sorta stopping point in my moving prep and went out to the terminal.

They'd assigned me a new truck--to me, anyway. The newest truck I've ever driven, with the fancy new EPA-approved engine and the even fancier electronics. I spent an hour or more wrestling all my stuff into it, and another half-hour figuring out how to set all the dashboard screens to work so I could read them properly.

At that point the dispatcher assigned me a load--that was scheduled for pickup two hours ago. Time travel is not one of the functions they've added to the new trucks yet. Oh, well. But they knew that when they assigned me. So I started the monster up and pulled out of the terminal.

I barely made it past the gate.

One of the features on this marvelous new truck was an automatic transmission. Very nice. But about fifty feet from the terminal, I noticed it wasn't shifting past Fourth. On a ten-speed transmission. And the gearshift indicator was flashing error messages. Most distressing.

Fortunately, I was bobtailing. With no trailer, finding a place to turn around was relatively easy. Getting the fifty feet back to the terminal was merely slow. When I told the mechanics what it was doing, they cussed and told me to park it. Apparently it had already been in the shop for exactly this problem. And the manufacturer had SAID they'd fixed it...

(By the way, don't read this as a tirade against automatics. They seem to be nice enough, and they're REAL handy in heavy traffic. And they seldom screw up, I'm told. But when they do screw up, it's not a quick fix. Or so I'm told.)

I told my dispatcher what happened. He probably muttered a bit, but he assigned me another truck. Feeling a bit paranoid at this point, I did a careful walkaround before moving my stuff. Good thing, too. The bumper was messed up. I spoke to the mechanics again. They cussed some more and sent someone out to look at it. He looked, and then cussed a good bit more. Apparently this was not something they could jerry-rig a quick fix for. And it was actually a safety issue--they couldn't let it out of the yard like this.

So I told my dispatcher what happened. He DID cuss this time. And found me a third truck.

A careful inspection, and then a weary time moving all my stuff into the new truck (at least it was only the second time--let's hear it for paranoia). And off I went, arriving at the customer only six hours late for the pickup.

Fortunately, the trailer was already loaded. I hooked up, connected the air and electric lines, and inspected the trailer.

One of the running lights was missing.

I suppose, strictly speaking, this might not seem to be a big deal. But the various state DOT's don't grade safety equipment on a curve. And this was happening right at the beginning of their annual safety drive--what is sometimes called "DOT rectal exam week."

Some other time of the year, I might get off with a warning. Might. Not this week. Someone with a badge looks at that trailer tonight, I could be in big trouble.

So I call Breakdown. And wait for a reply. The wheels of God, etc. Eventually, they tell me that, since the terminal shop is closed for the night, I'll have to run about twenty miles to a certain truck stop, there to have the light replaced.

So, off I go to the truck stop garage. Fill out the papers. And call breakdown for authorization. Which is where I am now. Waiting to see whether the shop can get the trailer fixed before I run out of hours.

Ah, someone just picked up. I'll be driving all night after all.