The days are a blur (part 3)

(NOTE: This will make more sense if you read Part 1 and Part 2 first.

Oh, are you back already? Good...)

Hmph. Must've still been sleepy.

Before I went to bed last night, I figured what the best starting time would be to get this load to its destination. Too late, and I'd (obviously) get there too late. Too early and I'd still be half-asleep when I started driving.

As it was, I think I underestimated the slowness of 4-lane non-Interstates again. I barely got the load there on time.

But I did get it there on time. So I won't complain.

Then I got my next load assignment. And for once this week the annoying delays weren't my fault. Just the ordinary fun stuff—the customer had all the time in the world. Just ask him.

I barely got to the truck stop before my hours ran out. But I did. And now I'm sitting here watching the world get dark (if you read Part 1, yeah, we're finally back to that.). Right now the brightest thing in the world is the headlights of the truck backing into a parking space opposite me.

They're about six inches away from my front fender.

(Some truck stops like to maximize their parking lot capacity. This often makes for interesting times backing in...)

Ah. No bumps, no scraped paint. He got into the slot and shut down. Dark and relaxing once again.

I've got some miles ahead of me tomorrow, but the schedule isn't as near-impossible as it has been the last few days. And I'll be awake, right? I've learned my lesson.

(So why are you sitting there typing after bedtime, boy?)

Umm.

G'nite.

The days are a blur (part 2)

(Note: This entry might not make as much sense if you haven't read yesterday's. Go ahead if you haven't. I'll wait...)

The bad beginning

02:00. Groan.

My alarm clock woke me.* My satcom didn't. The significance of that didn't register on me at first. That was the first strong indication that I hadn't gotten enough sleep.

I bustled blearily around the sleeper for a few minutes, eventually getting dressed enough to drive. It was about then I realized that I had no load information. No customer name. No address. No route.

Why, I wondered.

A quick look at the satcom showed no new messages since the good news last night. Odd. The dispatcher knew I'd accepted the load. Why hadn't he sent instructions?

Or had he?

With a sense of mounting dread I rebooted the truck computer. After the usual three to five minutes, it came fully online. And beeped. And started scrolling up useful messages.

And I'd only lost about an hour.

That was my first miscalculation.

The long and winding road, that leads me--to where?

The second became obvious within minutes, when I compared the truck's GPS-driven estimates of my ETA with my own quick-and-dirty figures from last night. The computer had me getting there a lot slower. Why? I wondered.

Because I'd been planning a trip to the wrong city.

I was going to have to cross a portion of Alabama on “ordinary” four-lane roads. Once I crossed into Georgia, though—well, Lake City, GA, is just south of Atlanta. And in Georgia, all Interstates lead to Atlanta. I was golden.

Except I wasn't going to Lake City, GA.

I was going to Lake Park, GA.

Lake Park, GA, is nowhere near Atlanta. It's over by Valdosta. Another direction altogether. And about sixty miles further than I'd figured on.

And there are no Interstates crossing South Georgia.

Sixty extra miles, and almost all of it on highways that were noticeably slower than the Interstates I'd been counting on. Well, at least I knew what the problem was.

The rest of the morning was a blur. Mostly a dark blur. Only a few things stand out at this point.

One was a deer. A buck. Nice rack—nothing the record books would be interested in, but nice. If I were a hunter I would have drooled a bit. As it was, I smiled a little.

Not much. The reason I remember the buck is that he didn't really register in my mind until I was well past him. I saw him clearly, but I didn't SEE him. The corner of my eye made a note, and eventually the brain got it. And absently filed it. Keeping the truck going was taking far too much attention.

The other thing I remember is the moment when it sank in that the non-Interstate was slowing me down a bit more than I'd estimated.

Translation: I was going to be late.

I spent the next hour or so looking for a place with two important things:

• a parking lot big enough for this monster, and
• a phone that worked, so I could warn my dispatcher I wasn't going to make the delivery on time.

Perhaps it says something about my work ethic that it was only after I found such a place and parked that I realized a bathroom would also be nice.

Fortunately, they had one.

And so on...

Daylight came at last. And so did my destination. I dropped the load (late, but they at least knew that was coming), headed to my next stop, and picked up another load. Then I drove another long stretch of non-Interstate four-lanes toward the only truck stop I could reach in the time I had left.

I drove right past it, as it turns out.

Well, actually I sat on the highway beside it. In the right-turn lane at the stoplight, looking at the parking lot on my left. Then the light turned green and I made the right turn I had to make.

It took me about fifteen minutes to get turned around and get back. At which point I was within fifteen minutes of being unable to legally drive. I HATE cutting it that close.

Oh, well. At least I'll get enough sleep tonight.

(continued tomorrow)
****
*It didn't once—and I got the only “no excuse” service failure in my glorious career because of it. I've been more paranoid about settings and batteries since then...

The days are a blur (part 1)

Dusk isn't always colorful.

When I was a little boy, there was a soap opera called THE EDGE OF NIGHT. I never watched it (or any other soap opera), but I would usually try to be around the TV when it first came on. I liked the theme music (the organ in the background was cheesy, but I loved the piano piece that floated over it). And I found the opening visual fascinating

It was a cityscape at dusk, gradually shading into night. Watching the buildings gray and fade as the lights in the windows came into prominence. The sky gradually going away. Sorta. There had to be some time-lapse or something, to make it fit into a TV opening sequence (do I remember the clouds streaking by, or am I reading that back into it?), but that just made it accessible to a three-year-old's attention span.

And the fact that it was in black-and-white didn't hurt it at all. If there'd been color, it would've likely been pastels of red and orange all over the place (soap-opera's didn't tend to the subtle). And I might have thought that a distraction. It was the gradual changes in shading and contrast that I found endlessly watchable.

Tonight's kind of like that, without the skyscrapers. Sky-blue fading into gray and thence to black. Everything below it gradually losing definition and color as the shadows change (not always deepening).

It takes longer, of course. This is reality. But then, I'm a bit older. I actually do have an attention span, these days. Sometimes.

It's MonTueWednesday, August 23-25. At least the month didn't drift. I think.

What can I say? It's been interesting...

My own fault, I have to admit. My work week was supposed to start on Sunday, but they didn't have a load for me Sunday. Weekends are often slow. So I had plenty of rest going into my load Monday, right?

Wrong. Computer binge. Five hours of sleep. Slow blinking all day.

Well, at least I got the load to where it was going. Got myself empty and headed for the nearest truck stop, where I had a quick meal and sat around reading the rest of the evening. Nice way to end the day.

At least until I got the message from my dispatcher. Seems he had a load for me the next morning. And I wouldn't have any trouble picking it up.

If I started rolling at 3 am.

This was not a problem, legally speaking. I'd shut down around 5, so getting up at 3 was perfectly all right.

Right?

Go back over my description of how I spent the evening. Did you happen to notice the word “sleep” anywhere in there?

If I'd been rudely awakened when the satcom beeped, I might have been all right. It would have meant I'd taken a nap as soon as I parked. But why would I do that? Nobody was going to need me before 5 or 6 am, right?

Right.

So there I was, just getting ready for bed, and here came the good news. And what do I tell my dispatcher? “Sorry, boss. Can't do it. I spent too much time surfing the Net last night and too much time reading STAR WARS books today.”?

So I said “Sure, no prob,” and went to bed.

Five hours sleep last night.

No more than five tonight.

Three o'clock in the morning.

Sigh.

(continued “tomorrow”)

I keep seeing things like that out here.

I am secure but not comfortable.

I'm trying to be a good boy about keeping this laptop safe (the last one got stolen out of my truck a year or two ago, for those of you who came in late). At the moment, I have the lock cable wrapped around a rung of bunk ladder. Reasonably secure, but a bit of a stretch when I'm sitting in the front seat.

And I pretty much have to sit in the front seat at the moment. It's cooled down fairly quickly tonight, but only outside. If I'm not next to an open window I am a puddle. I should be in bed, but not yet. Let it get cool enough to breathe in here first.

I did about 600 miles today. Not an epic journey, but a good bit of driving. With half a legal hour to go, I found a truck stop and parked for the night. As occasionally happens, there were some stores and restaurants within walking distance. More surprising, there was something to see, too. Closed, of course...

When I first saw the building from the highway I thought it belonged to a community college with delusions of grandeur. I mean, come on! A featureless concrete dome painted white, like a cue ball on a kicking tee? It looked like that, too--the building is earth-bermed, and has a roofline with one of those complicated sets of non-functional angles that architects periodically fall in love with. And the dome is MORE than a hemisphere. A white globe in a nest of white angular lines.

Something Significant Is Housed Here, it was designed to say. I doubted it, but what the heck.

I parked the truck and sauntered across the bridge to the other side of the Interstate, past the Bob Evans (temptation is everywhere...), and took a casual glance across the over-sized lawn at--a parked jet fighter? In chase-plane colors? From the early 60's from the shape. It kind of resembled a Douglas F4D, though I'm no expert.

Hmmm.

Then I saw the fellow with the kids in the empty lot closer to the building. Of course it was empty--at this hour the place had to be closed. But the lot wasn't QUITE empty. He was taking pictures of his kids as they poked around--

--an Apollo Command Module.

And there was a Gemini capsule sitting right behind it.

The interest level rose a bit. I trudged across the lawn and the empty lot.

As I drew closer, it was obvious that the Apollo, at least, was a mockup. No biggie--only somebody with an unlimited budget leaves the real thing out in the rain. It didn't take long to figure out the Gemini was a mockup, too. And right about that time I got an angle on the big sign.

I was in Wapakoneta, Ohio. And this was the Neil Armstrong Air and Space Museum.

Oh.

Maybe there's Something Significant in there after all.

According to the sign, Gemini 8 is. That's the one Armstrong flew, in the pre-Apollo days. And I don't doubt there's a bunch of other stuff.

It at least explains the architecture. Still more Show For Show's Sake than I like, but they really did have something they thought was worth making Stand Out. And it does look kind of spacey. In a good kind of way, I mean.

Maybe someday I'll show up here when it's still open. Or get rich enough to come back in a car.

Oh, yeah. The fighter. It was an F5D, not an F4D. According to the plaque, Douglas only built four of them (I think I'm remembering that right), and this was the only one left. Neil Armstrong had flown it in the early sixties when it was set up as a simulator of sorts. They were testing flight profiles for the Dyna-Soar, NASA's first step toward a functional winged spaceship. Call it the grandfather of the Space Shuttle. (The Dyna-Soar never actually flew, but it got the engineers thinking in a particular direction...)

Lazy days

Someday I'll have to figure out how to rig a hammock in a parking lot.

The evening was pleasantly cool, but I woke up twice in a sweat. The first time I ran the truck long enough to cool it down. And to recharge the battery--I'd been running the fan in the sleeper (didn't do much good).

The second time, I said heck with it and got up.

I've talked about the joys of sleeping in a metal-and-fiberglass tent before, so I won't belabor it. But it still surprises me sometimes, when I go to bed on a 70-degree night and wake up in a Turkish bath.

Glad I don't work for Truckbert.

The day promises to be well and truly hot. And not very exciting. I'm due for home time tomorrow, and I ended up getting back to town a day early. Which means they can't send me very far and still get me back in time for the next driver to take the rig. And for some reason people don't ship huge amounts of freight on a Sunday anyway. So in all likelihood I'll sit around all day, looking for places that are fairly cool and quiet,* and checking the truck every so often for a satcom message telling me my dispatcher has worked a miracle and found me something to do.

Someone might suggest I go home--it's close enough. But technically I'm still on duty. They MIGHT find a load I can take a hundred miles, with a load over there I can bring back. And if they do I need to prove I'm willing to earn my keep. At least until tomorrow.

I've talked to several drivers who were waiting for their trucks to get out of the shop. Breakdown pay is rather nominal. And on a Sunday, I'm not the only one waiting for a little action. But (due to some oddities about the division I work for) I am the only one here right now who's paid for days when they can't find me a load.

So I sweat a bit and fight boredom. It could be worse.

-----
*qt's Law of TV-Lounge Selection: your ability to deal with the show everybody else is watching is inversely proportional to your ability to do something else instead.
(In other words, if you have to go out and do something, one of the four shows you actually like will of course be on. If it's 95 outside and there isn't another chair in the truck stop, the entertainment in the TV lounge will be unbearable and impossible to ignore.)

Long day

Part the first
Detroit's rush hour isn't too bad from the south. I wasn't expecting that.

That 700 miles I mentioned in the last post turned out to be more like 800. And it included an extra stop on the way--the guy who came out to fix my trailer tire didn't have the equipment to replace the mudflap. By the time I got to a stopping place last night I had about four hours to make a run that would take exactly four hours.

If nothing went wrong.

Like traffic. Near the center of a large city at eight in the morning.

I pulled a couple of tricks to get here early enough to make a morning delivery. All strictly legal, mind you, but still, I was pushing things a bit. Other things slowed me down, so it's a good thing I took the precaution.

But there was no traffic to speak of. In a city the size of Detroit. Weird.

Now the southbound lanes looked like what I'd expected to run into. I guess I just don't know who lives where and goes whither.

No complaints, though.

Part the second
Got to the customer on time. The parking lot was overcrowded, but I did eventually manage to drop my trailer and hook an empty for the next run.

With a missing mudflap.

I hope this isn't a trend. Sitting at garages is not a good way to make money when you're paid by the mile.

Conclusion
Ice cream bars are messy.

Yeah, I know. Not a great revelation. Call it a truth that's come back to me.

I'm at your basic El Cheapo Deluxe fast-food table in a convenience store. A floor fan sits beside it, buffeting me gently (Dyson's Air Multiplier isn't likely to trickle this far down for a while...).

The fan is there because the store isn't air conditioned. Looking around, I suspect this is normal. The only vents I see are on what looks like a commercial-grade gas (or oil?) heater near the ceiling in one corner. The building itself is an open-plan steel prefab. Looking at the window, I gather it's double-walled, so I can hope the place is at least insulated. But I'll bet Ohio winters are still a bear.

It's warmer in here than outside--if outside includes shade and a breeze. Which it does, at times and in spots. But shade, a breeze, and a place to sit down--that's a much rarer combination.

So here I sit, sweating just a little, chasing the flies off every few seconds, and generally feeling as if I'd returned to one of those old general stores of my (very early) childhood. They're more pleasant to remember than to return to, but am I complaining?

Actually, no.

When I pulled in here, I was concerned. Which is a euphemism for "wondering how doomed I was." Getting that mudflap fixed in Detroit didn't take too long. But the trick I used to get the load to the customer on time this morning involved taking a legally required nap this afternoon. When I left Toledo, Ohio, I had about three hours of driving time left to me, and I knew of two truck stops on my route. One was nearby, the other a good hundred and fifty miles further on.

I wanted to make some miles tonight (rather like my fond hope in the previous post), but 150 miles in three hours on two-lanes was a bad bet. So I looked for the stop nearby.

It was a few miles north of here. On the Ohio Turnpike.

Not next to the Turnpike. On it. In one of the service plazas. And I had been explicitly told not to give the company's money to the trolls.

So what to do? Drive nervously into the gathering darkness, looking for a place to hide?

Well, any better ideas?

So I drove nervously into the gathering darkness, until I saw a little place with the sky-high overhangs that mark a set of truck-diesel pumps. No parking lot. But if they dealt with semi's, I thought, they might know who in the area would tolerate one parking for the night.

I found a corner where I could park my eighteen-wheeler without blocking the pumps and went inside. When the lady finished with her customer, I asked her where around here I could shut down for ten hours.

"Where're you now?"

I pointed.

"That'll be fine."

No complaints. None.

Changing times, OR, "When I was a boy..."

(All right. So the updates are still a work in progress.

(What can I say? I got the laptop to the truck just fine. I just forgot the power supply. So these didn't get out until I got back home. Again.

(So sorry. I'll try to do better...)

If I keep telling you how warm it is tonight, you're going to get bored. So I won't.

I'm in a gravel parking lot behind a small truck stop in the Deep South. And it's almost cool enough to sleep now. Actually, it must be--I woke up rather rudely when the repair guy showed up.

Today's pickup was a drop and hook, with 700 miles or so to put behind me afterwards and about a day and a half to do it in. I was planning to put in two or three hours of driving tonight so I could relax a *little* tomorrow.

That was before I examined the new trailer.

One tire was flat. And a mudflap was missing. Believe it or not, those two problems are about equally important (mudflaps are considered safety equipment, and the DOT will not look kindly on you if you run without one). But of course the tire was a bit more, shall we say, immediate. Driving any distance with only seven tires bearing the weight was not in the cards.

So I moved my tractor-trailer gently to the nearest place I could politely park it and reported the problem. On my satcom. It's efficient and convenient, but it has some of the same problems as a telegraph did, back when there were telegraphs.

Think texting.

Now think of serious technical discussions while texting.

After several messages back and forth--about the problem, and whether I needed repair immediately, and when I'd be leaving in the morning, etc.--the dispatcher decided she wasn't getting enough detail. So she tried to call me.

Or so I presume. I got a satcom asking me to answer my phone.

I haven't had the money for a proper cell contract in a year or two. Now that my wife is no longer with us, I have been carrying her cell on the road; but it's one of those "unlimited calling as long as you stay in the metro area" phones. The company's been branching out lately, letting you use the phone in any metropolitan area that the company serves; and that's made it usable in a surprising number of places. But this was not a metropolitan area. Not by a long shot.

So I sent back an email explaining that my phone had no reception here, and if she'd give me her extension I'd call her.

She sent back a phone number. A LOCAL number.

In a very different area code.

You know you're in 2010 when everyone simply assumes you don't have to pay for long distance...