Quick distractions

Crossing Louisiana on I-10, toward a grand bank of clouds.

And a rainbow.

Huge thing, stretching from horizon to horizon. Part of it arcing across the clear blue sky, where you can see it properly.

Other people's money?

Pulled up to the fuel pumps this afternoon. Pulled out the company fuel card and started the ritual. The pump told me to see the cashier. So I did. Gave her my card and she ran it through. Then she asked me how much I wanted to put on it.

That hasn't happened before.

But hey, if there wasn't something odd I wouldn't have had to come in. So...

”$400, I guess,” I said. “It won't take that.”

She bustled around the register, while I--

Looked at the card.

It wasn't the fleet fuel card.

It was my bank card.

My bank just got assimilated (resistance is futile—STOP THAT!), and the new management had to change everything. Including, of course, a new bank card.

Which I had in my wallet for the first time today.

It didn't look anything like MY card. Granted, it didn't look like my fleet card, either. But it did NOT-look like my bank card.

Which was almost enough to make me buy three or four hundred dollars worth of diesel fuel out of my own pocket. The company wouldn't have minded, I suspect, but...

I hurriedly explained matters to the lady, and she was nice enough to cancel the transaction, and the company ended up footing the bill. But it could have been embarrassing.

Not to mention expensive.

Odds and ends, redux. (No pun intended, see below...)

Beyond blind spots
Pulled out into an intersection this morning, and nearly got t-boned.

I don't understand it. I LOOKED to my right. How did I miss a RED pickup?!

Puzzling and scary...

The hazards aren't all obvious
Sad sight in a rest area. As I pulled into a parking space and shut down, I looked to my left. And in the empty space beside me I saw a pair of pants and a pair of skivvies.

Lying in the parking lot

Stained brown

Sometimes you don't get parked in time, and that's all there is to it.. I shook my head sadly, and walked a little faster.

But where was Gina Lolabrigida?

This morning I started my work week on foot.

This is not unusual.

Oh, the truck was there. And in reasonably good shape. But there wasn't a trailer attached. The people running the yard frown on leaving the tractor and the trailer hooked up unless you brought it in and you're taking it out. “How we gonna move that thing if you don't show up?” they say, or words to that effect. And I can't say I blame them.

So I gave the truck a quick once-over, checked my load assignment, and set out to find my trailer.

On foot.

This turned out to be a good thing.

When I found it, I found five others. Each with trucks attached. All trying to pull out of nearby parking spaces, at the same time. In different directions.

It looked like one of those Fifties comedies with an intersection full of Italian taxi drivers—none of whom will back up to let the others move. With lots of yelling in a foreign language.

Except our guys weren't yelling—even in English. They were professionals.

And they were actually making progress in getting past each other. Slowly.

I watched this for a minute or two. Then I went back to my truck and spent a few more minutes on my pre-trip inspection.

What the heck? I had the time...

He won't bite...

The plains of southern Texas aren't as flat as western Kansas.

I don't think.

It's been a while since I was in that part of Kansas. Over forty years. But I the sheer flatness got to me way back then, and this hasn't pushed it out of my mind.

It's flat enough, though. I'm still not really used to looking out there and seeing clear to a horizon. And there are a fair number of places here where I can do it. Not new, but still a little attention-getting.

Having a dog sniff my trailer, now. That was new.

The Border officer was polite and cursory. What was I carrying, was I driving solo, was I a U. S. citizen. Willing to take my word for it. I suspect he would have perked up a bit if the dog had, though...

Which made me think of the extra security precautions I had to put up with, leaving the terminal this morning. Including the small but vital part that had been removed from my trailer. Which I could only get by proving I was supposed to take that trailer out.

Took me a while to figure out what I supposed to do. But I did, eventually. And I got the Bills of Lading and the part at the same time, from Security.

Told my mother-in-law last night I wasn't in any real danger down here. Starting to wonder.

uh, hello?

I'm in Texas, and Mexico is just down the road a piece. I hope to have a load headed back east tomorrow.

My mother-in-law was distressed when he learned where I was. She'd been watching news stories about someone who'd decided to jet-ski on the wrong body of water, and been mistaken for law enforcement by some drug lord's overly-watchful minion.

I told her not to worry. I wouldn't be likely to die in quite so embarrassing a fashion.

Losing the terminal was embarrassing enough.

After two days of hard driving, I arrived at the customer's warehouse and parked. I'd just started to relax and maybe nap a bit (always a good idea) when I got a message from my dispatcher, asking if I'd had my trailer inspected.

Huh?

Oh, yeah.

I'm on the Mexican border, and judging by where I'm delivering this trailer, it'll be going on south without me. Which means it has to be inspected, so any questions of its safety and/or condition are settled beforehand. I should have taken the trailer to our terminal to be checked out before I came here.

So I look up the address of the local terminal on my satcom. And sure enough, there it is. Not terribly far off. I can even get the GPS to guide me there.

Which means I only missed the turnoff twice. Well we've discussed this GPS before...

Finally, though, I pulled into a sort-of familiar lot. I've been down here a couple of times, and I recognized the dusty gravel lot and the old trailer that passes for an office/lounge.

No Company sign.

There hadn't been one at the street, either. One reason I'd missed the turn.

And none of the trucks had a paint job to match mine.

Uh-oh.

The two Hispanic gentlemen in the office trailer were gentlemen indeed. One of them politely informed me that their company had bought this lot some time back. He didn't know where I was supposed to go now, but I was welcome to use their phone...

The other gentleman looked things up on the computer. This address was still in the phone directory, he said. But he himself knew where our new terminal was, and gave me careful directions.

Half an hour later, my trailer was being given a once-over at a terminal much larger and better set-up than our old one. An approving piece of paper to take back to the customer, and I was off. An hour or two later I was back to sample the pleasures of the new digs.

Nicely enough appointed. Not new. I suppose the Company found a place the economy had cast adrift. No complaints—I'll probably have to overnight here, and the facilities are certainly an improvement on the gravel lot and the trailer.

Be nice if they had a working coke machine, though...

Vanity

Passed a huge RV with a small SUV wagging its tail behind. Nothing unusual. Except the dinghy's license plate:

IN TOW

Smiled a bit. Then pulled up even with the land yacht's back bumper. Looked down.

LVN TWN

I like it.

D-r-u-u-u-g-s

I've starting packing sweatshirts.

The time of year has become obvious now. I wore long sleeves most of the day. I expect no difficulty sleeping in the truck cab tonight.

Once the truck was fixed, the bosses apparently decided to make up for lost time. I've done 500 miles today, up through the Carolina's and across Virginia. Not a problem—that's what they pay me for. The problem came from a slightly unexpected direction.

Late this morning (or was it early afternoon?) I started to lose focus. As if I hadn't had enough sleep. And the way that works for me it's scary. With half a day's driving still ahead of me, it was scarier still. So I decided on a drastic measure.

I've been carrying a few of those “five-hour energy”-type shooters* around with me, just in case. I've never used one before—rest has always seemed a much more useful way of not feeling tired. But today a test run seemed called for.

Hmm. Secret Mixture of Beneficial Herbs, uh-huh. Caffeine, yeah. Vitamins, mm-hm.

Vitamin B12. FIFTY TIMES the RDA.

O-kayyy.**

Well, watching the road signs fuzz out would be a lot scarier. I haven't gotten there yet, but it's coming. I can tell. So...

It tastes like cough syrup. No surprise—it's about that consistency. At least it doesn't have the kind of aftertaste you get from cough syrup that works. A few sips of water took care of what little problem I had with it.

I took the stuff at a rest area, after taking care of...other business. Getting out of the truck and walking around usually wakes me up for a little while, so it's kind of hard to tell if it's working. As much Mountain Dew(tm) as I often toss off in a day, the caffeine rush won't be noticeable. So it's kind of hard to tell if it's working.

Half an hour down the road I haven't started to worry about fuzzy traffic. Even a little. Given the usual pattern,that's a good sign.

Two hours, and I feel a little sleepy. Only a little, though. About the consistency of a soft-drink's worth of caffeine wearing off. Still not getting vague or out of focus. A few minutes more and it's gone. Or I don't notice it, anyway.

An hour or two later, it's back, but still mild. If I'd been depending on Dew's(tm) I'd have had to stop at least once for a refill, by now. Maybe more.

An hour or two after that, I was parked, and still more or less alert. At no point did I fear for my life, or for all the innocent people surrounding my semi. That's a good bit better than I'd been expecting around lunchtime. I can't say too much based on just one try, but apparently the stuff worked, more or less. I stayed awake and quite functional. And as of this writing, I haven't “crashed.” Nor am I particularly wired.

Which is a good thing. I still prefer the old-fashioned way.

G'nite.

- - - - -
*Not the brand-name you see on TV. I'm cheap—Big Lots(tm) specials look very effective to me...

**Turns out this brand's conservative. 5-Hour Energy(tm) has over eighty...

Hurry up and...

Well, I was SUPPOSED to drive all day today...

They told me last night which truck I'd have this morning. And that I already had a load. And that it was hot.

Oh yeah, and that it was already late.

No pressure, right?

So I packed for the week and got as much sleep as the remaining night would allow. Then I got up, dressed hurriedly, waved goodbye to my landlady (schoolteacher hours are much like truck-driver hours), and blinked and yawned my way through the thirty rapid miles to the terminal. There I made a tour of the yard, looking for the tractor assigned to me for the week.

At length I found it. And the sticker on the driver's-side mirror.

“DRIVING THIS TRUCK BEFORE IT IS REPAIRED IS A VIOLATION OF DOT REGULATIONS,” it said. More or less. There was a lot more legalese in the actual text.

A visit to the shop seemed called for.
When I entered, the guy at the counter looked up and laughed. Maybe I was wrong, but I thought I caught an edge of hysteria.

Every bay in his garage was full. The fellow talking to him was explaining in great detail about how inconvenient the sticker on his truck was. Another fellow was haranguing the lady next to him about the sticker on his trailer. A third driver was waiting his turn. He saw me and said, “You, too?”

I decided to make my inquiry as brief and painless as possible. There wasn't a lot the shop guy could say just yet, anyhow.

Having gotten my “I don't know how long” from the man at the desk, I strolled back out onto the yard and pulled out the cell. As I worked my way through the voicemail jungle to my dispatcher, I counted six other trucks in the parking lot with the same sticker. And more than a dozen trailers. Besides the (six? eight? ten?) trucks already in the shop's repair bays.

Looked like I was gonna be here a while.

The rumor mill's explanation
was that we'd just gotten a new shop manager. According to one of the more experienced drivers, every new manager feels he has to prove he's on the ball. So he orders a sweep of the yard, red-tagging every truck and trailer that isn't up to DOT spec. This is the shop's job, of course, but when they find a couple of dozen problem vehicles at once, well...

No complaints from me. In theory, at least. The problems they found on my truck were real, and at least one was serious. Better they find it than a DOT inspector two hundred miles from the nearest terminal. Sitting around in the drivers' lounge watching bad TV shows beats the heck out of sitting in an out-of-service truck at a weigh station, waiting for the mechanic and contemplating the fine you just got slapped with.

But it's still a lousy way to spend a day.

Further plot complications
They got my truck in the shop while I was out getting lunch. It was out by four. Time to find my trailer, hook up, and go.

No trailer.

I couldn't find it on the yard. It wasn't in the shop. And the last time Security checked the yard, they hadn't seen it either. It took us another hour to confirm that the load had been transferred to another truck.

My dispatcher had (quite sensibly) decided he couldn't wait for my truck to get out of the shop before sending off a hot load that was already late. And in the chaos of the day, neither I nor the outbound-truck controller had gotten the message. When I did finally get in touch, he explained everything, and told me to just knock off for the day. I hadn't gotten any sleep, so I couldn't drive tonight anyway. He'd make sure I had a load in the morning.

So I shambled out to the car, ran a couple of errands I'd been too frazzled to run last night, and headed back to the house.

Just as I was starting up the front stairs, my landlady pulled into the drive, got out of her car, and looked confusion at me.

“It's a long story,” I said.