I-I-I-I'm dre-e-e-ami-i-n-n-g of a whi-i-i-te--wait a minute.

And under the "scenic truck stops" heading, here's my Thanksgiving. Pennsylvania gives it a new spin.

I'd have prettier, but for some reason I didn't want to wave a camera around while driving over mountains on a two-lane road. I'm such a wimp...

Miami versa

A city bus is a bad thing to have on a crowded street. But an eighteen wheeler stuck behind a city bus is worse.

Another item for my list of Less Than Profound Morning Thoughts.

It turns out I really did find the right place last night. Delivered the load this morning as soon as I could legally get out of the truck. And now I am leaving, going out the way I came in. It's much more pleasant in daylight.

Miami is not a place I like to come. As a trucker, anyway.

No offense to those who live there. (I don't want Michael Weston hunting me up to defend his family's honor.) I'm sure I'd enjoy visiting. But this isn't a visit. And for someone from my company, at least, a trip to Miami is not a fun thing.

For one thing, it's a black hole. Freight goes in, but not a lot of freight comes out. The first time I took a load to Miami, it took the load planners two days to find something for me to haul back. And, as I have said several times, if a trucker isn't moving, he isn't making money.

Then there's parking

If you're on the tollway, it might or might not be bad. I've never come into Miami on the tollway. What I can tell you is that on I-95, there are no truck stops for the first 129 miles. No rest areas for the first hundred or so.

There IS one place to park, only about 90 miles up or so. But you can get nervous, sharing a parking lot with a scale house. What if they decide to start the morning with a surprise inspection, you fall asleep thinking...

Ah, memories...
After delivering that first load in Miami I spent hours looking for a truck stop. I finally found one far to the west. Hours later my dispatcher called to ask where I was.

And how I'd gotten there. That truck didn't have propellers, did it?

Seems his tracking software used a graphic display, on a scale that usually had no trouble showing him (for instance) the town nearest where I was parked. Not this time. On his screen, I was sitting in the middle of nowhere.

Surrounded by water.

The truck stop I'd found was thirty or forty miles west of Miami. On a tiny island in the middle of the Everglades.

This time--well, I talked about that yesterday. But that's in the past.

They had a load to get me out of Florida when I came in. It's waiting for me to pick up in the morning. And it's less than ten miles from the first batch of truck stops on I-95.

I will sleep soundly tonight.

Long day

Looks like a warm night. I wasn't expecting that.

I should have, I suppose. Yes, it's November. But it's also Florida. Miami, no less. And how long have I been kvetching about the cold?

(“Kvetching?” Now there's a proper Southern word. You've been in the city too long, boy...)

(Well, “complaining” quite cover it—it's more attitude than speeches. And the other common word for it (these days) isn't usable in polite company. Even my wife would have looked at me funny. And she loved dogs.)

(Cut it out, you two. These folks aren't here for a language lesson.)

Don't mind me—or myself. We talk to each other like that all the time. And about half the time it has nothing to do with what I'm thinking about.

Like right now. I'm not complaining about the weather. It's kind of nice. It's the rest of the day that has me in a little bit of a mood.

When I started out this morning, I planned to stop a little after sundown. Up in the wee hours of morning, another quick 200 miles, and then see what my employers had for me to do the rest of the weekend. Nice and simple.

My first hint
that that wasn't gonna happen showed up a little ways north of the Florida border. That was when I finally figured out that “Florida State Route 91” was “Florida's Turnpike.”

I've been spoiled, when it comes to toll roads. My company's good about paying tolls. Every truck I drive has little plastic boxes glued all over the windshield, all ready and eager to talk to tollbooths for me. There's New York's EZ-Pass (which also works in a bunch of other states). And here's Oklahoma's PikePass. And Florida's SunPass, right over--.

Over where?

Oops.

MOST of the trucks I've driven had a SunPass box glued on the windshield. This is one of the exceptions.

Until tonight, I hadn't realized just how much the company was paying when they sent me down a toll road. There goes my pocket money for the week. Granted, they'll reimburse me. Granted again, they actually did it tonight—my dispatcher advanced the money and put it on my fuel card. But I can't get it until the next time I fuel.*

No great hardship. But it led to another odd thing.

Fine print
As I said, I'd planned to stop fairly early. Just as it was getting dark, was the original plan. Which, given where I was, meant spending the night at one of the service plazas on the turnpike. Again, no big deal—I've done that before. But this time, I had already paid cash at the first tollbooth and taken a “we'll skin you when you get off” ticket at the second. When I pulled into the service plaza, I decided to take a look at that ticket.

It included a table of tolls, organized by vehicle size and which exit you cashed out at. That was (as I said above) enlightening enough. But then I looked at the fine print. Especially the part that said that a lost or expired ticket would result in the maximum charge being levied.

Translation (I think): If I stayed on the toll road more than twelve hours, they'd charge me as if I'd gone the whole length of the turnpike. An extra hundred and thirty miles or so.

A legal rest break is ten hours. Doesn't leave a lot of leeway.

Now I don't know for sure how they interpret that little zinger. Could be there are exceptions that would allow breaks. In fact, I think there must be. Enough of us do it, after all. And it might be something that gets taken care of automatically—if you're using a SunPass.

Better safe than sorry, I decided. So I didn't stop at a service plaza for the night. And I'll talk tomorrow about truck stops on I-95. To make a long story short, the place where I got off the Turnpike and onto I-95 was about 50 miles south of the last parking place on the Interstate.

So I kept going. All the way to the customer

Walking. It's not just for exercise anymore.
I've talked about GPS and truckers before. I've heard enough truck-stop gossip to believe my opinion is not unusual, even among those who bought their own. But my route came in from the opposite side of the city from where my directions assumed I would be. Which meant the directions the company had given me were pretty much useless.

So I followed my GPS. With GREAT caution.

About 1/4 mile from the customer, I got too nervous. I'm still not quite sure why. No matter—I was. So I parked, got out, and walked toward where the machine said to turn.

Nerves are sometimes useful. If I'd followed my GPS, I would have ended up driving in circles through the parking lots of a commuter rail station. With a 53-foot trailer. But I could see a building right where the gadget wanted me to go. All I'd have to do was shift into 18-wheel drive, barrel through that fence, and cross two hundred yards of freshly bulldozed earth.

It took me another hour, on foot, to find the actual way into the customer's parking lot—and then go back and get the truck. But I made it. With zero time to spare in driving hours OR on-duty hours.

So why would I complain about the night being comfortably warm? No reason. Better to just sleep.

And I will. So there. G'nite.
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*Well, I could. In theory. My fuel card can double as a Major Credit Card, so I could hit an ATM. But the typical truck stop ATM charges a transaction fee. And when the amount on the card is Just Enough...

Give me LOTS of room...

It was raining this morning. Temperatures in the mid-40's. Wandering across large parking lots, in search of a bathroom, under an umbrella that was entirely too small.

But I did get awake and washed and ready to drive, eventually. Shortly afterward I was driving city streets south of Memphis, on my way to a customer that wasn't reachable by Interstate.

I don't like driving city streets. Today was an excellent, if low key, example of why.

Several blocks ahead I saw a traffic light go yellow, then red. Plenty of time. I took my foot off the accelerator, moved it to the brake pedal, and pressed gently. The truck began to slow as I felt the brakes catch.

And release.

And catch.

And release.

Less than 30 mph. Gentle braking. And still the trailer wheels were locking up on the barely-wet paving, forcing the ABS* to intervene.

It's not the first time I've had traction problems at a red light. At least twice I've ended six or eight feet into an intersection, breathing a small prayer of gratitude that nobody was coming across. A few other times I wondered if I was going to stop before I reached that tiny bumper ahead. And once I looked back and saw the back end of my trailer drifting into the next lane.**

But those times involved slush, or really heavy rain, sometimes with a nice downhill slope to make things more interesting. This time the pavement was barely wet! Granted, the trailer was empty, so the back wheels had almost no weight on them, but still.

I hate to draw a moral, but this actually scared me a tiny bit. Having a hundred yards of no traffic in front of me was a great comfort today. I'd really like that to be a routine thing.

I don't suppose you've got some space you could loan me? Or whoever's in that tractor-trailer behind you?

----

*Antiskid Braking System, of course. Just letting you know it doesn't mean something different when we way it...

**It didn't quite get there, thank goodness. Traffic started moving ahead of me again, and I could let off the brakes and pull the trailer straight in time. Scary, though...

something old

Found an old post that I hadn't posted. And I posted it. Just thought you'd want to know...

Yet more odds...

At a Kentucky rest stop, I found a vending machine that took credit cards.

Time passes.

*

Was passed by a car pulling a tiny little camping trailer. On the back of it, a brand name or a dealership, I'm not sure which. What I caught was the motto beneath it.

I go where I'm towed to.

When you've been driving for six hours, you are easily amused.

If you don't like the weather...

I really need to watch my dashboard more.

When I got up this morning in Kentucky, it was about 50 degrees outside. An hour later, the OAT* gauge read about 45. Granted I was going north, but that seemed a little extreme.

Two hours later, I looked down again. The screen said I should watch out for ice.

Blue sky, bright sun, dry roads. Not a problem. But when did the temp get down to 34 or less? Don't know. But it was dipping below 32 as I looked at it.

Now it's bouncing around between 30 and 25. Indiana has discovered winter.

I might have to change out of my sandals.

-----
*OAT: Outside Air Temperature. Mostly an airplane-pilot term, but hey...