Small humilities

(Warning: Long, even for me...)
Rain is less fun when you don't have bugs on your windshield.

I'm sitting in front of a "portable" loading ramp (this company doesn't put loading docks in their stores for some reason), enjoying the breakfast I got damp for (it wasn't wet when I started, honest!) and feeling the trailer dance when the forklift comes. The lady driving that is worse off than I--climbing a metal ramp in the rain is an exercise in wheel-spinning frustration, and the lightning had her nervous till it went away.

At least I'm out of it. Now.

If I'd carried my umbrella when I went to get breakfast I'd probably be more charitable. When it's not a downpour (it's not) and I'm protected a bit, I like walking in the rain. I even wrote a poem about it once.* But walking through a drizzle with a coffee cup and a breakfast burrito that you want to keep warm is slightly different.

Ah, well, at least it didn't happen yesterday.

Yesterday I began my journey here with plenty of time to spare--enough that I wasted an hour on a shower.** Three or four hours later I stopped for fuel. Then into the wilds of New Jersey.

I am ashamed to say I was surprised the first time I realized not all of New Jersey is like Newark. Like New York away from Manhattan it's a nice drive through the country, except the towns are cleser together than I'm used to. Plenty of stoplights, stop signs, etc. And for some reason, the drive wheels were slipping every time I started moving. Not much, just enough to be annoying. And puzzling, on a dry road.

Then the siren blipped behind me, and I had other things on my mind.

When a police car wants you to pull over in the middle of a small town, it can be a challenge. For some reason, the locals don't tend to leave 80 feet of clear curb downtown very often. Oddly enough, though, there was such a spot just a little ways ahead. Looking back on it, I wonder if that's why the officer picked that place to get my attention.

At the time, I had other things on my mind. There is no such thing as a minor traffic stop when you're a commercial driver. Points count BIG. And even if you don't get a ticket, there are other things. Things the officer is free to look for, that can mess up your career as much as the ticket could. The Feds seem to add more of them every day.

Not to mention the question: why WAS he stopping me? As far as I knew, I was doing everything right. I hadn't seen any "NO TRUCKS" signs. What had I missed?

Well, I'd know soon enough. Here he was at the door.

Young. Thin. Tall. Earnest. And both polite and friendly. Odd attitude in the middle of a traffic stop,

Some people had called the police about me, he said.

Uh-oh, I thought.

It seemed that every time I stopped at an intersection the truck started leaking something. Brake fluid, maybe, they thought. Perhaps I ought to be warned, they'd said.

Perhaps they were right, I thought.

But brake fluid? Given that all the brakes on an 18-wheeler work on compressed air, that didn't seem likely. On the other hand, leaking ANYTHING is bad on a vehicle like this. So I thanked the officer for the warning and swung down to look for the problem.

"Now that I'm standing next to you," the officer said helpfully, "I can smell something."

So could I. Oh, this was embarrassing. Nothing for it, though.

I sighed.

Said, "Me,too. And judging by the smell, this will be easy to fix,"

And went to both sides of the truck and put the caps back on the fuel tanks.

That explained the slippery starts, too, I thought. Diesel fuel is a fairly good lubricant. And the fuel tanks are right in front of the drive wheels.

The officer was politely amused, and glad to know I wasn't about to break down or worse. He waited until I was rolling again and went on about his business. No harm, no foul, I guess.

And no water in the fuel. It wasn't raining.

*(In college. Two or three pages long. I doubt you'd be interested.)

**(In a manner of speaking. I didn't think it was wasted. If you' been close enough to get a whiff of me, you might not have either.)