I arrived at the Highland Park stop this morning to find their lot covered with patches of ice. That made it a bit tricky walking around and unstrapping the two pallets containing the two huge steel gears I was delivering to them, especially when I am already hurting and not able to walk very well.
Once I had them unstrapped the guy on the forklift tried to take them off. He got the first one ok but his forklift got stuck on the ice while trying to remove the second one. Luckily I still had most of a container of cat litter in the truck. I spread it around on the ice and that gave the forklift enough traction to get the second skid off the trailer. I had a devil of a time pulling out of there between the ice and the constant flow of Chicago bound traffic on hwy 41.
I'm now South of the Chicago area and stopped at the truckstop in Joliet for my breakfast. The hobble through the parking lot was miserable. Between the pain in my back and hip and the damn cold wind, it felt like it took forever to get inside. I really need to talk to the doc about getting a handicapped parking permit to use in these truckstops. It's getting harder and harder for me to walk these huge parking lots. Some days are better than others and today is one of the not so much days.
I used to make a point of parking as far away from the building as I could and walking inside to get a little extra exercise. Now it's less exercise and more torture. I am really starting to seriously wonder how many more years I am going to be able to do this kind of work before my physical condition forces me to quit. That's going to be a sad day indeed.
The service here stinks. It took several minutes to even get a cup of coffee and place my order. My order still hasn't arrived and my coffee cup has been empty for some time now. They aren't exactly busy so that's no excuse. It's kind of hard to serve customers when you're spending most of your time hiding in the back. There'll be no tip here today.