I'm parked at a small truckstop in rural TX for the night. I'm picking up a load near here tomorrow morning that will take me back up to WI. I'm a little on the tired side at this point. I left WI a little before noon on Tuesday, delivered in KS on Wednesday, delivered at the Army depot in TX today, and made my way deeper into TX to be in a good position to make an early pick up tomorrow morning.
Normally I would be able to just take it easy on my way back to WI but I am delivering the load to a farm in WI and he will unload it whenever I get there (meaning of course that he would like to see it there some time this weekend). I'll make it there some time on Sunday I think. That will still allow me to not be in too much of a rush and give me a little bit of relaxing time and maybe time to do a little geocaching on the way up.
I managed to hit a few caches on my way down and even collected my first geocaching souvenir from one of them. I took a home-made looking refrigerator magnet from a cache, and left a souvenir wooden token in it's place. I really need to make a point of putting together a decent collection of trade objects for caching.
When I got to this truckstop I was starved so the first thing I did was to find a seat in the diner and order up some dinner. There was an elderly gent, a farmer judging by the way he was dressed and his general look, seated at the table across the aisle who immediately struck up a conversation with me. He was a nice enough fellow and it was very obviously, painfully obvious, that he enjoyed talking. A lot.
He talked while I was waiting for my food. I would nod and make an occasional comment, and pretty much just let him talk on. He talked while I ate my meal. He talked while I ate my slice of chocolate cream pie. He talked while I finished off my iced tea. He even talked while I was paying for my meal. I finally shook his hand, told him it was nice to talk with him (although I don't think I said more than a dozen words total), and excused myself. He had already struck up a conversation with someone else before I was out the door.
Even the waitress made a comment about him 'talking your ear off" while she was ringing up my check. I just chuckled and said he means well.
During all of this I overheard the waitress telling one of the other locals that someone had poisoned her puppies. She was close to tears when she was telling him this. I felt sorry for her and angry that someone would do such a thing. People can be such sick fucks.
I'm back in my truck now, ready to relax for a while. I'm going to do a little knitting and watch a movie. I won't be setting the alarm tonight (I rarely do anyway) but I am sure I'll be up around 6 anyway.
Just another day on the road.