One of the best and worst things about running out to the left coast is the time difference. If it's afternoon and you're running a little behind it's nice because you have a couple of 'extra' hours to get where you're going. In the morning it sucks.
I slept in this morning and didn't crawl out of bed until 8:00 am my time. The sun wasn't even beginning to come up yet. I'm sitting around killing time now until I can get rolling. Seattle and Tacoma have oversized curfews in place preventing us from bringing an oversized load through their areas until after rush hour (both morning and evening). The evening curfew is what prevented me from making delivery on Friday as I would have hit Seattle during that curfew. The morning curfew has me sitting around here killing time before I can roll.
The Seattle curfew ends at 9:00 am local time. That's 11:00 am for me. These curfews aren't at all unreasonable. It's quite understandable why they don't want oversized loads on the roads during the insane driving periods. They know their citizens can't drive worth a shit. That doesn't make it any less a pain in the ass though. It has always irked me that we, the professional drivers, are penalized because Mom and Pop don't know how to drive.
Oh well, such is the trucking biz.
I'll sit here and sip my coffee, knit a bit, and wait it out. No other options really. I've already sat around all weekend so what's a couple more hours one way or the other?
It's still really cloudy here, but the rain has finally stopped and the clouds are floating above the mountains instead of being wrapped around them. That's a definite plus as there are few things more demoralizing than working out in a cold rain.
On my last load I didn't make it into the office in time to get my paperwork turned in on time to get paid Friday, and I spent the last of my cash on coffee this morning. I don't want to take another cash advance against this load so I'm now broke until I get my next load. I'm really hoping that'll be later today. I have a couple of days worth of food and Gatorade in the truck so I won't starve, but I really hate not having any money in my pocket.
That's the other bad thing about sitting around a truckstop all weekend. You tend to spend money. Truckstop food is anything but cheap. I blew over a hundred bucks just sitting around this past couple of days, and most of that was just for eating in the restaurant. Just getting a shower cost me ten bucks here. I could have eaten what I have in the truck but didn't want to deplete my stock as there's no grocery store within walking distance from here. This is not the time of year to be without supplies in the truck.
Hopefully I can swing into a grocery once I get reloaded and heading back out of here. I much prefer just cooking something in the microwave as to eating the plastic food most of these truckstop serve these days.
Well, the sun is up, and the curfew will be over in another hour. Almost time to get back to work.