I made it back to the yard in WI late yesterday after delivering some railroad spikes to a rail yard in Green Bay. I'm having the truck serviced this morning and then picking up another load of oil field compressors and heading back to Texas again.

I picked up the railroad spikes in a small town in Arkansas on Thursday. I had to run a lot of back roads to get there and it was an interesting ride past a lot of rice patties and not much else. They grow a lot of rice in AR, the largest rice producer in the U.S. It's interesting to see how they have the rice fields set up to channel the water into smaller areas to maake controlling the water levels easier.

I made it through last week's "safety" blitz unscathed. Every weigh station I went through was already busy with other trucks and I just cruised on through and kept going.

Last night I learned that the wife of one of our dispatchers is expecting a baby in December. I've already promised to make a pair of baby booties and a beanie for the expected baby of a trucking couple I know, so now I guess I'll be making two sets.

The sweater is coming along nicely. I am just about half way through it and it's looking like I had meant for it to look, and so far it fits perfectly. I'm honestly surprised that it fits correctly on the first try. I guess I'm getting better at calculating the gauge.

I'm really glad that warm weather has finally set in to stay. It's great to be able to get outside and work without having to be bundled up in a heavy coat. I heard yesterday they were exxpecting two feet of snow up on Snoqualmie Pass in WA. Better them than me I say. I'll take the warm weather any day.

Right now I'm just hanging around the yard listening to Sirius satellite radio and waiting to get into the shop. They know I have to be finished up and out of here by 10:00am so I can pick up my load in Oshkosh at 11:00am. It's almost 7:30am now so I should be getting in soon.

I spend a lot of time listening to the Road Dog channel on Sirius. It's the trucker channel on Sirius and has a lot of information and entertainment for truckers. All of the shows are call in shows and drivers call in all day long every day. It's usually the same cast of characters calling in and I have gotten to know a few of them over time as we run across each other out here on the road.

We call ourselves the Road Dogs and we fly a green bandanna or green flag or green dog collar on our mirror or CB antenna so we can spot each other out here on the road or in the truckstop parking lots. Of course inside the truckstops they can always spot me because I'm the one sitting and knitting LOL. We chose the color green because as far as we could tell green isn't a color that belongs to any gangs as are red and blue.

We also communicate with each other through a forum site that was set up by fans. The site was originally set up by fans of channel 110, and the Road Dogs were given their own section on that site as the host of the late afternoon show came over to the Road Dog channel from channel 110 and has fans from both channels.

I don't call in to any of the shows very often as I don't normally like to use the phone while driving and also because you're usually on hold for a long time waiting to get on. I have called a few times when sitting around and the hosts of the late morning/early afternoon show, which is basically a humor show, love it when I call in because I'm a knitting trucker which the female host especially likes.

I called in to that show, called Freewheelin', yesterday as the topic of discussion was "ear worms". Ya know, those songs that get stuck in your head and you can't seem to get rid of them. A couple of days ago I was in a small fuel stop and the song "Greensleeves" was playing over their sound system and it had been stuck in my head since.

I got a good laugh on the show.  When they asked me how I was doing I answered "I'm doing better than an ugly man married to a near-sighted super model". Silly, but it got a laugh. Meredeth asked about what I was currently knitting and I told her about the sweater I'm working on and also told her I was woking up a design for a Road Dog beanie. Both hosts said they really liked that idea and I promised to send them eacch one when I make them.

After I had hung up from the call Meredeth commented that she had seen pictures of me and that she loved the idea of a burly trucker like me sitting around and knitting nice stuff.

Ah well, we find our amusement where we can.