Tuesday I picked up some machinery out in New Hampshire to haul to a town just north of Minneapolis, MN. It was a wide load and I had to wait for the needed permits before I could leave.
As it turned out, the NH and MA permits didn't arrive until just about sunset so I had to wait until Wednesday morning to depart. I spent the evening sitting at a small truck stop. It had a restaurant so it wasn't too bad. I noticed a sign on the door of the restaurant that indicated that Sunday would be their last day before closing for good.
The sign explained that the new owners of the building had raised their rent several times in the past few months, forcing them to close. According to the owner of the restaurant they wanted her out so they could raze the building and put a McDonalds in that space instead.
Sad they would want to drive out a nice sit down diner just to replace it with a McNastys.
Well, these things happen.
The weather was a bit sketchy as I made my way west, but it never really got so bad that I was forced to stop. I ran from sunrise to sunset each day, even if the going was a bit slow at times.
In the western section of PA, on I-80, I passed no less than five wrecked big rigs. I guess I-80 had been pretty nasty the previous nights. Some guys just don't know when to call it a day and let the roads clear.
I stopped briefly at the truck stop in Hubbard, OH. They have a tobacco shop there and I wanted to pick up a couple of pouches of Five Brothers pipe tobacco. It tuned out they were out of Five Brothers, but I saw they had started carrying some Sutliff pipe tobaccos. There were several blends there that I had never tried, and they were quite reasonably priced, so I picked up four tins, Navigator Blend, Great Outdoors, Man's Best Friend, and French Quarter.
So far I have only tried the Navigator Blend and Great Outdoors. I really liked the Navigator, but Great Outdoors smelled and tasted like licorice to me. I have never cared for licorice.
Yesterday I finally made it into WI, but there was no way I could make it to my destination in MN before the sun set. I made arrangements to deliver the load on Saturday morning. That would work out quite well for me, as I could then bounce over to the yard and grab another load out.
When I was about three hours from the delivery location the broker called to tell me that something had changed with the customer, and that they wouldn't be able to unload the machinery until Monday morning. Oh, great.
Well, that's the way it goes sometimes. Nothing to do about it, so I checked into a hotel for some rest. While I would have preferred to keep running over the weekend there is a bright side in that the down time will allow me to reset my duty hours and I'll start off on Monday with a fresh 70 hours.
It is bitterly cold here at the moment, and thanks to the fascist laws in WI now one can't even rent a smoking room in a hotel, so I am forced to stand outside to smoke, at least until the lounge opens at 4:00. The lounge has a nice enclosed room for smoking. It isn't heated, exactly, but they installed a fan that draws some of the heated air from the bar out to that area. It's better than standing outside in the cold and the wind.
I was out there last night enjoying a smoke and a beer. I got to talking to an older lady and during the course of our conversation I learned that she had the same last name (maiden name) as myself and that her family was from the same general area as my own. Well, as it turns out her father was my grandfather's brother. Small world.
We exchanged email addresses so we could keep in touch. Funny how one can run into family which one has never met, and in some strange places. I once met a cousin in the airport in Sicily. He was working there and I noticed his name tag matched my own last name. A quick conversation confirmed we were cousins and simply had never met. Mine is a huge family and, as I said, it's a small world (but I wouldn't want to paint it).
The hotel has a gift shop that sells Minnetonka products. I saw a sheepskin hat that looked like it would be quite warm. It was a tad pricier than I would have liked, but when it comes to keeping warm price is no object so I bought it. I was right, the hat is very warm and was well worth the price.
