This morning finds me sitting at Rhode Island's only 24 hour truckstop located in West Greenwich, R.I. I had delivered my load in Maine on Friday and, as I had expected, there wasn't any reload available up that way. The best she could do was a partial, a skid steer, coming out of Greenland, R.I. Monday morning.

Ok, no problem. I went down as far as Portland, ME and got myself a room for Friday and Saturday nights. I needed a 34 hour restart anyway. The hotel was pretty decent and there was a nice place across the road for dinner and drinks.

I visited the place Friday evening, hitting them in the middle of happy hour. It was a nice place and the people were friendly. A local radio station was doing a remote from there and doing drawings for several prizes, including Jackson Browne tickets. Shortly before I was ready to leave the DJ called out my name. I had won a pair of cruise tickets.

Well, that was nice and all, but I really don't have much use for a pair of cruise tickets. I had been talking to a very nice couple at the bar the entire time I was there, so being as they hadn't won anything I gave them the cruise tickets. While the husband didn't seem especially thrilled the wife was quite happy at the prospect of taking a cruise.

I had wanted to some laundry during the down time but the hotel didn't have guest laundry facilities. I really didn't feel like dropping my trailer and bobtailing around an unfamiliar town searching for a laundromat. As there was a Kohl's department store about two blocks away I walked over there Saturday morning.

I got lucky in that much of the men's clothing was on sale so I managed to pick up a nice looking shirt and trousers for $20 each. That, combined with one more clean set of work clothes, would tide me over until I can do laundry this evening.

Sunday I came on down to Rhode Island so I could be here to pick up the skid steer first thing this morning. The loading went reasonably well, all things considered. The place was far too small for me to take my truck in so I just parked on the street and detached the RGN,

The folks there weren't especially helpful. He just verified the paperwork I had and pointed out the back door. "It's out back, help yourself". Hmmph. Well, in my business you don't just need to know how to drive a truck, but also how to operate just about any piece of heavy equipment or other equipment and vehicles you may need to load and unload so operating a skid steer wasn't much of a challenge.

Well, I located the correct piece of junk, errr I mean skid steer. I was a repo and not in very good condition at all. After verifying the serial number I climbed in to start it up. No key.

I went in and asked for the key. The guy said they didn't have the key for it, but loaned me one for another unit of the same brand. As they're all keyed alike that would work. I got it started. The throttle was stuck wide open and nothing I did would back it down. That would make this far more interesting.

I managed to get it out onto the street, jumping and bucking all the way thanks to the stuck throttle. Getting it backed onto the trailer while running wide open was a bit more touchy, but I managed it. Once I had it chained down I called in to see if she had found anything else to go onto the load. Nothing yet.

So, I drove down here to this crappy truckstop to wait and see what develops. It costs $10/day to park here after the first three hours. Buying 75 gallons of fuel gets you one day of free parking. Since I didn't know if I will be here more than three hours or not I went ahead and splashed in 75 gallons of fuel.

I went inside for some breakfast. They have a sort of cafeteria style set up instead of full service. You place your order at the counter and then they carry it out once it's ready. The food wasn't too bad, if a little too expensive.

Now I am sitting in my truck waiting for a call to go pick up something else. Could be nearly anything, anywhere. It would be kind of funny if it turned out to be back up in Maine.