Writing this on Tuesday, 2/10/09 12:30 central time, to be posted later.   This morning I went into Seattle to deliver my final generator and associated parts. I met the guy at about 20 past five and he guided me in to the jobsite. It was a high rise building right downtown and I had to park in an alley beside the building for the crane to unload me. Just getting in there was a bitch. I was there about an hour before the crane was due to start, which was ok as it gave me time to pu...

No wifi service here so writing this on Sunday to be posted at a later time. I slept in some this morning, finally getting up around 8:00 Central time. Of course that was 6:00 local time and the sun wasn't up yet. The first thing I noticed when I got up was that my back wasn't as stiff and sore as it was yesterday morning. I was able to get dressed without too much pain or difficulty. Sadly, that didn't last too long and as soon as I got out of the truck to walk inside for a cup of cof...

Yeah, this is basically a whine. I hurt my back a few days ago handling tarps. When I woke this morning I knew I was in trouble as I couldn't even roll over in the bed without some serious pain. It took me over 30 minutes and a great deal of pain just to put on my socks. I can barely walk and can't stand straight at all. This shit basically sucks. Yeah, I am whining about it because there's pretty much nothing else I can do about it. If I go to an emergency room it will cost me a lot o...

After dropping my previous load, going to Pocatello, ID and making a mad dash to deliver some emergency response generators to Indy, I am now back in WI and back on the Pocatello load. While I was gone to Indy they removed the part of the load going here in WI and had one of the local guys deliver it and replaced that stuff with three generators going to Washington state. That really adds some financial gravy to the load. Today was a very cold and tiring day. I picked up some steel in Chic...

Joe Users are a very generous and caring bunch. In response to my current economic woes several JUers ,kindly and caringly prompted and coordinated by Little Whip, have sent cards and money to help me keep my home. I have to say that I am truly touched by this and very, very thankful. I won't name names here, I will thank each person privately once I return home again and go through all of the envelopes. I just want to publicly acknowledge the fact that we truly do have some angels among our ...

This afternoon I got a call from R in dispatch. He wanted to know where I was in my trip to WI. I was in Lake Station, IN. He said he had a "hot load" coming out of a generator plant in Oshkosh tomorrow that needs to be in Indianapolis first thing Monday morning. So now I will be dropping this load at the yard in the morning and picking up generators in Oshkosh instead. Ah well, such is the trucking biz. I really didn't want to go to ID anyway. The bad part of this is I won't get to watch ...

Despite the mechanical issues and delays therein, I finally made delivery in PA yesterday. With business being slow I half expected to be spending the weekend sitting in PA. Once I unloaded I headed over to the nearest truckstop for some breakfast. Dispatch called me before I finished eating. She said she wanted me to load in Cleveland Friday morning. The load is a two stop load, one in Milwaukee, WI and the other in Pocatello, ID, and is paying pretty well. I told her I'd be there to load fi...

This morning I put my truck in the engine shop in Fargo so they could find the source of the coolant leak as well as get my heat working again. I was literally freezing in my truck. It pretty much took all day for them to do the repairs and to test to make sure it was really fixed. They had to replace the thermostats and the radiator cap. They thought the head might need to be replaced (again) so they put it on the dyno and tested for compression. Turned out the head was ok this time. Once...

I got my truck out of the engine shop Tuesday morning. Finally. I then went to the yard, hooked to a double-drop (lowboy) trailer, and drove a couple of hours up to Chilton to pick up a snow broom truck heading for the airport in Seattle. The truck needs to deliver at the airport no later than noon on Friday. No idea why, but that's what they want. I got the thing loaded and chained down and started running West. The first part of the trip, WI, MN and Eastern SD was cold. Yesterday morning...

Due to the slow economy I had to drop my previous home provider. I have now set up a new home page on a free hosting server. The site is pretty crude right now and is a work in progress, but for those who have contacted me asking when I will have the webcam feed back up, here it is. I'll be editing and adding to the site as I find time. http://www.gpstrucker.000hosted.com

I just set up a Twiiter account. For anyone who uses Twitter and may be interested, my user name there is Knitting_Guy.

I finally got dressed and dragged myself out of my hotel room around 11:00 this morning. I was getting hungry and thought Chinese sounded good. Nothing wring with a bit of sweet and sour tabby once in a while. I put on my wool coat, stocking cap, and gloves, and out I went. It's a bit warmer today than in previous days. It's still cold of course, but not that brutally frigid air that was around a couple of days ago. There's a Chinese buffet a mile or so away from the hotel that I had been mea...

As I am stuck in the hotel until Monday I went over to Applebee's for dinner and a few adult beverages. I saw a few people I know and had some good conversations, and met a few new folks thanks to my knitting. It seemed a pretty typical night. At one point a forner server/bartender came in, she hadn't worked there for some time, and we were chatting (after exhanging hugs and such). At one point I excused myself and went to the restroom. As I came back to my seat I overheard the conversatio...

I had stopped working on the turtleneck when Mom passed away but have recently resumed working on it. I am almost finished with the body. Sorry about the poor picture quality. My regular digital camera is in my truck, which is in the repair shop, so had to use my webcam.  

It's pretty much a mixed bag right now. The bad: I'm stranded in frozen WI as my truck is in the engine shop. Again. As I suspected, they had to pull the head. I just spoke with them and my truck won't be ready until late Monday. So much for making any money this weekend.   The good: Yesterday was payday. As business has been slow it wasn't such a great payday, but it was something. I called my friend Naomi and sent her a comcheck for enough to pay about 2/3 of what I am behind on ...