This morning I drove 90 minutes over to AR to pick up a tractor after spending all day yesterday sitting around a truckstop. Once I got the tractor loaded and chained down I called in expecting them to either have something else for me to pick up or to just proceed to WI. Well, they did in fact have something else for me to pick up, in Wichita. Monday. Geez. So I drove the hour up to Joplin and parked in yet another truckstop. I'll be sitting here until Sunday and then I'll head on over to...

I've been working on the sweater a little here and there as time allows. I've finished the sleeve holes and have the sleeve stitches on holders and am now just working the rest of the body.

Tomorrow I have to pick up a tractor at an equipment dealer in AR. I'm spending today, Thanksgiving, sitting at a truckstop in OK about 90 minutes from where I'll be picking up. As a majority of drivers are home for Thanksgiving, finding a parking space in the truckstop was no problem. I am just sitting here looking out my windshield watching the travelers come and go in their cars, SUVs, pickups, and RVs.  Traffic was horrible. Doesn't anyone actually stay home for Thanksgiving any more...

This morning the shop in Cleveland hadn't made any progress on repairing the electrical problem in my truck. They close at 4:30PM on Saturday and don't reopen until Monday morning. As I didn't feel like hanging around for that long I, and our shop manager, decided to just find a 24/7 shop and nurse the truck to it. I am now in a hotel in Columbus and my truck is being worked on in a real shop. Those guys in Cleveland were a joke. With any luck they'll have my truck repaired tomorrow and I ...

I had to get my truck jump started to get going the other day. Second time. I let our shop know about it and we figured the batteries were due to be replaced. We also figured that once I got my load delivered we would have me cruise into a dealership and have them install four new ones. I delivered this morning, ran up to Cleveland to pick up my next load, some fabricated steel going to Texas, and then stopped by the Western Star dealership to have them put new batteries in my rig. Should hav...

Late this afternoon I finally got a call from dispatch. They'd found me a load out of here. Tomorrow I have to go down to Hollywood, FL to pick up some rails heading for Ohio. I'd hoped for something that gets me closer to the yard, but it's a start. I just hope I don't wind up sitting too long in Ohio when I get there. Well at least when I return home again (around Christmas), it'll be to a clean house. All this extra time at home gave me a chance to get fully rested and I even managed to...

Update progress pic of the sweater I am currently knitting.  

I had planned on ordering yarn to make another sweater, but with the slow economy and subsequent slow frieght I just can't afford it right now. So I broke into my yarn stash and put together enough yarn of colors that should go together to make a sweater. It's all acrylic as I've used up most of "the good stuff", but that's ok at least it'll be washable, and it's soft acrylics not the harsh itchy stuff. I'm making this one a turtleneck. Naturally I am not using a pattern, just improvising as ...

*Sigh* I've come to the conclusion that mahines in general just hate me.  My clothes dryer has died on me. My truck needed a jump start. Now my main airconditioner has stopped working. Damn thing was working perfectly yesterday, without the slightest hint of a problem. I hate to even wonder "What's next?"

Well today was really special.  I loaded all of my road clothes in the truck, fired it up, and headed out to pick up the machine I was supposed to haul to Iowa. When I got there I walked in and found the guy I was supposed to see and the first thing he asked me "Where are your riggers?" My heart dropped into my stomach as the implication of that question sank in.  "I'm a trucker, you're supposed to provide the riggers to load the thing, that's the way it works" I said to him alre...

A friend of mine, who lives in California, is getting married in October of next year. He contacted me and asked if I would be willing to perform the wedding (I guess I'm the only ordained person he knows LOL). I checked with the state of California and found that I can legally perform the marriage there so I told him I would do it. I then realized that I hadn't seen my ordination papers in a few years (will need them when it comes time to sign the marriage license). I dug through some of m...

I got a call from dispatch around 11:00 this morning. She had found a partial load for me to pick up about 1.5 hours from my house going to Iowa. Cool. The plan was for me to go and pick it up and then as it doesn't need to be in Iowa until Monday morning just return home to wait for her to find something else to fill out the load. Sounded like a plan to me. I called the shipper and set everything up. He said to come in around 1:00 PM. No problem. After eating an early lunch I went out to ...

I'm watching the morning news and they just told about a meeting that is scheduled to try and explain the change over to digital braodcasts. The news reader (I won't call these idiots reporters), made a statement with regard to the change to DTV  "...that means no more antennas". It's exactly this sort of moronic statement that upsets people and makes them think the only way they'll be able to pick up the broadcast is by getting cable they can't afford. There are a lot of elderly on fixe...

I'm in the process of doing my laundry and getting packed up to hit the road again. This time around part of this process is to determine what warmer weather clothes I'll leave behind to be replaced by my Winter clothing. Even in the Winter I do still visit some places like Florida and other deep South areas where it stays relatively warm year-round so I always have a small amount of warm weather clothes along with me. This morning I took the time to finish off the sapphire blue sweater I mad...

I've had a great many injuries over the years, many of them quite serious and some life threatening. But there have been some silly ones as well. Probably the silliest one was a...bowling injury. Yep, you read it right, a bowling injury. My last girlfriend was teaching me to bowl one night while we were out with some friends (she bowled on a league). I was using a 16 lbs ball that I had bought earlier that day and had drilled for me Seems the guy doing the drilling screwed up and the ho...