I got up this morning expecting to roll into the Seattle area just about the time the morning rush hour oversized load curfew ended. As I approached the bottom of Snoqualmie Pass the big electronic signs advised that traction tires were advised and oversized vehicles are prohibited. Damn! A quick check of 511 confirmed that it's snowing up there (it's snowing/raining down here too) and that they are prohibiting oversized vehicles until the conditions improve. No idea when that might be. ...

Yuck. That pretty much expresses my opinion regarding the white crap that's currently falling from the sky here. I really do hate Winter. I was sitting here surfing the web and glanced out the window. I could see the snow illuminated by the lights in the parking lot. Not one of my favorite sights. I don't think the ground is yet cold enough for it to stick though, and that's about the only good thing I can think of about it. Yuck.

I finally received my permits via fax for this 102,000 lbs load and was just about to pull out of the truckstop when I got a call from dispatch asking if I had put tires chains on my truck for this trip. I reminded him that when I asked yesterday about when the chain laws went into effect he had told me the 15th so I didn't bother grabbing any. He made a couple of calls and found that he had misinformed me and that the chain laws actually went into effect on the 1st. Wonderful. The fines i...

I'm about to depart the yard heading for Tacoma, WA. I picked this Marine Corps truck up in Oshkosh yesterday. We knew it was going to be heavy as it's armor plated so I am using a brand new three axle heavy haul trailer. I'm the first one to use this trailer and it's the first one of it's kind we have purchased. I'm sitting here now as the mechanics are finishing making it ready for the road as I found a few mechanical problems with it when I picked up this load. Kinda sucks that a brand new...

I popped over to Applebee's for lunch and wound up staying for several hours. I was having a good time and some good conversation so I stuck around. The bartender for whom I am knitting a hat came on shift. My first thought was to just put away my knitting so she wouldn't see it but I decided to see if she approved of the colorway instead. She liked it so I guess it's a winner. While there my favorite bartender there, who became a manager and lately transferred to another location, came in...

I finally made it back to the yard late this morning and promptly put my truck in the shop to have the belt replaced on my generator. I checked with dispatch and as "R" hadn't yet planned anything for me I told him I was going to go hide out in the hotel over the weekend as I was tired as hell and my bum hip is killing me. He understood and said he would just plan on my being ready on Monday and may use me for some local stuff that day. That worked for me and as soon as my truck was ready ...

I had a pretty long day today. I started out this morning in NE (edited...thanks LW) OH, right on the PA line and, after swinging by the yard to pick up an additional piece to deliver over in MN, am now parked for the night in western WI. I only covered about 650 miles today as I was held up in several back ups the causes for which ranged from a big rig on fire on the shoulder of the highway to a flatbed that dumped his load taking a ramp too fast to a couple of run of the mill car crashes. A...

No load yet today so I checked into a hotel. Screw sitting around a truckstop. I found a place with decent rooms, a restaurant, and a lounge. I'll bill it back to the boss anyway. I had a pretty good time in the lounge, a couple of the ladies asked me to help them pick out songs on the jukebox, and I even enjoyed a nice slow dance with one of them, but eventually wandered back to my room. At some point in the lounge I totally screwed up the pattern in the scarf I am working on so I'll h...

I pulled into this plant in PA this morning hoping to get unloaded fairly quickly and be on my way again. No such luck. The receiving side isn't capable of unloading anything as large as these pieces so they sent me around to the shipping side which is quite busy. I am now sitting and waiting for my turn to get into their bay to have the pieces unloaded. As this is the shipping dock I have to wait until they load the trucks that are here to pick up. Thankfully this place has a cafeteria ...

I made it back to the yard today, unloaded the one piece that's staying here, and promptly checked into the hotel. After a much needed shower I headed over to the Appleby's next door for a few adult beverages and some dinner. Geez, I'd only been away from there for about a month but things had really changed. I know the bartender but didn't recognize about half of the rest of the staff, including the manager. I knew the old manager quite well and was disappointed to see she wasn't ther...

It had to happen. And you know what? I'm not even a little surprised. Last night I walked over to the grocery to stock up on food that I can heat in the microwave. I bought enough to tide me over for a few days. Just a few minutes ago the generator that supplies the power for my microwave took a shit. Figures. The belt is shredded. No power, no heat, no nothing. So now I have a stock of food but no microwave in which to heat it. I really can't afford it but if I am spending another nigh...

I'm sitting in a mud lot in a tiny little truckstop in northern WA. It's a joke to even call this a truckstop as it's basically just a gas station/C-store that happens to sell truck fuel and has a big enough piece of mud to park a few trucks (for four bucks a night). I got up this morning and as I am on the left coast the sun hasn't even begun to rise yet. I trudged through the mud to use the restroom (get the key-on-a-stick from inside and walk around back), fill up my coffee mug, and tru...

One of the best and worst things about running out to the left coast is the time difference. If it's afternoon and you're running a little behind it's nice because you have a couple of 'extra' hours to get where you're going. In the morning it sucks. I slept in this morning and didn't crawl out of bed until 8:00 am my time. The sun wasn't even beginning to come up yet. I'm sitting around killing time now until I can get rolling. Seattle and Tacoma have oversized curfews in place preventing...

I'm stuck for the weekend. I'm sitting in a truckstop east of Seattle with a view of the cloud wrapped mountains and tall pines outside my windshield. Here the clouds are not something way up in the sky, but are instead something that drifts around you. It's quite a sight. Coming in here I had to come through Snoqualmie Pass. As I climbed the mountain the rain started becoming more solid as it hit the windshield, that squishy sort of sleet that isn't quite liquid but not quite solid either...

I'm sitting here in Western Montana watching it rain and waiting for the sunrise to begin so I can get rolling. That's one big problem with running out west. The time zone difference means sunrise comes pretty late to those of us who run on Central or Eastern time. I'm typically not a late sleeper, especially on the road and most especially when I know I'm under the gun to get some place. Thanks to some pretty nasty fog in SD slowing me down the day before yesterday I am in a tight spot re...