I guess I went to bed too early. I wanted to be lazy and sleep in this morning. What time did I wake? 6:00am. ugh. As it was only 5:00am locally the sun wasn't even up yet. I tried going back to sleep but it was a no go. My body said "It's time to get up!" So I got up, wandered over to the C-store for a large cup of coffee, and just accepted the fact that the day has started whether I wanted it to or not. Ah well, I'll loaf around for a bit, get a hot shower, and wander on up through De...

I'm in Lamar, CO. I'm about 4.5 hours from where I have to deliver on Monday morning. I've checked into a motel for tonight. I just felt like relaxing and wanted a bit more space than the truck provides. I first pulled into the Best Western but the young lady informed me that all of the smoking rooms were taken. I walked next door to the Lamar Inn and checked in here. It's not nearly as nice as the Best Western, but it's reasonably comfortable, has a restaurant and lounge, and of course Wi...

I'm pretty much a live and let live kind of guy, but I just saw something that blew me away. I am now convinced I've seen it all. I was sitting here filling out my log book so I could get rolling. I looked up and saw a guy walking across the truck stop parking lot. I had to do a double take as I was certain I couldn't be seeing what I was seeing. He was wearing a ball cap, green tee shirt, and a denim skirt . A young guy. A truck driver. Wearing a skirt. WTF? All I can say is he has gu...

I'm parked in Amarillo, TX on my way to the Denver area. As I don't have to be in the Denver area until Monday morning I can relax and take my time. I'm going to spend the night here and then ease on up that way tomorrow. I finally got paid and was able to pay up my Cingular bill so now I have net service full time again. I also mailed home a money order to pay my bills. They'll be about a week late but it couldn't be helped. It does feel good to have some money in my pocket once again. ...

I'm sitting in Austin, TX connected to someone's unsecured wireless router, waiting for the folks at this little shop to arrive. I'm picking up a truck that's heading for Colorado, just North of Denver. I'll be reloading there Monday morning heading back to Wisconsin. I haven't been in CO for a long time so this will be a change of scenery. At first I was told the guy needed me to be here at 6:30 for this pick up this morning, but then when I called and spoke with him he said 8:00. I don'...

This morning I "slept in" until 6:15. After getting up at 5:00 for the past couple of mornings it felt like sleeping in anyway. No alarm, just woke up on my own which is really the best way. I had a few cups of coffee and shot the breeze with a couple of old hands sitting around the coffee counter, and then returned to my rig to prepare to roll. As I was starting to pull out I thought I ought to have a closer look at my Texas oversize permit as many cities have a curfew. Sure enough, I cou...

Well, my run of bad luck is still holding fast. I ran hard yesterday so that I would be within reach of my delivery point for this afternoon. Piece of cake as they say. Until Murphy (the bastard) stepped in. I'm having some problems with my truck now. It's going through quite a bit of coolant and yet I can't locate any leak. Saturday I had to top off the coolant level with two gallons. I didn't think much of it at the time as these big diesels do need coolant added now and again. But t...

Today was one of those strange, mixed up kind of days. As far as myself and my trip goes everything went quite well and under other circumstances I would have called it a good day. But I was also following the insane tragedy in VA today and that put a real damper on things. I really do hate hearing about these kinds of things happening. They simply defy any sort of logic or rationale a sane mind can conjure. As the story unfolded and I followed the information update I couldn't help but fe...

I finally managed to get my laundry done. I hauled my old sea bag full of dirty clothes into the truck stop, got five bucks worth of change from the machine, and threw it all in to wash. It took three machines. I've had that old sea bag since I was in the service. No matter what else comes and goes, that old green duffel has always been with me through thick and thin. It's showing sign of age and wear, but it's still very serviceable. There were a few other drivers sitting around waiting f...

Last night I took a pain pill and muscle relaxer to ease my back a bit. I slept like the proverbial baby. I could have slept in all day but I woke at 6:00 am. I looked at the clock, said "screw that" and went back to sleep. By 7:30 my body said "screw this" and made me get up. I went inside the truck stop and had a few cups of coffee to get my heart started, and then I had a nice long relaxing shower. Then I had breakfast, "steak" (I swear it was really kangaroo) and eggs.. Really exciting...

After I had some lunch I wandered into the truck stop tv lounge. I was sitting there all nice and quiet knitting on my sock and watching the idiot box when another driver came in and sat down. He asked me what I was doing and I told him that I was knitting a sock. "You can actually knit your own socks?" he asked. "Umm, yeah dude, socks don't grow on trees ya know." was my probably a tad too smart-assed reply. The guy seemed genuinely fascinated by the idea that a person could actuall...

I'm hauling an oversized load, a fire truck, down to the port in Houston (yuk). Illinois has a stupid curfew on oversized loads. We can't move between noon on Saturday and sunrise Monday. Most states allow you to run all day on Saturday, but have a Sunday curfew. Stupid Illinois has to cost us an extra half a frigging day. So I ran about as far as I could before pulling into the truck stop. The next one down the road would have put me past noon. A lot of times I play dumb and just keep run...

I made my delivery (a fire truck) today. While the folks at the place I delivered did piss me off a little I worked around it and got the job done. One guy told me to unload at a certain spot and while I was in the midst of the work required to detach the trailer some other guy came out and told me I needed to pull around behind the building and do the detach and unload there. *sigh* Fine, what the fuck ever. I needed to get the job done and get to Oshkosh to pick up an over size fire t...

I made it into Detroit tonight around midnight local time. There was almost no traffic in the city at all. Perfect. It turned out the directions I was given were not good at all. I drove around for about 30 minutes trying to figure out how to get to the loading/unloading area of this civic center. I was going down one street that became very obvious was not the one I wanted, and I decided that I need to back track. I saw a good place to make a u-turn, hit my signal, double checked what wa...

When I went in to the doctor's office for my appointment this morning I had determined that I would not go off on him but rather I would simply say that I am feeling fine and he should release me back to full duty so I won't have to see him again. I guess he sensed something wasn't right because I gave very curt answers to his questions and no more. "How's the pain today?" "Nothing I can't handle." "Has it improved." "I'm fine." He asked me what was up, and I told him I fel...