After a good night's sleep I got up around 6:30 for some coffee. I wanted to get as early a start as possible. I'm about an hour from Gulfport which is the closest truckstop of any size. Starting at 7:00 I've been calling the number for where I am supposed to pick up so that I can get directions and let them know I am on my way. I guess they don't get an early start on their day. I don't know for certain but I suspect that it's a National Guard post and they may not come in until 9:00. So ...

dasfanvia. yet another spammer dredging up old threads to pollute the forums.

I managed to get a few pics of Socrates today. He has really grown!

Ok, this really won't be of much interest to anyone but myself. I'm going to keep a sort of record on my beard growth to track how quickly (or slowly) it grows in this time. Sometimes that helps when it reaches the point where it doesn't seem like it's growing in any more. Ok, so this is after a week of growth. The first couple of weeks are when it always looks the worst.

I slept in this morning. Socrates was kind enough to let me sleep until a quarter past 8:00 before he finally lost patience and pounced on me. It's warmer today than yesterday. While it's still cool I don't need a jacket. Long sleeves is enough to be comfortable. It's cloudy and as I walked back to my truck after breakfast there were a few sprinkles of rain falling. It's looking to be one of those dreary days in MS. As I was never able to get a hold of anyone either at the shipper or th...

It turned out the lounge at the hotel across the street was closed for remodeling. Something to do with some bitch named Catrina. I wound up walking a half mile to Ruby Tuesday. I had an interesting time there. I talked to a few different people. one of which turned out to be a Navy officer I had slugged when I was in the service. He was an Ensign back then and didn't know his ass from a fuse. He actually apologized to me for that incident (and admitted he was an asshat then) even though ...

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I managed to make it to the air base fire station and made delivery today. Finally. Only took 5 days to do a two day trip. I've never been so happy to be out from under a load in my life. Some loads are just bad luck or something, they just don't go well. But it wasn't completely uneventful. After I directed the fireman pulling the truck off the trailer he went to back it into the firehouse driveway and the wheels wouldn't turn right. They would turn left just fine, but they wouldn't turn ...

I went to bed early last night, around 9:30. I set the alarm for 5:30 so I could get up and have some coffee and be ready to roll when the sun comes up. I'm about 7 hours from my delivery point in the FL panhandle and they leave at 4:00pm central time. If I don't run in to any major delays I should be able to make it easily enough. But the way this trip has gone, that's a major IF. The stress of the past few day's incidents had taken it's toll I suppose. I was dead tired last night and fel...

I got held up for a little while first thing this morning. An IL DOT salt truck tried to go under and overpass with his dump bed raised. It didn't make it and the salt truck was wedged under the overpass. Traffic was backed up for miles. Once I got past that it was smooth sailing. No disasters, accidents, or major problems. I stopped once in KY to have the rest of my oversize permits faxed to me. While I was there I walked over to the tobacco shop and picked up a fresh bag of pipe tobacco....

I finally got the fire truck back on the trailer straight and centered. The guys from the towing company were far more nervous than I was even though I was the one driving the fire truck off the trailer and back on again. It could have had something to do with my mentioning the fact that it was worth about 1.5 million bucks. I made it as far as Effingham, IL before the sun decided to set. I pulled into the parking lot and set my sights on some dinner. After dinner I wandered over to t...

This is turning into the load from Hell. When I finally left the yard this morning I got about 5 miles down the road and received a call from dispatch. He said that someone had called and said that my trailer brakes were smoking. As I am pulling a wide load I can't see the trailer wheels. I quickly found a wide spot on the shoulder and pulled off to check it out. It turned out to not be the brakes. When the mechanic had adjusted the trailer's air bag valve to lower the trailer he didn't...

This morning I went up to Oshkosh to pick up a fire truck from the factory. I'll be running it down to FL. I made an appointment with our shop to have my truck serviced and to have them check out the generator to see why it didn't want to run. On the way to Oshkosh my truck decided that it didn't want to run either. I chugged and sputtered all the way there and back. I put it in the shop as soon as I got back. I was right about the generator, it was the fuel filter. They replaced it and ch...