I'm Back!!! As the spirit would say

So sorry for the long absence. Last week was a LONG week, and I didn't have much time for anything much less blogging. Sleep was even on the short list. :-) Anyway, to fill you in, I started out Monday around 10AM for the yard. I was going to Phoenix, AZ for a 7PM delivery to Amazon.com. Made it as far as Indio before I has a blow out on an inside drive tire. F@#$. So, limp into a TA truck stop and arrange to buy a couple of tires. If one tire is really worn, and you put a new tire next to it on a dual setup, the new tire will wear out twice as fast, so it is advisable to replace both tires, so that is what I did, and strapped the old drive tire to the back of the cab. It can be used as a trailer tire when needed. So, that took an hour and a half, and suddenly, I was in jeopardy of missing my appointment at Amazon. You do not want to miss an appointment with them, as it takes four days for another appointment. Management would not be happy about that. :-) They give you 30 min leeway, so that helped. I made it at 7:18. Unfortunately I didn't get unloaded until 11PM. Part of the problem was a muslim, who was evidently a new driver, that couldn't park his trailer at the dock. He hit one trailer next to him, and had it so jacked in between that trailer and mine, he couldn't get it out, or backed in. He was asking guys for help, and unfortunately came to me. I have a hard time not helping when asked, and went to asses the situation. Ended up having to drop the trailer where it was, and back into it at a different angle on the tractor to be able to get it backed in without hitting anything else. I think the whole warehouse was out there after he hit the trailer, and that delayed everything for an hour or more. After I got unloaded I went to drop a trailer at another mfg'er to have them load. But the place was all locked up and had to wait till morning. Had a hard time finding the docks, the place was huge and they were all the way around the back of the building through a parking lot. Who designed this place??? Anyway, got it all figured out with the shipper, dropped the trailer, and as I was pulling out onto the street got a call that the order had been cancelled and had to hook up to the trailer and pull it out. Went to another place and picked up and order, then took that trailer to our Phoenix yard, dropped it, hooked up to a load for Wal-Mart, and delivered that. Afterward, I went back to the yard, dropped the empty, hooked back up to the trailer I had loaded before and headed back home. About half way back, got a call that there was a hot load for Yuma, that needed to be delivered by 7:30AM the next morning (Wed). Crap, by the time I get back to they yard, drop this trailer, pick up the Yuma trailer, do all the required paperwork, and get out of the yard, I have an hour and a half of available time to work. So, I stretch things a bit and get to Salton City and crash for 4 hours, get up and finish to Yuma. This was another fiasco. The address I have, the GPS is telling me to turn on a little dirt road next to a water canal in the middle of some agriculture area. This thing was about 8ft wide and was essentially a dike holding the water in with a dirt path. No WAY am I driving on that!! I call the customer, and leave a message. Fortunately he called me right back, and gave me directions to the place. The bad part was, they wanted the stuff delivered to a warehouse about 13 miles back the way I had come. Finally got that delivered, and headed back. I got about halfway back from Yuma, and dispatch called again. A load to Washington. Crap. It is Wednesday afternoon. Now, there is no way I can get home before Saturday night, Sunday. That is if I leave Wed. afternoon. Here we go again. So, instead of going home and getting some sleep, I head out for WA. Such is the life of a long haul truck driver. I will finish this off later. Right now, I have some stuff to take care of before I get called out again.

Larry

On my way back from WA. At the Casino again. Great showers here. All marble and tons of water pressure. It was a gorgeous day. The weather was perfect. Sunny and warm. So nice for a change. Can't get my laptop connected again, so am using my phone. I swear, it is much harder than it needs to be. Hustling home so I can be at my grand kids birthday party. TTYL8R

LARRY

On the road again, da, da, da da, da, da da

Well, a bad start to this trip. I was supposed to head out Tues evening so I could get back home for a birthday party for my grandkids. Well, they didn't get the trailer loaded until 10PM, and so I didn't get out there until quarter to one. By the time I got hooked up, checked out, and ready to go it was a quarter to two. I had tried to sleep before I left, but only got about an hour before the phone rang. Then couldn't get back to sleep, so got up, showered, made some sandwiches and coffee and headed for the yard. I drove until 5, but just couldn't safely go any further, so pulled over and slept for 3 hours. Felt much better and was at Stockton by 1. Dropped some stuff off there, and they filled the trailer up with some other stuff and I hit the road. Got up to Corning, which is my usual stop because it is halfway to Puyallup WA where the yard is at. Good Casino here, with lots of truck parking, showers, laundry, and a really good buffet. I get the senior discount and it is only $14.99. Really good food. Much better than some Las Vegas buffets I have eaten at. And they could get away with being bad. No competition around here except some Denny's and some truck stops. Thank God they are taking the high road. It is a great change from the usual truck stop fare. I was sitting at the bar having a beer to relax and get sleepy and another truck driver was playing video Keno a couple of seats away from me and won $8000. Boy, would that be nice!!! Anyway, had a good dinner, and am going to get some sleep. I need to get up about 3:30 AM and hit the road so I can bet to my stop in WA tomorrow evening. It is supposed to be just a drop and hook and head back south. It better be, or I am going to miss the party. I requested it, but ya never know with trucking. I took a picture of some nice clouds outside of Sacramento today. It was a great day, after raining all last night and this morning, it was nice to see the sun again. I also took a picture of Mt. Shasta on my way home last week with some clouds swirling around the peak, and a picture of Mt. Rainier on my way back from Canada last week. I will post them here for your enjoyment. Hope you are all well. I am working my way back home. Talk to you later.

Ahh hell, the connection is too slow to load the pictures. I'll do it some other time.

Larry

A respite

Boy, is it good to be home. I don't know for how long yet, but hopefully I will get today and tomorrow off. Although, I would rather leave tomorrow night if they are sending me on another long trip. A weekend home would be nice. I miss my family and friends.
I got up yesterday morning in Corning, CA about 90 miles north of Sacramento. I planned on getting home early as possible. So woke up at 3:30 and hit the road at 4:15. It was raining, but not terribly, and the road was pretty much empty except for the occasional car and a few trucks. Sunday morning coming down. :-) It was pretty nice all the way through Sacramento, then started getting some of the weekend travelers going home. Still not a bad ride though, until I hit Santa Clarita. Then I got the usual LA traffic and all the regular erratic and crazy drivers that come along with it. I only had stopped twice to complete the required bodily functions for about a half hour combined time, so I was doing well. Got home in about 10 hours covering 567 miles. Not bad in a truck. But, sitting for those long periods takes it's toll. I stopped and grabbed a hamburger and some beer after I dropped the truck at the yard and got close to home. Becky was here to greet me, along with Roxy she had stopped and picked up at my sister Mickie's house. It was good to get a greeting and good to finally relax for an evening. It didn't last long, since I was asleep by 9 or 9:30. Trying to catch up on lost sleep. I know it doesn't really work that well, but it felt good trying. :-) Have a few things to try and get done today, since I don't know when I am going out again, and it could be tomorrow.

A couple of things I have noticed on the road and been meaning to post, but get tired and run out of space sometimes. First is touring motorcycles. Of course, being a biker, I always notice bikes on the road. Of the bikes, I have seen most are touring, which makes sense, since I try to avoid cities during rush hour traffic and that rules out most of the commuters. Even in this unusually cool spring/summer, there are quite a few bikes out on the road. Of these, I would have to guess that close to 95% of them are Harley Davidson's. The other 5% are a mix of Japanese, BMW, and a few Victory's. The most of these 5% tourers are Gold Wings, with probably 3% of the 5%. Obviously this is just an observation, and hardly scientific, but I would say fairly accurate. I have driven nearly 20,000 miles in the last month, and have seen a lot of road and a lot of bikes. A good enough sampling for a wild ass guess. :-) So, I have to surmise that either Harley riders are the true adventurous nomadic bikers, or there are just THAT many more of them in the country. I suspect that except for the Gold Wing clubs and touring groups, there are guys that just buy a Gold Wing or other touring bike and only take it out on the occasional weekend. Now, the Harley rider, will take almost any opportunity to hit the road to some gathering or just to go somewhere for the hell of it. I know, I know, there are a lot of Harley riders that don't ever hit the open road, but imagine how many more there would be if they did. Kind of makes me want to get out there and do a little tour. I am itching to ride, even after 20K on the road. But, on a bike is a whole other story.
Now that I have eaten up a world of space on that rant, one other thing I will make short mention of is the difference in rivers in OR and WA. Now, both states have a lot of rivers, much more so than CA. In CA, we call creeks or runoff channels rivers. The other states have REAL rivers. For some reason, and I suspect grazing or farming land, the rivers in WA are much muddier than the rivers in OR. In fact, I only noticed a handful of muddy waters in OR. The rest are beautifully clear. In WA, it is hard to find one that is not muddy. Anyway, just some useless bit of trivia I happened to notice and probably not interesting to anybody but me. But it is funny the things you think about in those lonely hours on the road when you are tired of listening to music and there is nobody but you and God in the truck.

Take care my friends, I will be back with another brilliant observation of life on the road soon.

Larry

Finally home tomorrow

This trip has been quite the experience. Had some deliveries to make on the way up. One was in Mt. Shasta City, at the foot of beautiful Mt. Shasta of course. Neat little town, reminds me a little of Big Bear, or Idyllwild. Not a great place to be driving a 75 ft. big rig, but hey, it's not a job, it's an adventure, RIGHT?? But I got the chairs delivered and finally found my way back to I5. As I mentioned the other day, stopped and saw family, enjoyed that, then got up early and hussled to Puyallup. There was a driver waiting there for me to guide me to and over the Canadian border. This is no mean feat. It is actually quite a hassle, and can take up to four hours from what I hear. Everything is contingent on paperwork being completed and filed in advance, the paperwork you carry must match what was submitted, and they want your life history in order to cross. Coming back is not much better, you must do everything by the book, or they punish you. I didn't have my trailer door open, and didn't know the license number of the trailer. My punishment was taking the truck through an xray machine. That is one big xray machine let me tell you. But evidently they didnt find anything because they let me go. You do have to pay $10.75 for the priveledge of bringing your truck back over the border though. Neither side has any sense of humor at all, so it is best to just keep your mouth shut and do what they say. The driver that led me over, and explained where the deliveries were and the best way to go about backing in was a really nice guy. Helped immensley, and when we found out we had to go back on Friday with two more loads, he offered to bring me coffee in the morning. Which he did, along with a nice order of biscuits and gravy. What a guy!! Explained all the deliveries again to me, I had 5, so it was hard to remember everything he told me, but the guy has a memory much better than mine. I recognized everything he told me upon reaching each location. He is a Army Viet Nam Vet like me, is 63, started driving truck again after a failed business, anything here sound familiar?? Heck of a guy. Even came and woke me up after he returned from the border ( he had more deliveries and a pick up) took me to his house, let me take a shower, and fed me dinner. Then drove me back to the truck so I could leave early this morning. Even though the border guards are quite surrley, the people where I made my deliveries were all very nice, to a tee. All in all it was an interesting experience and not wholly unpleasant. Just finding out I had to go back on Friday to deliver again, instead of heading for home was the only real downer. But, I made some pretty good money by my accounting in these 7 days, so I guess it was worth it. I headed out at 4AM this morning, and made it down to Corning, CA to spend the night. Corning is about 25 miles past the halfway point from Puyallup, to Riverside, so is the perfect spot. It makes for 2, 11 hour driving days, plus breaks, but I can just make it home legal. My cousin Don turned me on to a Casino just south of Corning, and I stopped in on the way up to check it out. Good truck parking, nice and clean, a truckers lounge complete with showers, laundromat, internet, and the casino has a nice buffet. I joined the gamblers club, and won $25 in a half hour on the way up. Didn't gamble tonight, just want to get a good nights sleep and head out early. I only got 4 hours of sleep last night, and it was broken up into 2, 2 hour naps. Not good for a long day driving. I struggled a few times staying focused today. Anyway, I have some other things I wanted to mention but will hold off for another day. This post has gone too long as it is. I don't want to bore the patrons. LOL

Was fortunate enough to be able to stop by Portland again and.see my daughter. She also ran me by the hospital to see.my niece Wendy, Noah, and their new son Henry. Beautiful baby, and they are so happy. It is fun to watch our children grow up and become parents.
Got up early and headed for Puyallup. Got here dropped the trailer, grabbed another and headed for BC. Whar a pain the border crossings.are. On both sides they are a real pain. It is like they.are trying to outdo each other on being nasty. They.have absolutely no sense of humor. So, spent the day driving around delivering furniture and got back to Puyallup around 8. And the good news is, I get to do it again tomorrow. Looks like I won't be.getting home this weekend. Now, I need some rest. So till next time..

Larry

Had a bad start to this run. Originally I was going to leave at noon on Mon. I got a call and said that had changed to 6 because they were going to load some Vancouver BC on it. Great, a load to BC, that pays a bonus. But, I didn't want to go out there at rush hour so waited till 7. Good thing. Got out there and the load was still not ready. 9:45 it was done. So I.didn't get out of there till 10:30. Drove till 5 and HAD to sleep. I had gotten up at 6:30 the morning Monday and was dead tired, slept till 8 and drove.the hour and a half to Stockton. But I was there for 2.5 hours to unload some freight and load some other. Out of hours by then. So, I have to get up early.and make a delivery in Mt Shasta before heading to WA. HOPE THIS IS THE END OF THE HANG UPS. GOOD NIGHT

Off again

Well, I had a wonderful weekend home. Got back into town Friday at 5, had dinner with my Friday Friends group, went golfing Saturday with my Brother in law, and my friend Michael. Sunday was brunch with Mom and the family at Panda. It was a great weekend with family and friends. Just what a road weary trucker needs. It is now Monday afternoon and my load is finally ready. I was hoping to get an early start, so I could be back for the coming weekend, but there was a lot of shifting around of the loads. So, as it turns out, I am going out tonight for Stockton, CA, add some freight to the trailer and head to Vancouver Canada. This is what I have been waiting to do. I will get a bonus for going into Canada, and a few more hundred miles. Should be a good run and I hope it puts me in the $900 to $1000 range. Problem is, I probably won't be home till sometime Saturday. We will see. I am going to try and run most of the way to Stockton tonight, so I can get a run for the border early. You never know how things are going to go. Plus they said I will probably have some drops along the way up or back. Oh well, it all pays, so got to do what I am told. I need to get going, but will try to update this blog tomorrow. Thanks for a great weekend everyone, see you on the flip side. :-)

Larry

Hello everyone, back out on the road again. I left home Tuesday morning after a couple of wonderful days at home with those I love. I was hoping for one more day, but that was not to be. Another trip to Payallup, WA was ready for me. Payallup is just a bit southeast of Tacoma, and I one of our terminals. The weather has been unbelievably beautiful in stark contrast to my last trip. Mt Shasta was particularly a standout. Not a cloud in the sky, and full of snow. I got a couple of nice pix and will post them soon. Made I up to Portland on Wed, in time to have dinner with My daughter Brittney and my niece Wendy. Both are pregnant, and Wendy is overdue by aces days. Women are just so lovely when with child. It makes me feel good knowing I have left a mark on this world, and not a blot. :-) anyway, I am off to WA in about an hour so gotta run. Enjoy!!

Larry