Poof !

On Friday morning, I had both a load up to Chicago (which had already been loaded into the trailer on Thursday in Sylvester, GA) ... and a load back.

At 10:30 a.m. this morning when Dan called me (I was on I-65 by Culman, AL headed north) ... There was no longer a return trip load. That means that out of 4 trucks, only 1 had a complete roadtrip of loads ... 2 trucks are sitting idle all week ... and I will be vacationing in Chicago this week ... waiting for some kind of load or combination of loads that will get me back home again. Without wasting all of Dan's fuel money ...

My wife declared to me that I am going to go out and get a different job ... just as soon as I get home.
The foto is Sienna on a hammock.

Didn't get it done ...

This week I didn't get anything done on the trikes. I didn't get the birdhouse even started ... although I do have plans for it. The gardenbox did get created and planted. We spent at least one day on Real Estate. There was another visit to the dentist ... And we did finally manage to get the swimming pool open.

There was a cover over the pool ... to keep junk out during the winter ... it collected water from the rains, leaves from the trees, along with bugs and polliwogs. We spent a good while at midday using buckets to remove all that stuff from on top the cover. Then brushing it all to one end so we could bucket it out and toss it over the fence. My clothes were soaked with perspiration. I had to go lay down for an hour nap.

Now that the invisible muscles on my ribs aren't hurting so much ... I noticed that the ones in my thighs were kind of sore ... and of course, the shoulder is still sore. We won't talk about slight dizzy sensations when laying down. And sleepy sensations when only driving for 4-5 hrs. I really don't want to go get checked for blood sugar or blood pressure ... oh, well. This getting older stuff ... ugh ... gives me a better understanding for my Dad. I still want to do all the things that I did when I was 20, because I still feel that way inside, but I just don't have the energy for it.

Job Offer ??

The broker that my wife works with ... offered to pay for the schooling if I would take it and pass the Real Estate exam.

Daniel can't afford to drive his cab-over truck any more ... and if any more weeks like this one crop up ... he and I may be looking for a new source of income.

Planted a white eggplant and a bell pepper in the garden this afternoon.

the Gardenbox is in !!

Don't let the smile in this foto fool you ... I'm really "too pooped to pop!"

It took a good 6 hours to tear the grass out, get the 4' x 8' box in, and mix the soil with compost and peat moss.

My wife surfed on the computer to discover that the tree out front is a native species of Black Cherry ... the fruits are only 1/4"-1/3" in diameter. Slight tart taste, but excellent flavor. Good for jam and pies.

I found lots of melted and broken car safety glass ... and charred wood remains. Daniel says that Paul used to have a wooden shop over in this area ... and a fellow had his Jeep parked next to the shop, when the shop burned down. Hence the broken and melted car parts. This led to the building of the big old barn shop on the other side of Paul's place.

My wife wants to drive down to the beach and watch the sunset over the ocean ... I want to turn on an air conditioner and collapse for the rest of the day ... it's going to take a lot more than 2 aspirin to get me up and moving tomorrow ... :-)

Memorial Holiday

This rather smiley fellow dropped by for a visit yesterday ... I believe he was attempting to get out of the middle of the wedding preparations for one of his wife's relatives.

He worked on setting up a DVD player on an XP computer that my wife has ... After working on my Apple eMac ... I was astounded at how difficult it still was to work with Windows machines ... The hardware was installed, DVD player software was downloaded (3 or 4 different ones), and still it wouldn't play. Seems we had to find the correct Decoder ... I will attempt to download and run one today to see if it will finally work.

In honor of Memorial Day, we went out to the cemetery to put plastic flowers on graves.

My wife said that "we" need to make a garden box ... so, the other foto is of a wooden garden box which I made to her specifications ... out of whatever lumber was the cheapest ... (it is currently upside down). I need to cut out the sod from that location ... hammer the legs down into the ground ... and mix in some compost and peat moss with the sandy soil. I'll show it again when it is finally done and has some plants in it. That dark object in front of it is a stump ... that I was using as a chopping block ...

Rest-stop, I-65, mm-61, KY

These are fotos of the rest-stop on I-65 at mile marker 61 in Kentucky. There is one on each side of the Interstate ... and they are HUGE!

There is a center aisle with 2 rows of trucks ... back-to-back off the center aisle. I stood about mid-way and pointed my camera to the left and took a foto ... then pointed it to the right and took a foto. I've only seen one or two truckstops that can handle this many trucks!! AND, what you are seeing is only the truckstop on the west side of the Interstate. There is another one just as HUGE on the northbound (East) side of the Interstate.

Notice (below) that when all the parking spaces filled up during the night, trucks started parking along one side of the center aisle to sleep ...

Old Signature in Book

This fancy penmanship was produced by Joseph R. Messervy ... it is on the back of the title page of a book that I recently acquired ... Vol . 6 of the works of Flavius Josephus ... printed in English in 1828.

I did a little research and found that this may be the only example of his penmanship still in existance. Examples of his previous penmanship exercises had been stored in the house of his son, Oliver, and were destroyed when the Teton Dam broke and flooded parts of southern Idaho.

My handwriting will never look this good ... but then I come from a father whose journals will require a "rosetta stone" or some such item to translate them into readable writings.

a Cascadia "in the wild"

This morning I saw a real live Freightliner Cascadia pulling a dry-van of product to Fischer Peanuts in Elgin, IL. It is privately owned by a small trucking company. The driver said that it was the best Freightliner that he has ever driven.

However, he had a "beef" about the shaft that attaches to the steering wheel ... seems it goes down into a box where it has a set of gears that loosely mesh with another set of gears ... acceptable play according to Freightliner ... but it rattles and makes metallic noises.

Then he showed me a picture of the International "Lone Star" truck ... he says the best truck he ever owned was an International ... even better than a Kenworth ... cheaper to maintain ... and all around better. OK.

The purple Cascadia parked next to Dan's green truck (in Minooka, IL) is leased from CR England ... it is the stripped down model without the bunk-area doors that the white one has, and without the additional lower box-door on the passenger side. Those side window doors are great for loading bulk or large items into the truck ... without dragging everything across the front seat ... and they are great emergency escape doors in the event of an accident. I can't see buying a Cascadia without them ...

Lot Lizard

A moderately good-looking young woman came walking around the ratty truckstop where I was parked this afternoon (corner of Lane & Commonwealth in Jacksonville). She was talking to drivers ... I waved her off (shaking my head "no") when she knocked on the side of my truck.

When she knocked on the side of the truck next to me, the driver got out of his bunk, talked with her, she climbed in, and disappeared into the sleeper.

Sometime later they both climbed out and he said something about having to get money from the ATM machine. He was headed inside ... and she slowly followed.

Later when he came out alone ... I asked how much it had cost to have sex with her ... only $20. How very sad.

This is a sad commentary about both of them ...

Load, Load ... Who's got the load??

I delivered in Elgin, IL at 6:00 a.m. ... then drove to Pleasant Prairie, WI and picked up 4 pallets ... then to Lyons, IL picked up 8 pallets ... then to University Park, IL @ 5:30 pm. to pick up 6 pallets ... sat there for nearly 4 hrs before they knocked on my door ... but they were looking for trailer 1176 ... I have trailer 79. They had 16 pallets for trlr 1176 ... but my load was gone ... they loaded it on the wrong truck. An hour late (@ 10 p.m.) for my next pick up appointment, I departed ... while they are still trying to get that other truck driver to come back with my load (so they can give him his load).

Arrived Minooka, IL at 10:45 pm. ... got in a dock after midnite ... was loaded by 02:30 and got my paperwork to depart at 0300. Arrived at University Park, IL again at 03:45 ... this time they had my 6 pallets of cargo ( retrieved from the other driver) ... so I was loaded and ready to go by 04:30 a.m. ... a rather long day ...

If you don't pick these loads up when scheduled ... it is often difficult to re-schedule the pick up ... a day or two later ... which means you won't deliver on time ... which means you totally mess up all the loads for the following week ... but a 23.5 hr work day is way too long ...

To Dentist, to Dentist, to Dentist ...

I went to the Dentist on Tuesday morning, on Wednesday morning, and again on Thursday morning. I told the Dentist that I really needed to get a new hobby ... and not see him for awhile.

Just imagine having an ear itch ... scratching it ... but not feeling it (not getting relief), because the whole side of my face was numb. And waiting hours and hours for it to go away so that my face would return back to its normal appearance. People seem to be a bit "put off" by you drooling out of the corner of your mouth ...

Enough of that for a couple of weeks. :0)

Good Start to Week

This week has started out excellently! I called Daniel this morning to find out how the load was going ... He said they were about done unloading him, but the return-trip load had been canceled. Seems the cold storage facility in Minooka had insufficient product to do the load. So he is stuck there until he can find a load back.
The load up barely paid enough money for the fuel to get it there ... the load back was supposed to be the money maker.

My wife called the dentist this morning to confirm my dental appointment at 09:00 a.m. The appointment was made at the end of March, written down in the book, and the secretary wrote out an appointment card for me to take home as a reminder. It seems it never made it into the computer at the dental office. No dental appointment.
So my wife drags me around to take fotos of houses all over the countryside. Took so many flash fotos that the camera is back on the charger to get enough energy to download the fotos to the computer.

Nice day though. :0)

Misty Morning

It has been misty all night.

This morning is one of those on which you hear water droplets dripping down thru the leaves on the trees ... you can hear the power lines sizzling in the mist ... and the darn mocking birds are starting to kick up a ruckus as the light is coming up thru the mist.
Everything is pastel and fuzzy.

Arrival Home

After arriving home ... I took my personal stuff out of the truck ... and gave all the paperwork to Daniel. It is his turn to drive this week (I have a dental appointment).

My wife came home with 2 grandsons ... they wanted to go fishing. As you can see, we trekked down the hill to the pond and spent some time fishing. The cane poles don't require technical skills. Wife + grandsons did fine with the closed face reel ... but experienced technical difficulties using the open-face spinning reel.

Let's go eat! :0)

Dumb Driver!

After loading this morning, the drive axles were a little over 30,000 lbs. and the trailer axles (at the rear of the trailer) were 35,000 lbs. NOT good. They can't be over 34,000 lbs. So I needed to slide the trailer axles further back to take some weight off of them.

I went back in front of the axles to release the pins that hold them in place. Sometimes it is a pull lever, and sometimes an air release valve. I saw this air valve right there ... and didn't immediately see a release lever ... so I pushed the air valve ... the pins didn't move ... air was hissing out ... and the trailer started lowering. OOPS! Wrong thing. Stopped that quick! Found the camouflaged lever and pulled it (releasing the pins).

The knobs that control the air brakes for the tractor and for the trailer were pulled up while I did this. I went back to the tractor, released the tractor brakes by pushing the yellow knob down, rolled the tractor forward ... pulling the trailer ... while the trailer wheels stayed locked in place. Went back to check and found that just a little bit more forward pulling and they should lock into a hole (I released the lever so the pins could do that). Sometimes there is a lot of resistance pulling the trailer with the wheels locked ... and what happens is that the wheels actually roll. There is an additional trailer brake lever that you can pull to lock the brakes so they won't roll. I pulled the lever down, rocked forward, then rocked backward to ensure the pins were fully extended ... let go of the lever and it flipped upward. When I pushed the red knob down to release the trailer brakes, there was still some resistance. I fiddled some more with the brake knobs ... and then scaled the load ... 32,520 lbs. on the drive axles and 33,120 lbs. on the trailer axles. That's legal.

I headed down the road, but noticed it wasn't accelerating . I was checking in the mirrors and noticed a puff of smoke. I IMMEDIATELY pulled over onto the shoulder of the road. The trailer brake pads were smoking. I sprayed water on the pads and drums to cool them ... spit, sizzle! I was wondering what the heck I could do to remedy the problem. My cell phone doesn't have service over there ... I was totally on my own. I'm sitting there holding onto the rear bumper and looking at the brakes ... wondering what I can do ... when it popped into my head that I could get the 11mm wrench and back the brakes off mechanically. Duh! So I backed them way off. (the 11mm bolt head is in the middle left area of the foto, near the bottom of the dark greasy thing). Then I was running down the road with no trailer brakes, air-cooling the pads & drums ... so the tires don't catch on fire. About 6 miles down the road, for some reason I looked down and noticed the hand lever for the trailer brakes ... I pushed upward on it ... and discovered that it hadn't been all the way up!!! No wonder the trailer brakes had been rubbing and gotten hot. Dingie.

A few miles further down the road was a place for trucks to park. I stopped. Went back and checked the temperature of the tires (warm but not hot). I touched the outer rim ... cold. Touched the inner rim ... no heat s I got close to it with my fingers ... it too was cool to the touch. So I adjusted the brakes all the way in ... and then backed them off to their proper setting. This time everything was working fine. What a ditz.

Hurry up ... And wait.

I delivered my frozen load in Jacksonville, FL this morning ... ran to "the yard" to pick up my check ... then onward to Blakely, GA to wait to pick up tomorrow.

Dan is trying to conserve on fuel money. Otherwise, there would be the trip from "the yard" to the house ... then from the house to Blakely and back to the house. So, it was a shorter trip to Blakely ... and only one trip to the house tomorrow.

In the meantime, you can see the view out my front window. I'm parked behind the Huddle House Restaurant on the 62 by-pass. The reefer doors are open to let the breeze air-dry the interior. So tomorrow I won't have all that condensation on the walls. There are no stores or anything else even close to here. No truckstop either. And this is the only place to park while waiting to pick up. Surfing-the-net, reading (Kansas Weddings), letting the air flow-thru the window screens (no engine running) ... and waiting to eat the Subway Sandwich that I picked up at the Pilot Truckstop this morning in Baldwin, FL. If I really feel energetic (or bored), I could go sort the 3 stacks of pallets to weed out the really rotten ones into a separate stack that they can pull off and never put back on again tomorrow. :0)