Fun Stuff: Good days, bad days. Have fun with it.

Starting this one backwards cause Wrong Way does things the Wrong Way. Been tryin' to fix that a LONG time. That fix never seems to have taken. Still. Fun is fun.

Happy trails. I got to shut her down and get some shut eye. Got to get up early and book for Tucumcari for an undetermined relay. Here lately the loads I have been getting have had sweet miles between CA and the mid-west but were undoable for making the apt times solo when I got them. Lot of running back and forth between 40 and 70/80 to relay with a team. Suits me. Miles are miles however they come and I'll take all the MO fuel I can get. $3.40's there and $3.70's and .80's everywhere else on the route. Mileage works out great to splash high and get back to MO with plenty of room in the tanks for topping off low. I ain't complaining a bit. Miles AND a good fuel route. You can pretty much float the hills or cruise it on flat at economy speed too so MPG is up too. Works for me. If only that JERK hadn't scraped my truck and hauled tail while I was taking a shower in Tucumcari the other day. But Hey. That's OK. Steven's driver got my back. He "saw the whole thing" and got info for me. (I am TOTALLY SERIOUS): "It was a Mexican in a red Freightliner. One of them old ones like they built to look like Peterbilts." No tag number, company name, DOT number or anything like that. Just "a Mexican in an old red Freightliner that looks like a Peterbilt".

Oh. He was short and heavyset with dark hair. "Thanks Driver. 'Preciate the info. I'm sure the Quay County Sherriff's and NM State Police will be all over this bump and run at a truck stop. Let me get 911 straight on the line. Shouldn't be too hard to narrow down which short, heavyset, dark haired Hispanic bumped into me with an old, red FLD in New Mexico an hour ago. Yup. There'll be an arrest and appropriate damage compensation any minute now. Oh. It was a man. That narrows it down even more." I'm not being racial or anything like that. That's just the description I got from the friendly Steven's driver that "saw the whole thing" (but neglected to jump out and holler "WHOA"). Kinda "needle in a haystack". I'm looking for a white person in North Dakota with a Western Star or a someone with a New York accent pulling a container. You get the idea. A little bit too generic for anything to ever come of so I'll be 100% outta pocket on that repair.

Then last night I fired up the APU after pushing the electronic babysitter to it's max (but I did it Legal - 10 minutes to spare) to make a p/u on time (turned out to be drop and hook) and it sounded like a bird or squirrel family built a nest in the fan cage on the back of the cab or something and got all ground up in the fan. Helluva noise. All squealing, squeaking and grinding. I thought (and prayed) at first that it was the reefer (delay but no outta pocket for me), but the pitch of the engine was APU high not reefer low and the reefer was on Sentry and just cycled off. I kill the APU, get out with a flashlight and some of the cross tines on the plastic guard are broken and missing (no fur or feathers, though) and two of the radial support spines are broken. So the fan is now misaligned with the housing and scrubbing. Lovely. How the hell does THAT happen? Cut my hand on a spine sticking out checking it in the dark. Nice. Reefer's fine, load's temped good. It's a cool night so I can just leave the windows down. I'll deal with it in daylight. I got tools and some resourcefulness.

Note to fellow reefer newbies. Don't leave the windows down at a meat plant in Illinois. Or even five miles from it (where I was). Probably anywhere else near a MEAT PLANT for that matter, thinking about it in retrospect. Hindsight's always 20/20 isn't it? Didn't need an alarm. Fifty million new winged friends decided to keep me company all night. Three inches down on both door windows with no screens (it was a beautiful and pleasant desert night) was all the invitation they needed to come party in my cab all night long. Oh, and what's up with flies and their apparent affinity for human FACES? Hmmm? They can't go bother the cooler, or my wind breaker, or at least my sock feet or boots under the steering wheel? NO!! My new crowd of fans want to all buzz sweet nothings in my ears or (please God let them at least be GIRL flies) dance and kiss on my lips!!!!

I finally come up outta the bunk like Jackie Chan . . . only HE probably woulda at least HIT some of them . . . instead of the slide out desktop . . . right on the cut from checking the APU problem. He probably wouldn't have hit his head on the corner of the closet and landed on his butt either. Still sore about that. Literally. Not metaphorically.

Note to fellow newbie glasses wearers: Make sure you put your glasses on BEFORE jumping around a dark sleeper and swatting at flies with your hands because: Mr. Miaggi and Bruce Lee did it, so you can too. Right? I suggest fly swatters and "Patience Grasshopper." Or you know; leave the windows closed or get screens. Working APU would probably be helpful too. It was anyway. Until it became a foreign object grinder. Still don't know what happened there. That's OK. God invented Zip-Ties and Duct Tape for a reason. New Independent Contractor's best friends. BTW, zip ties, duct tape, some rubbing alcohol and a clean shop rag can serve well when YOU FORGOT TO BRING A FIRST AID KIT.

So:

"Now I lay me down to sleep. I pray the Lord my soul to keep. If I should die before I wake; PLEASE DON"T LET MY CHILDREN EVEN THINK ABOUT DRIVING A TRUCK. Let 'em be Dr.'s and Lawyers and such. OK. Not so much Lawyers. Dr.'s or Bankers. That's it. Bankers. Well, maybe not so much Bankers either. Writers maybe. I don't know bout that either. Not Movie or Singing Stars for sure. That's just a truck driver with too much time and money. Not good.

Maybe . . .
Engineers . . . not railroad . . . maybe computers or space . . . nah; too much computing going on and not enough humaning going on as it is . . . maybe . . . maybe I just need to sleep and everything will be better with coffee in the morning.

Everything's always better with good coffee in the morning. Thanks for everything Lord. Especially good sleep and good coffee in the morning. AMEN."

Nite all.

 

That actually explains a lot about bugs. Believe it or not, I can use that info. Yeah, they'll never catch the guy. That's why I didn't report it to the police. Company; yes. Must have good records, but police? Nah. It's not that bad. $300 worth of plastic and aluminum parts I can remove and replace myself. Didn't do any real structural damage. Shouldn't have to do it at all but that's part of the risk as an I/C. Thanks for the info on bugs. I have an idea for a bug trap now. A sacrificial bottle of soda and some Dollar Tree Contact Paper. Soda sweetness and CO2 and sticky paper. Ought to be irresistible to the little devils. Thanks Ma'am. I'll let you know how it works.

Thanks. I got to really thinking after I wrote that and laid down. You know; those wore slap out drifty off to sleep thoughts. "You pulled full miles. Ended the day with nobody hurt and nobody else's property damaged. No accidents. Everybody around you going home the same way they left. It was a great day. Let it go now. Tomorrow will be here soon. Let . . . [YAWN] her go . . ."

The coffee was real, REAL good this morning and I got the APU working. I had about 6" of heavy rubber tubing left over from a windshield washer repair. My wife teased me about being a pack rat keeping it. Ha, ha. Whose laughing now. I just saved what I guarantee TK would have charged me about $400 for fixing by doing it myself with "pack rat stuff." The fan was hitting the condenser coils. So I cut about four 1/4" - 3/8" ( I didn't measure - I eyeballed it) sections of that heavy rubber tubing out. It looked like the inside diameter and wall thickness would be tight enough on the mounting bolts to create bushings that would put the fan far enough back from the coils to keep the fan from scraping the coils, but still do it's job. It was. Nice and tight on the bolts. I tightened the bolts down to about 1/8" clearance so the rubber bushings would act like a lock washer too by putting back pressure on the bolts and flat washers, because naturally the Love's shop was closed and I didn't have lock washers that would work.

Fix worked. Pumping nice cold AC and a fantastic cup of coffee. Turned out that not only was the plastic fan cage with the motor mount messed up, but the metal mount housing and coil mount was too. If I had to guess, I'd swear someone high hooked it and the reefer they were hooking to bumped the whole unit, broke plastic, bent metal and misaligned everything but not enough to be apparent at the time. Took some bouncing down the road aways from the next driver (me) for the final "pop" to go and let the fan dig into the coils on it's next startup. Thankfully I heard it, killed it and didn't actually let it "dig" into the coils so no leaks. Now after a few hand scrapes, cuts and knuckle bruises it's back off the coils and spinning like a top.

WHEW!! Great coffee, good fix, I beat the rescue team to the relay point for the swap and digging on some no idle APU A/C in my "No Fly Zone." . . . better day. MUCH better day.

See? Everything's better with good coffee. Well, I'm quite sure the Good Lord had a hand in it too so I'll thank him much better tonight. I'm not as religious as I probably should be. I should probably be a lot better about church and stuff. But I know where my bread gets buttered every day and I always say please every morning and thank you every evening. We fuss every now and then but we get along pretty good. Got no complaints there and I'm grateful.

Thanks y'all.