10 years--Gettin' back on the horse!

Thursday May 29, 2008

Today's been the day for squeeker docks:



This one is at a farmer's coop in Decatur, AL. And no... that's not mud on the ground—it's ground up nasty smelling hog feed/other various nasty smelling things.

The other trailers are in at an angle making it hard to judge where to put it to keep it straight with the dock. Not to mention the yellow I-beams holding up the roof with 3 inches to spare on either side. The yard guy says at least two or three sets of doors per day get ripped off in this dock. Nice!

I was gonna stop at the house on my way down to Florala, but they're taking so long to load this thing that I probably won't have time now. Ahh well.

 

I guess I never will learn my lesson, lol. This is my third time gettin' back on the evil horse. Like my insurance man said, "You just can't take the truck driver out of the truck!"

On another subject... have you noticed an increase of panhandlers asking for gas money now that the price of gas has gone up so much? I had a fairly well dressed woman, driving a newer Honda Element, ask me for "gas money" in the parking lot of a McDonald's in Cullman, AL. WTF?

I've gotta say, after driving truck in all the lower 48, you get to hear every sad story under the sun. This woman caught me by surprise though—I wasn't expecting her to slide me a line. As much as she looked legit though, my BS detectors were going off at full tilt. I told her, truthfully, "Sorry, I don't carry ANY cash."

I don't care how good your story is, I'm NOT the Money Store®.

 

HEEYY!! Now there's an idea!

I'll just stand on a corner in a warehouse district holding a sign that says, "Will haul freight for fuel money"

 

Where oh where did my last post go? Oh where oh where could it be?

 

Wednesday June 11, 2008

So, I'm sitting here at the ##### J in Jackson, MS. I just had a shower in probably one of the worst J shower rooms I've ever seen. Nasty ain't the word for it—a half a can of Lysol before I even got started.

Then I finish up and go out to see what they got to eat... I grab a Johnsonville brat and an ice cream bar and head to the truck. Hmm... the brat is lukewarm and the ice cream bar is not frozen. Lovely!

If I wasn't so #### tired I'd go back in to get a refund. Screw it... hopefully I don't die of food poisoning from eating a half cooked hot dog.

 

Saturday June 14, 2008

I should be sitting at the port of Panama City right now, getting unloaded, but I'm not. Instead, I'm sitting at the Pilot in Biloxi, MS waiting for a tire shop to open up.

I swear Murphy's law has kicked me in the nuts the last 3 Fridays in a row... everything can go along smooth all week, then Friday hits and bam! Something prevents me from getting home on time.

I've come to the conclusion that those little valve cap extenders are a bad thing—this will make the umpteenth time I've woke up, done my pretrip and found a flat tire because the extender was stuck just a wee bit open. This morning I had one that was completely flat... aired it up and only made it 15 miles down the road before it blew out the sidewall.

I am religious when it comes to checking the tires. I check them every morning, when they're cold, with a gauge. After experiencing a couple of flats when the valve core stuck, I started spraying the core with soapy water after gauging, just to make sure they weren't leaking after I checked the pressure. One little grain of sand is all it takes to make those extenders leak! Apparently even this measure didn't help—still got a flat.

So... the extenders will be coming off and getting replaced with Crossfire pressure equalizers, even if I have to pay for them myself. There is nothing I hate worse than sitting wasting time and money because of flat tires.

 

Good morning... er, afternoon now.

I got the tire fixed and I'm typing this from the comfort of my couch at home. Kinda screwed up my 3400 mile week... ahh well, I'll take it down to Panama City Monday morning and be ahead of the game for next week.