Swift - Starting the New Year training with Swift 1/7/13 - A long read...

Good advice. I will keep that on mind.

I had some more downhill experience today going down Grapevine in CA. No overspeeds this time.

Definitely!

 

Spending the night here at the fed ex terminal in Oakland to pickup in the morning. We drove up from phoenix. California is a crazy state. Seems I had to stop at every scale for some reason. I'm starting to understand what they meaby The Peoples Republic of California. Beautiful state but restrictions everywhere.

I was driving up I-5 North when I saw a cropduster plane up ahead flying low over the fields. It was to my left and circling around. I got out my cell camera, held it to the window and hit record. The plane started to pace my truck off to my left flying towards the road just ahead of me. He was literally feet off the ground. He dropped his load dusting the ground below as he approached the highway. He just barely skimmed the roof of a car coming from the opposite direction and as he flew feet above the highway he pulled up as he crossed over in front of me. Awesome. It was like watching an air stunt show right there in over the fields of the California valley. I must have watched the video four times today in near disbelief.

It's a beautiful state. The migrant workers were busy working the fields further up. I smelled manure long before I saw, to me, the biggest stockyard of cattle that seemed to stretch for miles along I-5. As we passed lemon and orange orchards we guessed what other crops existed that we saw growing. Possibly nuts as they grew on trees.

We ate at In and Out Burger and it was delicious. Reason to rave.

Going to SLC tomorrow. Im at 200 hours and in the final stretch. Should be done with my 240 soon.

 

Jakaby I agree. The burger and fries were delicious. You could tell it was more fresh than your average fastfood. Got the double-double but not sure if I had the animal fries. I don't think so. Mine were pretty normal looking. Can't wait to hit that place again. We went to the Oakland location complete with armed guard outside. Talked with him for a while about what goes on around there.

Hi Bis. Once I get my own truck I will get used to the jake on that one. As it is, I'm getting used to the Cascadia's. Today I had a pretty light load and I could keep it in 7th down the hills with the jake on either high or medium. For some reason this Jake pulls like crazy and it works great. Now it's more a matter of paying closer attention to what I"m doing. I love the fact that we have jake brakes to use at all. They help a ton.

I finally got a chance to go over Donner Pass today and then over a few other passes in California and Nevada. I'm getting better at setting my speed for the downhill.

 

Dropped here in SLC, UT earlier and now just waiting at the SLC terminal for something to come up...more later.