Post Gordon ~ Thoughts, Commentary & Reflections

Off until Monday!!

No run tomorrow, light weekend. Works well for me to get ready for 3 new chickens and duck. Heading to town for Brianne's Friday soup before Main Street Coffee runs out again!!

Identified 'obvious' good walking route up hill up above, then back down over hill and below in back. Needs some work, want it wide enough to easily negotiate wheelbarrow. Means don't hafta go down to Spencer Y for good aerobic exercise, plus my dog Freddie really enjoys it. Tika, not so much.

Two eggs out of nesting box so far this morning. I think 3 yesterday, don't remember exactly, at least 3 though. Lots of eggs right now, including a store-bought dozen, which I get from Aldi's whenever they're really cheap, which is quite often. Scrambled some of those and hand-fed to the hens this morning. They do like scrambled eggs. Chicken livers coming up shortly, too.

Also plan to put out more finely chopped egg shell...

 

Negotiating with Nick...

Brianne WAS out of soup after all--by 1 pm! 7 vegetable minestrone. Funny, the reporter from the Bloomington paper who wrote up the story on the homeless guy I helped out came in, had one of Bivi's tamales. Only spoke on the phone to her, did not identify myself today. She had been tweaked that I wouldn't let her use my name.

"Everyone knows you're in the middle of this, Victor," she badgered.

"If everyone knows, adding my name adds nothing, does it?" I countered.

Of course, the buffet in Terre Haute charged me 3x for the buffet; looks like finally straightened out. Where else but on the web could you find a phone number for a new place that just opened. Cool! Then I somehow managed to lose my phone, despite that I made call to Terre Haute from bed. Tore everything off, yada, yada. Left without it.

Tonight, saved by a web site that calls you on their dime. Found it!! Somehow crawled up an inside fold in pillow case; not all that easy to get out, either.

Rooster was back in the hen convent tonight; he's back with his brothers now. Got another whole chicken to practice breaking a whole chicken into pieces. Cooked up the thighs from the last one this morning--really good!! Fresh!! Shared with dogs. Not as fresh as one of those 3 roosters, I bet!!

Rooster, better watch it.

Got another egg out of nest box when I got back; total 3 today.

Habitat Restore had a bunch of free plywood. Got that. And some windows I'd been looking at for a while were still there.

Me: Got a minute, Nick?

We walked out back by the windows.

Me: These 6 inserts have been here forever, marked $5 each. Been watching them because I build a frame around, double them, makes very quiet and like super low-E...

Nick: You want inserts, huh. How about a buck.

Me: You can charge me more than THAT...

Nick: You can pay MORE, if you want.

Okay, I'm a cheapo. I put an extra $2 in the donation jar. Paid $6 for all 6.

Very cool!!

 

Bottleneck--Spencer, Indiana

They call this area 'Sweet South-Central Indiana' and it's known for two-lane, winding and hilly highways through lots of hardwoods. We sit in a basin, called the Owen Valley along the frequently flooding White River by McCormick's Creek State Park. I'm up on the first rim that forms the basin.

Actually, I'm what they call here in Indiana, 'out in the country.' Town's 6 miles south--Spencer, population about 2500 (29 churches and still adding new). Surprising amount of traffic for a town this size because you can hardly cross the county (population 25,000) east-west or north-south without passing through the little bottleneck of the one-mile through town, Morgan Street, aka Highways 46/67/231. Spencer's at the base of the basin.

East-west, we sit between IU (Indiana University) college town Bloomington (if you're a college basketball fan you'll recall Bobby Knight) and Terre Haute (if you ever picked up a Staples load, for example) running east-west on Hwy 46. Lots of traffic that way. We are also the 'main' north-south pass through west of Hwy 37, that connects Indianapolis and Bloomington.

From Spencer you can get to I-70 either going west out of town to Terre Haute, or north out of town up to Cloverdale--well, now you can get to Terre Haute since the bridge west of here is no longer out but still says '14-ton Limit.' Doesn't seem to deter Class 8 traffic from what I saw Thursday...

North-south, if you were at Gordon orientation there at Country Suites off I-465 (which circles the City and connects I-70, I-65, I-69 and I-74 in an outer loop around Indy), and drove the block or so on Flight School Road to Kentucky Road, aka Hwy 67, and went south on Hwy 67 out of Indy, you'd end up at 'The Junction,' which is just north of Spencer. All over the State people seem to know this 4-way stop north-south intersection where Hwy 67 joins into Hwy 231, and takes both through Spencer going south.

Up above The Junction, Hwy 231 drops directly down from I-70, 41 miles due west from Indianapolis, at Cloverdale, takes you to Spencer, too. So you have this triangle, Indy on the right, Cloverdale on the left and 18 miles below Cloverdale is Spencer with that one-mile bottleneck where east-west traffic joins north-south traffic and it all passes through town.

Two lanes.

Town of Spencer has a small Wal-Mart, 3 grocery stores, hardware store, Wendy's, Taco Bell/KFC (or KFC/Taco Bell, if you prefer), McDonald's, Burger King, CVS, a Mexican restaurant, Chinese take out, 3 auto parts stores, 3 banks, library, restored Tivoli Theatre (thank you Bill Cook--R.I.P.), 2 large-ish manufacturers (Boston Scientific and Cook), YMCA and McCormick's Creek State Park just east of town over the White River. Good hiking trails, Canyon Inn (hotel and restaurant). White River floods often and we had two, over 90-year floods within the last 10 years...

Lately I don't get to Indy much.

Don't get to Terre Haute much, either, more now because of the cardiologist/internist I see there. Usually I'm in college town Bloomington a lot--17 miles east of Spencer, about a 25-mile hike for me. The yard I drive out of is on the west side of Bloomington, about a half-hour drive.

That's about 15-20 minutes less than the drive I had to the yard of the Prairie-run outfit, my last job. Drove past the yard 2x today going into Bloomington and coming back. Usually have a 'circuit' of to-do places to go to so like today, left around 3 pm and didn't get back until after 7 pm.

Very typical that 'day off' Bloomington trips take the entire afternoon...

Kills a lot of days, running to Bloomington. My primary errand today was pickup some strip-nails for Max pneumatic framing nailer I bought just recently--but had a whole series of 'usual' stops and still didn't manage to stop in to see a 96-year-old buddy at Bloomington nursing home, Bell Trace.

So there's still an important Bloomington 'to-do' left hanging. Nice, though, that after the run Tuesday, still have tomorrow (well, actually today) Saturday and Sunday left to get something done.

Poco a poco (little by little)...

 

Then There's Plan B

Just got a call, 6 am, Terminal Boss asking if I'd take a new run, never been to... he's scrambling, trying to cover something that or somebody who dropped out. Gonna scramble 2 not just 1 in this scenario.

When I remind him haven't been to X, he rings off and then rings back again.

So whoever was KY is now going where I haven't been and I'll be on my way to KY. Driver who had been today's KY will cover X instead...

Well, this is trucking in a nut shell, isn't it? Shell game.

My long 'weekend' Wed-Sun, just got truncated.

Okay, fine.

If this were OTR, wouldn't matter whether I'd been there or not, would it? No. Would be my problem to figure it out--oh, there'd be directions and fuel stops, of course. Then another set of directions once off the Interstate.

Here, it's just easier and makes more sense to switch me to a run I know and another driver to X... We'll both be home tonight. Plenty of time for me to take care of critters. Maybe even get some exercise up and down the hill.



//I was out back doing my uphill/downhill exercise (minimum 3x) when Wayne came down the hill at 9 am, tooted his horn. Has a nice, sharp air horn toot.

 

Old 'Give a Toot'

Yeah, when I had a chance to walk over and join in with the kibitzers, first thing I did was deadpan to Wayne that a truck much like his had tooted its horn by my place (as if I didn't know it was him). My sense of humor is not appreciated by all... dry, deadpan, sarcastic.

Some don't like it 'cause they can't tell when I'm joking. Or just don't like my jokes. Dunno.

"Oh, I knew you were awake, Vic. Saw your car running," said Wayne. Indeed it was. The maroon one has to warm up for 10-15 minutes before some valve or something in the tranny opens up and only then will shift up into the higher ranges from low. Runs fine after that. In the meantime, the dogs and I were hoofing up and downhill behind my place and I saw Wayne clearly at 9 am.

What I want to know is what time that boy started? Gee!! And why he was still on the yard when I got there. Jawing with Chekhov... Wayne, go home!! By the way, Wayne, the roosters start tooting and waking me up by around 4 am (often earlier). You can toot any time you drive by. No problem.

I was truck number 2 yesterday and when I arrived the green Volvo was still unloading and they were going around and around with him due to a new procedure that his old paperwork doesn't support. Oh, oh. Green Volvo driver, by the way, is 75-years-old, finally retiring this year... good guy.

This is his last year trucking. 75-years-old.

That delay gave time for our truck number 3 to arrive with only 9 pallets. Made sense to unload him first and we pallet jacked his 9 pallets off while they were going round-and-round with green Volvo. They had a bunch of pallets to go back and truck number 1 had left a freezer box for one of us.

Normally they forklift it all off. I had 29 pallets. 38K and change in the box.

Made sense to have truck number 3 take the freezer box and go. After all, now that he was empty, would unnecessarily delay him to run all those pallets in, and would be the same for me time-wise, whether the pallets went on him now or on me after I got unloaded. For that matter, I could have taken freezer box, too. As a result, truck number 3 arrived after me and left before me.

Good for him; made no difference for me. Not an especially long day, either.

But I like that we get a little exercise.

 

Back to Eeny Meanie

At least the run pays well enough that being called in when I expected off is not an insult to my wallet. Although I liked Gordon, every week seemed like a wallet insult. Such peewee pay checks!

Really could have used the time off and puts me back in the usual triage, try decide what can get done, if I have materials, enough time and what's most important. Tops on my list for today (since will probably run tomorrow, Monday) include setting up heated water stations for chickens, roosters and dogs. Since I caught Tika eating poultry feed a while back, the dogs have been put on back deck, much as I'd rather have them protecting chickens.

Bought a heater base and a couple heated waterers. Outdoor heavy duty, 12/3 cords. Accuweather says not too cold week upcoming. Cold enough.

For waterers outside, may have to construct some kind of cover. Need to prepare place for 3 new hens and duck. Can't just put in with others for a while. Need to be along side where they can all see each other and get used to each other; concerned for duck, too. His familiars won't pester him but chickens and roosters can be downright mean--well past merely hurtful--dangerous. Duck's a little guy...

Don't want anybody out there hurting the duck. Then there's the doghouse the couple with this new clan has offered. Haven't started the F350 for a while and may need a repair to clutch pedal linkage based on last time I futzed with it. But that would be easiest way to get doghouse over here.

And I've been wanting to get new Dewalt 15-gallon air compressor at least plugged in and test new (used) Max pneumatic framing nailer.

This list could go on indefinitely. There's the router/router table on the back deck that I bought and haven't brought in and checked out yet...

There's... and there's... and...

 

New Job Dislike Noted

My new job dislike?

Up until now was just the irksome, oversensitive city horn and have kinda got used to and successful in avoiding it for the most part. Doesn't bother as much. This new issue has no more chance (I think) of getting changed. This run wasn't too bad but last week's was. Hurtful.

Our day cabs have fixed fifth wheels bolted to the frame just ahead of where they should be; should be mid-way between drives. The result is severe backslap only a wife beater or masochist could fully appreciate. It's especially rough as you pass from short bridges to the apron to pavement where the truck bucks and heaves. Without seatbelt the jolt would put you right out of the seat. That bad.

Other drivers have told me that sliding the tandems a little makes a difference, but who wants to stop and play with that?? For that reason!! Last week got beat up pretty good all the way down, assumed had a sliding fifth wheel. Didn't, of course.

Didn't want to stop on the way down; pulled into Pilot at start of way back. Left trailer brakes set, released tractor, pushed what I thought was fifth wheel slider release and tugged and tugged. Was actually a fifth wheel pin release that's no longer functional--our fifth wheel pin release levers have to be pulled. Well, thankfully. Can you imagine... Vic drops trailer on nose. Not!!

You can probably imagine how sheepish and frustrated I felt when finally did the G.O.A.L. thing (Get Out And Look). Had been tugging on a fifth wheel firmly bolted to frame. Not going anywhere.