Good Night From II

Oh man o man.

The things that happen in Swift terminals. As I'm reading this very thread and making my last post a guy walks up. It's kind of late here, not many people in the driver's lounge here at the Laredo terminal. Guy walks up and approaches me as I'm hiding out here in the corner on my computer.

I'll paraphrase but he basically comes up and asks if I can do him a favor. I'm thinking, uh oh here it comes. He tells me that he believes he got bit on his back earlier today by a tick and that the same tick is now in his back in a different location. This is what he tells me but having grown up with ticks on me and my pets this doesn't sound like tick behavior. But he insists it is a tick.

So it gets better.

He pulls up his shirt closer to the light here in the driver's lounge and shows me his back. Pimples everywhere, white heads, etc. Not trying to be gross but I'm setting the scene for what is to come.

He tells me he has tweezers in his truck and asks if I could do him a favor. At this point I'm getting that feeling that I've somehow now separated my consciousness from my actual body and that I'm somewhere up over my body, floating, looking down on this situation that can't possibly be happening. But it is happening and now I'm back in my body in disbelief.

Before he goes out to his truck he asks me to follow him into the men's room so we can both look at what he is talking about and he can show me while he is looking in the mirror. I'm not sure what this lady that is sitting over here on her laptop is thinking but I can only imagine. He shows me exactly the place he is referring to. It is a pimple he popped and it has a tiny dark scab on it. I tell him this as he looks at it in the mirror. No, he insists, it must be a tick, possibly a deer tick. It is not.

We come back out of the bathroom, I go sit down while he gets his tweezers. He comes back inside. I'm thinking that I was just going to leave about 5 minutes before this whole fiasco. But I didn't and now here I am. He is back inside, looks at me and heads to the men's room. So here we go.

Back in the men's room he hands me the tweezers. As gently as I can I'm picking this black spot off of some grown man's back in the public bathroom at a truck terminal. I show him what I removed and he agrees, yes, it was a scab from his pimple.

More talk about how he doesn't get ticks in his native Michigan. That's odd but whatever. I'm disgusted, packing the computer up and I'm going to bed before someone has me cutting corns off of their feet or something similar.

 

I just lost my appetite...

 

Walmart in Sidney, NE. 6ºF and temperature's dropping. Stars are out but a light snow is falling, those tiny little crystals in the air.

Starting from that great rest area in Wiggins, CO late this morning I pushed on to Rapid City, SD to make my drop and sweep at Target and took a 30 after finishing moving the trailers. The roads were bare and dry the whole way, not much wind, a perfect day for driving. I absolutely love west South Dakota. I imagine huge herds of Tatanka covering the rolling grassland.

Tomorrow I'll deliver the sweep trailer in Pueblo. I've been watching MyRadar all day and it seems the snow storm has been hovering over the entire Denver/Pueblo area all day today. Any word on how things are down there?

 

LOL Grrrrrrrrr Would it be wrong to say shaddup already in the nicest possible way??

I MISS my flip flops!!!

 

Yep; learned it the hard way. The simple version:

8+ hours in the sleeper "freezes" your 14 hour clock. Obviously your 8 hour "break" clock will have reset. Your 11 won't change (you're not driving), and your 70 won't change (you're not on duty).

When you come off sleeper (even to off duty!), your 14 will continue. Do what you need to do, and then take another 2 hours on either off duty or sleeper, and your 11 and 14 will reset... EXCEPT for what you used between your 8 and 2. Effectively, your day started when you came off of your 8.

An example:

Pull into a truck stop 30 minutes from your destination. You have 2:00 left on your 11, 3:00 left on your 14. Go into sleeper.

8 hours later, your 14 will jump from -4:59 to 3:00, where it will stay until you either leave sleeper, or have spent 10 hours off duty.

Pretrip 15 minutes, drive 30 minutes, trailer drop 15 minutes. Clocks: 11 - 1:30; 14: 2:00.

2 hours off duty. Your clocks will be:
8: 8:00
11: 10:30
14: 11:00

Kind of strange to wrap your brain around, but once you get it, it's simple.

 

I have done splits before; I am familiar with how they work. My question was more in regard to back-to-back 8's or pauses?

A bit more backstory, I got a nice 750 mile load with plenty of time on it that picked up Tuesday afternoon and delivering Thursday morning. Detroit-ish to Willmar, MN. Live & Live. I have family that live in Minneapolis that are always telling me to call them whenever I come through. I haul ### Tuesday night covering 701 miles. Shut down at mm10 at the Flying an in Wisconsin along I94 at 0500 Wednesday. I had 7min on my drive time, and figured that the J had better parking prospects than the TA at mm4.

I went down for just an 8sb at the J, and then relocated at 1300 to the TA for a shower. So that's 8 hours sleeper. 7min drive. 2 hours off. 8/2.

Affer the 2 for the shower, I drive another hour to a Wal-mart that I can park at and my family comes to pick me up. Got there about 1630, I went out to eat and did some shopping with family, and then got back to the truck around 2130. Three hours later, Wal-mart is banging on my door telling me to leave. Apparently an elderly gentlemen had parked his sedan under a trailer, so they were asking everyone to please leave.

Decided I'd just go for broke and went ahead and drove the 2 hours to my final in hopes of getting lucky with parking nearby. I got lucky. Made my final on time, and managed to squeeze in another 8sb in hopes that I could recover from effectively starting my clock a good 5 hours before I intended. Otherwise, Thursday was looking like it was going to be a wash for productive driving.

So basically, I had done an 8, a 2, then an 8, and finally another 8. The qualcomm seems to have a great grasp on how splits work. So when it said that I was good to go after two 8's, I was super elated.

 

doc...shouldnt complain tooo much. you agreed to help him.i would've told him to go to the doctors.

 

The easiest way I've explained back to back 8's is. Take the time you used from the end of your first 8 to the BEGINNING of your second 8. And subtract that from a fresh 11/14 clock. That's what you'll have when you come off of sleeper berth.

example: I finished my first 8 break and I have whatever left on my 11/14 (doesn't matter as it doesn't pertain to the 8/8 split). After I finish my first 8. I drive 3 hours and have a total of 1 hour extra on duty for fuel, pti's, etc. Then i take a second 8 break. Now to calculate what I would have when I came off of my second 8 hour break. I'll subtract the 3 hours I drove and the 1 hour on duty I used between the two 8 breaks. Therefore after the second 8 break. I'll subtract the 3 hours driving from the 11 clock. Which gives me 8 hours drive time. Then the extra hour on duty plus my drive time. So 3 + 1 = 4. And take that from my 14. So 10. So my clock will be 8/10.

Hopefully that was easy enough to understand. Sometimes I over complicate things as I'm typing them lol.

 

Still at home. Finally back to work in the morning. Had a nice talk with IEL yesterday and again today and found out that they changed the Lease. Now instead of 4 years only 3 now. With me retiring in just a little over 2 years they told me that no problem. I can walk away when retire and no penalty. So today ordered my new 2016 T680 fully equipped and the color that I want and a Automatic. Only problem, 3 months. Possibly one sooner and instead of going to PHX they will have it delivered to Memphis.

 

Well I'm stoked. My old dedicated gig snagged me up and had me bobtail the 200 miles I was away from them to here. I snuck into the Troutdale terminal, dropped my empty (literally the closest spot to the gate,) shot a Mac 5&6, called and got my deadhead order, and bob tailed three hours to the old gig. I couldn't be more pleased for the week. Hopefully freight keeps up and I can hang out here making the old runs and catching up with friends for a while.