Maverick .... from a wife's perspective

Happy Turkey day everybody.

Redcoat FINALLY made it home today around lunch time. After he dropped off his load in Springfield, VA yesterday (Wednesday) he got dispatched to York, PA to pick up a load of brick headed to Ft. Smith, AR. He left Springfield around 1430 after being delayed for an hour waiting on breakdown. There was an I-beam sticking out of a pile of them and when Redcoat backed up to get turned around, the back tire of his trailer just caught the end of it and blew the tire. ARRRRGH!!!! It took him 4 1/2 hours to work his way around D.C. and Baltimore up to York -- just a little over a hundred miles. The traffic was TERRIBLE. Typical for that area but doubly worse on the holiday. He was supposed to get up to York by 2030 which would have been plenty of time but then they changed it to 1830 and that wasn't going to work out. He got there around 1900 and by then was out of hours so he had to shut it down for the night.

He left York this morning and arrived here in Petersburg, VA just before lunch. We just got back from turkey dinner and Redcoat met my son and his family for the first time after we've been married for almost two years now. It was a good visit.

We plan on leaving for Raleigh tomorrow because I have to go to work on Saturday. Redcoat can still get in a reset and plans to leave for Ft. Smith Sunday afternoon. His load is due for delivery Tuesday morning.

Stranger -- update on my mom. She is currently going through radiation and chemo as she is fighting a tumor on the top of her head. The cancer has invaded the bone of her skull and is growing down into her brain. The doctors showed her the MRI results which told the story plain as day. They cannot operate and the doctors have told her that the treatment she is going through now is pretty much the last resort to try to stall the inevitable. My mom is enduring it well enough. Not too much pain yet. She is a strong woman of good Danish stock but this last round of treatment is taking a lot out of her. She gets tired very quickly. She has finally consented to coming to North Carolina with me and I'm going to get her at the end of December. She will stay with me until I finish my work in NC (or until she needs to go into hospice) and then we'll go back to Mississippi and try to live off Redcoat's earnings while I stay with her until the end. Thanks for asking about her.

Sarge, thanks for the constructive criticism on the tent tarping. I read your response to Redcoat and he was like, DOH! He had completely forgotten about the wood on top of the coils to tent the tarp. Also he did not know that he could get dinged safety points for not doing it and has resolved not to forget to do that the next time he gets that type of load. Grateful for the heads up on that deal.

That's all my news. Stay tuned.

 

Latest update.

Redcoat made it to Ft. Smith on time Tuesday morning. He stopped by the yard at Little Rock to drop off the tire and pick up some bungees. Then he joined the queue at Ft. Smith to unload.

Has anybody heard anything about Maverick and the contract with MacSteel?

He picked up a load from there and headed back across I-40 to Georgetown, KY. Dropped that load off this morning along with another Mav driver who said, "They'll probably send us up to Ghent..." And sure enough, that's where he is headed now.

Nothing like looking forward to humping all the wood and tarps from one trailer to the other.

Good news is, this load is another long haul to Houston, TX.

Ironeagle I don't consider your post to be callous. Your opinion matches mine and my mom's. She doesn't want any superhuman efforts to keep her around. My mom has been in the hospital since Friday. She was having serious back pain on Thanksgiving and knew something was terribly wrong. They did x-rays and found that one of her vertebra had broken. The doctors guessed that either the chemo was causing her bones to be brittle or the cancer has invaded her spine.

Monday they did a biopsy on her back and in the process of rolling her over on her stomach they broke her collar bone. She heard it pop so now her shoulder is also hurting. Not as much as her back though. They x-rayed her shoulder and found the fracture on her collar bone. Her oncologist came in yesterday and told her the bad news that the cancer has spread to her back. He will know today what kind it is and how aggressive it is.

My nephew has taken time off work to fly down to be with her until I can take off work at the end of the month. I'm trying to save up enough money to get us by on Redcoat's check so I can stay with my mom to the end.

It is true what you say about the pain. You resolve yourself to the fact that the end is near but its hard to watch someone try to deal with the pain involved. They have her on some hardcore pain meds. Not morphine but something that starts with a "D" that I can't remember but it's not Demerol. Something else.

And that's all my news. Stay tuned.