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

At the Sumner terminal after a long run from Missouri. I am beat.


I'm here at Sumner to get a mandatory B service. I got the message before I even picked up the last load that my B service was due 200 miles prior and that I had 1900 or so miles in which to get the service done. Or be put on a maintenance hold. Thankfully I made it here without interruption and I am now in the shop for the B service. I should be back on the road Thursday morning and then I'll plan on a few days off, some real time off, for Easter out in Virginia. And I'll get out there to get my taxes done.


Too much time on the road...

All this time on the road is finally catching up to me and I can feel it. I'm getting cranky on the road and I don't like the way I'm reacting to other drivers and the 4-wheelers. I'm too tense. I'm catching myself being overly critical over every little thing every single person is doing out on the road and everywhere else, including fuel stops. I'm just a big ol' B lately and I don't like it. I can barely be around myself. I've had to shut my CB off just so I don't go on a rampage like the arsehole I've been.

I try to find my special place of peace out on the interstate - find the right radio station, traffic is minimal, weather is good. Then the stupidest thing happens - another semi drifting into my lane, a 4 wheeler coming over in front too close, someone that can't maintain a consistent speed, even another semi driver not being courteous - and I'm all pissed off. It's ridiculous. The formula works out to show that my irritability increases exponentially with every incident as my time on the road increases and the lapses of quiet in between play a smaller role in keeping me at peace. So it's about that time for some real time off.

But there are other ways to unstress and the lack of some things makes me an unruly animal...


Finally some female company. No, not a lot lizard...

I was supposed to have some company tonight but it looks like she is coming by here tomorrow night instead. She is nervous about finding the terminal and getting lost at night. That's her, always nervous about silly things. I'm actually surprised that she is coming to see me since the last couple of times I was out here she didn't seem interested. She ignored my texts when I mentioned I was on my way out so I was surprised when she responded this time. When I asked her about it she mentioned that it is too hard on her to see me only for me to leave a day later. But this time she has been receptive.

Tomorrow night she wants to stay the night with me. I was surprised when she brought it up so of course I didn't fight it. It just adds to an already different kind of relationship that we have shared for about 15 years.

This individual, herein referred to as Ms. Boulder, is what brought me to Washington State originally. But I met her in Boulder.

When I moved to Boulder, Colorado from Chicago years ago I was with a different ex that I had met in Chicago. This other ex had been attending the University of Chicago and I was in law school down in the loop. Despite the advice given to us at law school orientation to not fall in love, I failed to heed it. As a result, I never finished law school but she finished her masters at U. of Chicago and we decided to move upon the completion of her degree. She suggested we move to my home state of Jersey and I suggested moving to her home state of Colorado. Common sense and I both won out and we moved near Boulder where she would start working for the state's social services and I would work for, what was then, MCI WorldCom's regulatory legal department.

It wasn't long after she and I moved near Boulder that the relationship started to fail. I stayed in the apartment, she moved out and we split up. That's when I met Ms. Boulder. She was from Washington State but had been out in Colorado helping out her dad. We hooked up, eventually moved in together and then subsequently split up over my moving back east to enter the NYPD. I was being "fast tracked" at the time, I was flying back east to start the process and I told her that once I was accepted that I did not want her to come with me. She went back to her home state of Washington and I went back to Jersey. As it turned out, my poor credit was the one thing that was delaying me from getting into the NYPD so I worked on repairing it while driving a cab on midnights, the 6 PM to 6 AM shift, and writing about the experience. Months later we reconnected from different coasts and continued the relationship 3000 miles apart, mostly via phone conversations. I was still trying to fix my credit when she mentioned that she wanted me to move out to Washington. I loved Jersey City, I loved my neighborhood and where I lived but after a few close calls with some unsavory types and after a buddy of mine, another hack that drove for the competing cab company, was shot in the face and killed I decided to scrap my plans for the NYPD. I would pick up and start all over again somewhere new. I was off to Washington State, a place that I had only visited once when I went to visit Ms. Boulder, and a place that couldn't be more different than the abrasive and sketchy streets of Jersey City.

As it seems to be the case, whenever I move for a girl it doesn't last. Once again, it happened but it was a couple of years after my move to Washington. But before we would break up we got engaged, me proposing to her on a bench about midway up the wood-planked boardwalk that crossed the center of the Brooklyn Bridge, high above the East River and a few feet above the vehicle traffic that traveled off to the sides and below the walkway.

It was one of my favorite places to walk years earlier with a close buddy. My buddy, Gilberto, was one of the only people I have ever met that was a "walk and talk" friend. We could spend hours discussing those things that amazed and perplexed us while walking for miles. James Joyce once said that Dublin was one of these cities conducive to walking and talking. I would argue that the same could be said for a late night walk across Manhattan and the Brooklyn Bridge. This buddy and I would take the PATH train subway from Jersey City over to either the World Trade Center or up to Christopher Street, walk all the way over the Bridge to Brooklyn Heights and then walk the Promenade. So when the time came, after living together in Colorado, the long distance relationship from coast to coast and then living together again in Washington, the Brooklyn Bridge seemed right at the time. But we never made it past the engagement to actually get married. I don't remember how it all went wrong but we broke up and a few years later I was getting married to Satan herself, my exwife. I lost touch with Ms. Boulder during this time of dating my exwife, marrying my exwife and then separation and divorce. And about a year ago, I can't really remember, I was hounding Ms. Boulder to meet up with me and she relented. That night, after many drinks with her while on a home time here in Washington, I took her back to my hotel.

Since then it's been us sending the occasional text hello but not much more. When we reconnected after the hotel meeting she tried to convince me to reconsider relocating out here in Washington. Although my home address is technically out here in Tacoma, I don't live here. I have a storage unit with some things, a motorcycle at this terminal and that is about it. I have some friends I occasionally see, rarely would be more specific. My connections out here are few. And I have no desire to give Washington another shot. I told Ms. Boulder this. The next time I put down roots they will be in Virginia near my parents. They are at that age where I want to be there for them, to give back for all the times they have given me. I can't make any exceptions to this and I told Ms. Boulder this. All of her family is here in Washington and she doesn't want to move. I understand that. So that is the impasse.

But there has been a slight break in this deadlock and tomorrow night I will see her and spend the night with her. And maybe on Thursday I will get back on the road a lot less cranky and with a lot less stress.

 

Thanks. Yes, I agree completely about getting away from trucking. Whenever I'm out of the truck that is my time off. I try to avoid the extra truck talk, this includes the terminals and the truck stops. I notice this at a lot of our terminals when I'm there. The group that is outside is usually talking about everything trucks - loads, gripes, outlandish stories, etc. It drives me nuts. I would hang around more with them if they were talking about anything other than our job. We spend enough time as it is working that any time outside the truck I don't want anything to do with trucking. Another reason I park at WAlmarts all the time. It allows me to feel like I'm not actually doing anything to do with trucking, if that makes sense.

 

Thanks. Yes I do somewhere. They are still a jumbled mess. Either on my external hard drive or my other laptop. I never brought my laptop with me since they were always trying to rob me so I jotted everything down on notepads and sometimes I just wrote my notes on whatever copy of the NY Times I had that night.

It's kind of funny how I got into it. When I went back east I moved back into a building that I had lived in before moving to Chicago. Although this time I was on the 2nd floor and not the 3rd. When I moved back I needed to get into a job pretty quick to make some money. I like to think that I have a lot of my maternal grandfather in my genes. He was the total New Yorker to me. He was a high rise iron worker, ex-Navy WW2 vet, raised in upper Manhattan above Harlem, owned an Irish bar with a crooked cop as a partner and he drove a cab in NYC for a while. He was an old school, tough guy New Yorker and I looked up to him. My grandmother, his wife, was the same way although she was from the Bronx. In the back of my mind I always had driving a cab on my bucket list but it had to be in NYC or somewhere very similar. Kind of a weird bucket list item but the life and job fascinated me and I knew little about it before then.

The problem with driving in NYC is that there are a decent number of requirements. Not only with the Taxi and Limo Commission but even leasing a cab. So when I moved back to Jersey City I hooked up with a buddy of mine who was driving at the time for a shady cab company called A-1. They drove out of Jersey City but we also drove into NYC, Hoboken and other surrounding areas pretty often. We could drop off in NYC but we could not pick up there under any circumstances. Kind of like the rules in trucking between the U.S. and Canada. So at times, once I dropped my fare off in NYC, I found myself with people rushing my cab in NYC trying to hop in just to have to kick them out.

The job was positively miserable as far as trying to make a living. But it was as colorful as could be as far as the experience. It wasn't just the crazy 6PM to 6AM shift that I worked but the actual cab company I worked for. I actually worked for the cab company two different times over two years.

The first time was for an Irish family, a father and his two sons that grew up in these housing projects off of Newark Ave. They were as shady as shady could be. The cabs were always in an extreme state of disrepair - exhaust fumes leaking into the cab making me sick and dizzy, my customers complaining and getting out because they couldn't stand it. I drove with no headlight just using my 4-ways all night until I had enough and told them I'm bringing the cab back in. Doors that wouldn't open, windows that wouldn't close, wobbly tires, etc. They were true POS. They had one mechanic that worked there that tried to keep up and I had to pick him up often at these projects near Lafayette Houses that we called "the mud houses". So every time I went to pick him up from his place or drop him off I risked getting robbed. The problem with refusing to drive a car or turning it in early during your shift was that you would be punished. The next day you would show up for work and they would say, "sorry, no car for you. Go home and come back again tomorrow". I needed the job and wanted the experience so I complied most of the time. Sometimes I was refused a car for days. When I left the job and came back months later it was different owners this time. Middle Eastern guys that were suspicious of everything and they always thought everyone was trying to rip them off.

The pay was terrible. Slow nights like a Monday or Tuesday were the worst. The danger of me getting robbed seemed to be highest then and the number of fares I had were the lowest. There were nights I went home with $35 after 12 hours. It was a tough life. And the other cabbies were as sketchy as the job itself. I could tell you some stories about running drugs, hookers, pimps, psychos and one time Jenny McCarthy and her girls to a club. It was a colorful life but I wouldn't do it again.