Catchin' Up

DATELINE: WEST MEMPHIS, AR

Greetings, readers. Pardon my updatelessness the past few days, but it's been hectic out here. I am very tired tonight so I'll keep this short; just enough to let you know where I've been, where I'm going, and why I missed those few days.

As you recall when last I wrote, I was in the Chi-town area to pick up a load and haul it to Texas. I did pick it up early Friday morning and headed south through Illinois, aiming for our terminal in West Memphis, AR to spend the night. My truck was due some regular maintenance, so I called and made an appointment to have that done while I was there. I got there an hour before my appointment, dropped my keys...well, to make a long story short, I was there for almost 24 hours, and since my truck was unavailable to me most of the time, I didn't get much sleep. (And I couldn't get to my laptop to keep y'all updated.) So I then had to revert back to an overnight driver to get my load to Sulphur Springs for my 3:40 a.m. Sunday delivery appointment. Made it, but with just one niggling little glitch that I won't goo into now.

OK, after that delivery, I headed down the highway to find a truck stop or rest area for some snoozin'. It only took 60+ miles to find one. And after my shut-eye (only 5-ish hours, still having trouble sleeping a full shift), I tried to log on to the 'net but found that, way out in the middle of nowheresville, TX, I had no Verizon signal (I have a Verizon card for my laptop to enable my online capabilities on the road). So no update Sunday, either.

Sunday afternoon I got my next assignment: head up to Shawnee, OK for a pickup to haul to Atlanta. OK, so that meant hit the road as soon as I complete my 10-hour break in order to make that pickup and start the trek eastward. The trip to and the pickup went just fine, so I headed towards USA's terminal (and company HQ) in Van Buren, AR. This was another overnight drive, and with my growing lack of sleep, a tired one. After a couple of wrong turns in Van Buren(more bad/incomplete directions) I finally found the place at about 3:30 a.m. and hit the sack. I was awakened by my message box beeping to alert me to a new message just before 9:00 a.m., so that made another short sleep. The message was from my dispatcher asking me to come into the building (we have GPS in the truck, so he knew I was in the yard) for a safety meeting. They hold such meetings quarterly for the drivers, who can attend when they're at one of the terminals giving the meeting. I dutifully went in and sat through the 30-minute presentation. Since I was up, I decided I might as well take advantage of the terminal's facilities, namely the showers and laundry. While at Van Buren, my dispatcher let me know that instead of taking my load all the way to Atlanta, I'd just take it to West Memphis and swap it with another driver. He'll take that one and I'll take his to Lawton, Oklahoma. And that's where I sit now, readying for sleep and catching y'all up with my travels. This was just a quick once-over, without all the troubles filled in. It was an "interesting" weekend. I'm just too tired for full disclosure right now.

I am very fatigued, so sleep oughta' come pretty quick. If all goes well, I'll write again tomorrow night, once I get set up in southwestern OK. Thanks once more for reading, and I hope your life wasn't too empty without my updates the last few days. I hope to keep such absences to a minimum.

As always, keep on truckin'.