DATELINE: FLORENCE, KY, 10:30 p.m. EDT
Miles Today: 336
Well, I'm back at it, not so fresh from a couple of days at home. "Not so fresh" because I had lots to do and didn't get to sleep 'til around 2:00 this morning. Then I got up about 2 hours later so Mrs. R.T. could drive me to my truck on her way to work. So fatigue was a big part of the day. Anyway, here's how my day went.
I got back in my truck just a little after 5:00 and sent in my "back to work" message to dispatch. I hoped that perhaps it'd take a while for my load assignment to come in and that I could catch a few winks while waiting. After settling into the truck, putting away some of my clean laundry and such, I finally stretched out on my bunk right around 6:00. Within a minute my assignment message came in, so I had to get to work. Especially because my first pickup was scheduled for 7:00.
That's right, my first pickup; this load includes 2 stops at each end. The pickups were in Wyandotte, MI and Livonia, MI. The deliveries are a bit further away and farther apart: the first is in Morgan City, LA (extreme southern LA) on Thursday morning, the second is in Laredo, TX on Friday morning. That gives me plenty of time (3 days plus) to mosey the 1000-ish miles on down to stopoff1, but I'll really have to haul asterisk to get to Laredo within a day, another 650 or so miles away.
Anyway, the pickups went just fine, although the second took a little long, a bit over an hour. The first was a drop-and-hook. The problem with today, besides the short sleep, was that the most direct route was down I-75 through Ohio. I seriously considered heading west along I-94 through Michigan to take I-69 through Indiana, bypassing Ohio altogether. But I decided to tough it out and take the shorter route.
After I'd been driving a while, my fatigue started reaching a critical mass, so I pulled into a truck stop in North Baltimore, OH for a nap. I was planning on about an hour for that nap, but it actually stretched a bit to 90 minutes. That gave me enough alertness to make it this far, the Rest Area/Kentucky Welcome Center near Florence. I was planing to drive a bit farther today, closer to Louisville, but I got to Cincinnati at rush hour and spent over an hour crawling through the traffic there. That plus heavy rain and dusk settling in led me to decide to shut it down here. (I guess my lack of sleep may have had some part in the decision, too.)
So that's my story, and I'm stickin' to it. Thanks for checking up on me. Drop me a line so I'll know I still have an audience, and keep on truckin'.
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1 comment:
Mrs. R.T. is only minimally remorseful for your lack of sleep, since it looks like you're catching up. So stop whining! But you can whine about having to drive thru OH; what other reaction could be humanly possible? My condolences.
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