Meet Me in St. Louie, Louie

DATELINE: VINITA, OK, 10:40 p.m. CDT

Miles Today: 493

Boy, I should be more tireder than I am now, considering I got up at 4:30 this mawnin' after a short night o' sleep, then put in a 14-hour work day. (Well, it was only 10-1/2 hours of work, but over a 14-hour period.) Then, after parking here, I went online and played some more poker. I'll probably feel the fatigue tomorrow, though. But enough about my sleep deprivation, let's get on to how the day went.

As I mentioned, I was up good 'n early, then on the road at 5:00. I reached my delivery site by 6:15; just a little early, which is good. I wrote yesterday that I had fears about the tiny lot/docks area at the site, but those fears had no basis today. True, it was still the same small lot, but I was the first truck there and the dock they had me back into was wide open--no other trucks/trailers in the adjoining docks to back around. That made it much easier. Unloading went very quickly, then the only quasi-difficult part came.

The company is having their side parking lot re-built, and today was the day the cement trucks came to pour the lot's surface. Not a problem for getting into the docks area, but the cement trucks had to get to the new lot via the driveway I needed to use to exit. So I had to wait a bit 'til they moved out of my way.

While I was waiting, my next assignment message came in: drive over to Arlington, TX and pick up a load bound for 2 drop-offs in Illinois. So I checked my map, found my route, and headed Arlington way.

My pickup was scheduled for 10:00 a.m., but I got there and checked in at about 7:45. This was a drop-and-hook pickup but, unfortunately, they hadn't loaded the new trailer yet. So I parked the empty trailer I had brought with me where they had indicated, unhooked it, then parked my cab and waited. I did some paperwork, some reading ("Full Tilt Poker Strategy Guide, Tournament Edition"--a good book if you're interested in improving your poker game), and some puzzles in a copy of Games magazine I have with me.

They had told me they'd come get me when the trailer was loaded and ready for me. But long about 10:20 or so, I was still waiting. I went in to check on the load's progress. It took the shipping clerk a few attempts to find the proper paperwork, and lo and behold the load was indeed complete and ready to roll. So I hooked up the trailer to my truck and hit the road.

This load doesn't deliver 'til Monday, 4 days hence, and it's only a 2-day drive, so I'll be dropping this trailer at our drop yard in St. Louis on Friday, whenever I can get there. It's still a goodly long drive across Missouri (~300 miles), so I'll use a good portion of my allotted driving hours tomorrow to get there. But I should have enough left to go get another load afterwards.

Anyway, after making the pickup in Arlington, I headed north on I-35 to Oklahoma City, where I picked up I-44 and am taking that northeast to St. Looie. Portions of this highway are turnpike, and I've stopped for the night at a service plaza along the 'pike. I had figured early in my drive that I'd reach here just about as my 14-hour work window was closing, and I was just about dead-on; I made it with 5 minutes to spare.

As I mentioned, after parking (and grabbing dinner at the McDonald's here built over the roadway) I went online to hit the virtual felt. Lately I've found a new favorite game at Full Tilt Poker--the 6-handed Sit-n-Go tournaments. (No-Limit Texas Hold-em, of course.) They go a little faster than the normal 9-handed SnGs, and I think I play a little better at a short-handed (fewer players) table. Not that my luck's any better, as I've been taking an infuriatingly large number of bad beats and suck-outs, and had some long stretches of being card-dead. (If you're not up on poker terminology, I apologize for this deviation from trucking talk. But that's what I feel like touching on right now.) But I do generally last a good long while in each, unless the bad luck hits early.

Back to trucking, reader Dennis the Accompanist inquired about my least favorite intersection/interchange to drive through. (Check his comment after yesterday's post for his exact wording.) I can't think of any one specific place that I "regularly" encounter, but there was one place around Newark that blew my mind. I've only driven that stretch once, but it was a "Spaghetti Junction" with entrance and exit ramps coming and going this way and that, and narrow, potholed roadbeds. I almost read-ended another truck that had stopped completely (all the other traffic was flowing at normal speeds) in order to cross to a ramp. And the signs in the area were confusing, to boot. (A couple different streets with similar names.) So I hope I don't have to go back there.

Well now, it's getting later and later, and I do believe I am now starting to get a bit tired. So I'll wrap this up and say, "Good night!" Thanks once more for following along, drop me a comment, and keep on truckin'.