Round Trippin'

DATELINE: WEST MEMPHIS, AR, 10:45 p.m. CST

Miles Today: 407

Well, I'm back tonight from whence I started yesterday. I made my delivery this morning, and while my trailer was being unloaded, my next assignment came in, even before I could send in my "empty call" message. There was a good reason for that, though; my pickup was at the same place where I was. I thought that might be a possibility, because I had made a pickup at that site once before.

Anyway, the delivery was a live unload, and it took over an hour and a half. The pickup was a drop-and-hook, though, so that went quickly. My new load is headed back along most of the route I had just travelled, to Irving Texas, to another customer to whom I've delivered loads twice before. So I'm getting good, long looks at I-40 and I-30 this week.

The load isn't due for delivery 'til 11:30 Thursday morning, so I have plenty of time to get there (about 48 hours from pickup to delivery, and only about 13 hours of driving). So I've stopped back here at the terminal and have an appointment for my truck's regular maintenance check at 8:00 tomorrow morning. (The message telling me my truck was coming due for the service came in just as I was leaving here yesterday, of course. They couldn't have let me know that when I was here on my 34-hour break Saturday night and Sunday.) Assuming the maintenance work goes quickly in the morning, I'll have plenty of time to get to (or at least a goodly ways on my way to) the Dallas area (Irving is a Dallas suburb) afterwards. Then it'll be a quick drive to the delivery after I sleep in a bit Thursday morning.

I'm in a bit better mood this evening than last. Following my two online poker tournament wins last night, I played one more after arriving here tonight and won it, too! This one was quite interesting because it got down to the final three fairly quickly (it was a 6-handed game to begin with), then the battle went back and forth for quite a while, well past the 1-hour mark before we could eliminate the 3rd place finisher. Interestingly, he had been the chip leader when we went to the 3-way stage.

The heads-up battle between me and the eventual runner-up went back and forth for another long while before I finally got lucky--admittedly--on a couple of hands and took a huge chip lead, after having been well behind before the lucky swing. After that it wasn't long before my worthy opponent went all-in with a marginal hand (he was pretty much forced to because of his small chip count compared to the size of the blinds) against my strong one, and I took the win. After that prolonged battle, I had had enough cards for the night. I'm now happy and tired.

So that was my day, a bright, sunny one all day long. Thanks for checking out today's report. Do me a favor and submit a comment, and keep on truckin'.