Busy Day, Lazy Weekend

DATELINE: OTTAWA LAKE, MI, 7:00 p.m. EDT


Oops! Missed a couple days again, didn't I? Sorry, faithful readers. Sometimes I'm just too tired when I finish a work day (Thursday) or when I finally get disgusted with my poker results (last night). I'm getting pretty tired now, too, but I finally had a good day adding to my poker bankroll, so I'm in a good enough mood to blog up. So here's what I've been up to the last 3 days.

THURSDAY, 246 Miles
Busy, busy day, with a good bit of waiting around. I started out with an hour-long drive to my first(!) delivery in York, PA. It was a drop-and-hook (D&H) delivery, I arrived an hour early (6:00 a.m.), and it went nice 'n quickly. Except it had no "Hook" part. The company didn't have any empty trailers for me to take with me after docking the loaded one I brought in. But that turned out not to be a problem 'cuz my next pickup, on the other side of York, was a pre-loaded trailer.

So that was a quick hook-up, then I was on my way to its destinations. Yes, plural. The load was bound for 2 stops, with both deliveries scheduled that same day. The first was set for 11:00 a.m. in New Castle, DE, the second in Bellmawr, NJ at 1:00 p.m. Since it is late, I'll skip the detailed version of events, but the first delivery went fine (once I found the place--more not-quite-detailed-enough directions), but I had a long wait at the second. That one took 3-1/2 hours or so.

After completing the 2nd delivery, I bopped on over to a service plaza along the NJ Turnpike. I was down to less than 2 hours left on my 14-hour clock for the day, but Dispatch did send me another assignment. It was for a pickup in Mt. Laurel, NJ, right near where I was. I was concerned that if I went over to make the pickup, I'd wind up having to break the 14-hour reg. But Dispatch told me I'd be pickup a pre-loaded trailer, so it wouldn't take long. So off I went.

I got there with about 45 minutes left on that ticking clock. But when I went in to check in and gave the clerk there my load number, he claimed it was a bad one. So I hopped back in my truck to see if I could get a proper load number from Dispatch. Well, that clock was ticking, and I needed to get to a place to park for the night before my workday hit that 14-hour mark, so I just left. Dispatch could figure out the load number problem overnight and I'd pick up the load in the morning. (The load delivers to 2 sites in the Chicago area on Monday, so a late pickup was not a problem. Getting a slap-on-the-wrist phone call from Compliance about hours of service violations would be a problem.)

I wound up at a TA in Paulsboro, NJ, 20-ish miles away. (Not a lot of truck stops in that area.) As I mentioned up top, I was just too tired from the long day and the stress about getting parked within the proper time frame. (Did I mention the TA parking lot was quite jammed, and I had to circle it a couple of times before I spotted an opening?) So I grabbed a quick bite for dinner and went straight to bed.

FRIDAY, 258 Miles
Yesterday I got up after my 10-hour break and headed back to the shipper. This time we got the right load ID (a different, apparently more on-top-of-things clerk was on duty) and I grabbed my assigned load. (Another D&H.) Since I don't have to deliver the load 'til Monday, and it's less than an 800-mile trip, I have plenty of time to make my way to northern IL. So I'm just taking shorter drives this weekend.

Yesterday I stopped at the TA in Breezewood, PA. Because I'd started up so early, it was just noon when I got there. So I used my copious free time to work on rebuilding my poker bankroll. Alas, as is the norm on the days when I have oodles of time to do so, the cards have a totally different idea. I scrapped and scraped my way through 11 double-or-nothing (DoN) SNGs, ($1.10 entry for each, $1 into the prize pool, $.10 for the entry fee) but wound up cashing in only 5 of 'em. That dropped my balance by $2.10. Grrrrrr! Disgusted, tired, and hungry after those several hours of poker stress, I logged off, went in search of dinner (a Quizno's down the street), then went to bed.

TODAY, 364 Miles
I wanted to get to bed relatively early last night because I plotted that my next stop would be here in southern MI, just 30 miles down US-23 from my house. (Going all the way up to the Ann Arbor area would be just a bit too far out-of-route.) If I'd arrive early enough, Mrs. R.T. would have enough free time in her busy day to c'mon down and meet me for lunch. So I got up at 2:30 this morning and hit the road by 3:00.

I got here--a Pilot Travel Center--at 10:00 after just a couple stops en route, one to grab some grub, the other to grab a shower. The Mrs. arrived a few minutes later, and we got to spend a little quality time together over breakfast at the McDonald's here. It's always a plus when my route and schedule allow see my better half and/or whatever part of my family is available (and willing).

After Mrs. R.T. headed back home, I hopped back in my truck to see about righting the poker wrongs that had befallen me lately. And I finally did (for the most part) get the proper distribution of friendly cards. (Aside: I have a CD of the greatest hits of the Alan Parsons Project. One of their tunes is, "The Turn of a Friendly Card" and includes in the chorus the line, "But the game never ends when your whole world depends on the turn of a friendly card." For some reason I like that song.) I played another 10 DoN SNGs, and this time I cashed in 8 of 'em. That's more the type of result I expect in the DoNs, and it grew my meager bankroll by $5, so I am much happier tonight.

Tomorrow I'll mosey on over to the Gary, IN area for my base camp for Monday morning's assault on my two deliveries. After that, I expect Dispatch'll try to find me a load to haul into or towards MI, since that's the day I'm scheduled to start another bout of home time. Or maybe they'll just let me dead head (run with an empty trailer) my way home. (Yeah, right!) Gotta' get home so I can vote on Tuesday and watch the election results through the night. I'll also have all day Wednesday free before heading back to the truck on Thursday. I'm looking forward to that.

In other news, I got word that I'm scheduled to start training to be a trainer soon. The class will be the 11th - 13th at our Van Buren, AR HQ, so I'm looking forward to that, too. Although I do rather like (and probably prefer) being a solo driver, I can sure use the extra income from being a trainer (to the tune of an extra $45 a day I have a student with me, on top of being paid my regular rate for all the miles of our dispatched miles).

The level of trainer I'm going to be is for our "Driver Apprenticeship Program", in which I get a new driver fresh out of orientation. I'll have each one for probably a couple of weeks before s/he goes on to the next level of training, which is basically being a team driver with another trainer. In the Apprenticeship Program I'll let the student do most of the driving (and docking, etc.), but I'll do some here and there to ease the burden and demonstrate techniques, etc. But neither of us will be in the bunk sleeping while the other's driving. It's called "right-seat training", so we'll stop every night just as I do as a solo driver. I'll miss the solitude of my own sleeper berth, but $omething make$ me want to $tep up to do thi$ training $tuff.

Well, it's been a L-O-N-G day now, and the land o' nod is a-calling. I expect to make full use of the extra hour of sleep afforded by tonight's time change. Thanks for checking up on me today. Please let me hear from you via comments and questions, and keep right on a-truckin'.