North Out of FLA

DATELINE: SPARTANBURG, SC, 8:30 p.m. EST

Miles Today: 601

Whew! What a long day, and it's not quite done yet. Y'see, I'm at our terminal here in S'burg and taking advantage of the laundry room, doing a load. So I have another hour yet before the dryer finishes up. Therefore I have some time to blog away for y'all. Hopefully I can stay awake that long, so I'd better get right to my story. But first a recap of yesterday.

Not much to tell about my Sunday. I slept in 'til seven-ish, grabbed a quick shower (but was too lazy to shave), hopped in my truck (well, after toweling off and getting dressed again) and hit the road. My mission for the day was to get close to the site of my Monday morning pickup in Freeport, FL. However, there aren't any truck stops very nearby, so I stopped in Marianna, about 75 miles away. That was good enough. When I arrived there at 2:00 p.m. (actually 1:00, since I crossed back into the Central Time Zone), I was inexplicably very worn out. I thought I had had enough sleep that night, and felt good when I got up, but for some reason I just wore down through the "short" (330 miles) drive.

But I didn't go right to bed then. 'Twas time for some food, so I answered the siren song of the "Mexican Grill" sign at the strip mall right next to the Pilot where I was parked. It didn't live up to expectations. Oh well. After that I did a little shopping for some things I needed at the Dollar Tree and Wal-Mart in the shopping center. THEN I returned to my truck and hit the sack. And I hit it hard. I was still snoozing soundly when Mrs. R.T. called me around 8:45 p.m. as she is wont to do. After that confab, I pulled down the ol' laptop for a quick update to my Facebook page and chatted some w/ my niece who happened to be online at the time. But then I couldn't get back to sleep. 'Twas well after midnight when I finally did, and I needed to get up at 4:30. So that made for a day of fatigue fighting today.

I got my work day started at 5:00 this morning by pulling around to the fuel island and filling up the tanks. Then I set off for Freeport. Well, I won't go into the story of the incorrect directions, save to say it took an extra hour to get there. Which wasn't good because my available hours situation for the next couple of days leave me just enough to make it to the delivery in New Jersey Wednesday morning on time. So I don't have any wiggle room in there for backtracking and driving extra miles. But I recovered easily enough, made the pickup, and headed north.

Naturally this load doesn't afford me any time to pull over for a quick rest, nor to stop early for the night, so I soldiered on through my fatigue and made it all the way here to Spartanburg with only 15 minutes left of my available driving hours for the day. Tomorrow I need to get as far as I can as well, which I estimate will be somewhere around Harrisburg, PA. That will leave me with just a couple (or 3) hours to drive early on Wednesday morning to reach the Flanders, NJ delivery.

So that's the encapsulated version of my last 2 work days. If I'm not too tired tomorrow night I'll write you up a report on the day's drive. Thanks for following along. Drop me a line or two, and keep on truckin'.