Salty

I'm in Salt Lake City tonight and for some reason there are several fireworks shows.  I've been running pretty hard and I'm getting ready to get into the leasing program through Swift so I'll have my own personal truck.  I'm very excited and the plan is to bring some family and friends along on some of my runs.  I'm also hoping to get on some of Swift's dedicated runs which will get me home a lot more. 

Today I am quite happy with how things are going though I miss Morgan and the family a ton.  Little Jack is a gift I appreciate daily and my moods have definitely stabilized for the better since acquiring him.

I will be headding to Sacramento, CA tomorrow and most likely will have lots of photos to post this week as afterwards I will be headding to Seattle, WA.  Gorgeous country up there and blessedly cool.  I'm really tired of this nasty heat this summer. 

Meeska Mouska Bus-kateers

It has been a very long time since I have updated. Basically my life blew up all around me. Again. I am now living in Phoenix again with Morgy. Cody is still in Denver. I would give more details but honestly I don't want to relive much of anything. The engagement has been cancelled and we are no longer dating. Morgy and I are... recovering. Cody is in a similar state. What does the future hold? I have no clue. I know only that I could find no local jobs so I am back on the road, Morgy is loving being around the family again, and I am exceptionally thankfull for the amazing support and structure that is my amazing family.


Morgy has been diagnosed with ADD. Not a surprise to me but the ammount of school she needs to make up is considerable. Luckilly we are back with the family and between Nana, Connie, a great school, and some supplemental schooling on the side she should be back on track within a year. She is also finally getting her swimming lessons and is excelling. She also already has found new and old friends to help ease her loss of the crew she loved in Denver.


I have also managed to move forward in my job. I have wanted to move into the Flatbed division and managed to spend the last two weeks with a Flatbed Mentor. I absolutely love the Flatbed work. Chains, straps, tarps, climbing all over the load, and in generall being out of the truck more is much more my style. My mentor was awesome. Funny, laid back, and had all the episodes of Seinfeld and Will And Grace on DVD. I haven't laughed so much in a very long time. It was very nice liking my job again. Van division had grown a bit weary.


Currently, I am on a bus. A Greyhound bus. It has been exceptionally interesting. As someone who has always travelled on plane or in a personal vehicle travelling by bus is a whole new world. Somehow I figured it would be more like plane travel. I was so absolutely wrong I don't even know where to begin.


The senile, sweet lady who has accompanied me since I first embarked on this adventure was the first intro into the wierd world of bus travel. She is positively darling, and completely insane. My first clue was when she told the story of how the Drug Cartels had rigged the Mega Millions Lottery and owed her 3.5 million dollars. It then progressed into her and the "preacher" praising Jesus, The Holy Spirit, and the glories of God including for all intents and purposes a full mass, and her exclamations of how Jesus protects her as she walks alone, at night, through New York City. Heartwarming, but less so when you can not leave the area or even block out the noise with your headphones. Somehow Gregorian Chant can not drown out the praises of Jesus and the Holy Spirit. Not sure how that works but there it is.


Later she began her fixation on the idea that the bus was going the wrong way. In of itself it could be ignored but when she keeps requiring you to read off every road sign you pass it gets old really quickly. She is extremely up-to-date on gas prices. She updates the entire bus when we pass every gas station and then reminds us of all previous gas prices at all major cities in the nation. I find this very informative, and amazing as it is unlikely that she has driven a personal vehicle in at least 10 years.


I do find that she is much more tollerable than many of the other passengers on the bus. Like the guy who announced in the IHOP as I was ordering my first meal of the day (at 1pm), that he had been accused of six counts of assault and battery and had a restraining order on him. Nice. I didn't miss him when he got off several stops later.

I have been less impressed by the tiny Asian woman who has stolen my pillow. She came on the bus somewhere after Dallas and was placed next to me. She is about 4'11" weighs approximately 75#, can't walk, and doesn't speak english, but has still managed to get her seat changed and has taken my pillow with her.


Now the bus has been switched from a primo new bus with leather seats and plug ins for the computer and phone, to an ancient beast who has bad belts, an oil leak and is filled just shy of capacity. Not too much of an issue except that this is the night travel part of the trip and now I can not sleep as there is no room to do so. My tailbone is positively aching. And I am praying that my lack of mechanical good karma will not be following me on this torturous journey through the neverending vastness that is Texas.

My baggage is already missing. I saw it put on the bus in Memphis but when we changed busses in Dallas it was gone. I reported this and was told that they had put it on another bus headding to Phoenix. When I explained that I SAW it put on the bus I was on they just said it was switched. A fight for another day. At this point I am not even sure the bus I am on is actually going to Phoenix. I was supposed to transfer busses two more times but in Dallas they took TWO transfer tickets from me, gave me a different number to give to some other driver to get me in the correct direction and when I tried to ask them to explain the driver simply pointed at the stairway into the bus and said "Get on." So the crazy lady may be correct in her delusions of incorrect directions and Drug Cartel Schemes. Maybe they have purpously misguided my bus to some other unholy destination and only her avowed faith in Jesus' protection and The Holy Spirit will get us through.





12 hours down.







And only 18 hours to go.

AZ 400

This week I have been running back and forth between Snowflake, AZ and El Paso, TX. It isn't a bad run. There is no snow. The roads are pretty decent. The places aren't too much of a pain to get in and out of. Actually the paper mill in Snowflake is becoming one of my favorite places to deliver and pick up from. They are friendly. The scales are accurate. They are open 24 hours. They will happily receive or dispatch loads early, and best of all there are tons of empty trailers. The down side is there are no convenient truck stops or even decent places to stop by to eat. My PB and J stores are now running very low and I am really tired of eating them. Hopefully I will get on another route soon. I keep repeating my mantra: "Must pay off debts. This will all be worth it." Maybe soon I'll believe it.


The next bit of news is that Annie will be going to Phoenix. I am working on getting the vet out to get her heath papers done and then on a shipper. She will be there for use for Jenn, and anyone else who would like to play with a very nice Hunter mare. I am relieved that I will not have to sell her. She is a part of me as much as Cody and Morgan are. I am still tossing around the idea of selling Toby, The lady who owns the barn that he was previously housed at has offered to take him. Now I have to decide if I am comfortable with him being used around kids. Hmmm. I'm not entirely sure. He is relatively evil.

I am waiting on another mentor. This time for Flat Bed Fleet. I am very excited to go into this division of the company as the freight is more hands-on, more specialized, and makes me more versatile and therefore worth more. I also really like the idea of spending more time at huge factories and less time at Distribution Centers with hundreds of docks and very angry dock personnel. The people at the huge factories or mills are often more friendly and if not you deal with them less than you do at the DCs. I also detest most retail places I deliver to. The people seem to WANT to make my life as difficult as possible. I honestly don't mind doing more work if people are relatively happy and appreciative of me. At CostCo and Home Depot I find myself in more of a "screw you" attitude by the time I leave. Especially CostCo. I would swear that they require their dock employees to take rudeness classes.

So in the meantime I am running the 400 miles between Snowflake, Arizona and El Paso, Texas. I love my audio books, helping Cody cook dinner over the phone and chatting with Morgy about all the crazy things that have/are happened/happening and listening to them giggle over some silly thing the dogs have done or movie they are watching. I love coming home, and the job isn't too bad though I'd like to be able to bring Cody and Morgy with me more. I am working on it but am having to wade through the Corporation BS at the moment. It will happen. Morgy needs to come see all the cool things with me.

Onioned

I am sitting here in a lovely restaurant in Flagstaff, belly full of a spectacular meal and figured I should write something.

I spent most of last week in ice. Most of it on an off-ramp a mile from my delivery in Tulsa, OK trying to explain to the maintenance crews and police why you should clear the ramps BEFORE you clear the highway in storms. They didn't get it. My rear wheels were 3/4 covered in snow and luckily I do have about a weeks worth of food on my truck. Unfortunately I do NOT have a bathroom.

Once I got removed from the snow I had to take my load, which now was so lat it couldn't be delivered, to Oklahoma City. I was then accused of not wanting to run because I refused to head either to Denver into a HUGE storm, Minnesota between two huge storms, or to Chicago which has been shut down for weeks and was getting a fresh storm. I managed to pick up a load back to Denver the day after the storm passed and then picked up another one over here to Arizona but was very disheartened by the fact that Denver had a huge storm rolling in and I got to spend less that 24 hours at home.

Escaping the snow in Denver was proceeded by skiing from the NM border to Santa Fe but since then the weather has been lovely. Off I go to Prescott AZ and hopefully to Phoenix where my medication awaits me. I have to say that I am quite desperate to be reunited.

But while on the off-ramp in Tulsa I did get started on a book. A novel. Wish me lock and I hope the fates have been kinder to you all.

Naked

So, when I was home this week I adopted an abandoned and neglected mood ring. Morgan recommended that I check online for the meanings of the colors. I found this awesome chart at blogadilla.com but have also come up with my own "trucker" interpretations. As I am very limited on this particular computer as to my photo editing program I will do my best to make the conversion easy for all.

Color- chart meaning- trucker meaning

Misty, sea foam green- flatulence- Just passed the last truck stop for 115 miles.

Goldish yellow- road rage- Welcome to Texas

Greenish brown- ennui- Damn. Out of paper towels. Don't they ever stock these bathrooms?

Black- hungry for waffles- Go back to sleep. It's so cold the truck won't start anyway.

Cobalt Blue- hung over- The heater coil works in the hand dryer.

Purplish (usually edged in gold on my particular ring)- sweaty- How far to the next approved fuel stop?

Light blue- full bladder- Weigh Station in 2 miles.

Muddy Yellow- jaded- Pull out the chains.

Hope you all enjoyed that little bit. As you can see I have a lot of time on my hands to think up all kinds of crazy things.

I am still liking the job. Due to the job I am currently unmedicated, a state I have not been in for almost 10 years, and I am not at all liking this state. I need to figure out how to get into a doctor ASAP. And to think I was looking forward to seeing if I could go without meds 3 weeks ago. Weeks 1-3 were OK. As of week 4 that would be a huge negative. Especially with 24 hours a day to feed on my unbalanced mind (undisturbed save for interactions with fuel island clerks and other truckers. Rather like the unbalanced leading the unbalanced). Kinda scary. At least I haven't disappeared into conspiracy or doomsday theories like so many of the other truckers out there. I, personally, blame it on the radio. I have discovered that in 90% of the country there are only fundamentalist Christian stations (AKA- "You are HEALED!), conservative talk radio (AKA- It's all Obama's fault. Bush had nothing to do with this mess.), country, and classic rock stations on the radio. My theory is that this leads to chemical imbalances that cause the paranoia and theory sections of the mind being overstimulated and thus "Trucker Mind" develops. Luckily in about 80% of the country a classical music station is thrown into the mix which causes the calm and peace centers of my mind to be kicked into action. For the other times I throw in a CD. Usually either Beethoven's Pastoral Symphony (that would be #6 for those of you not so familiar), the soundtrack to Four Rooms (a movie highly recommended BTW), or Reel Big Fish. Ska in particular has paranoia banishing abilities.

Signing off for now.
The Feisty Filly