It's now mid November and the freight shortage still looms large. I have done OK in the past few weeks and have even needed to take a couple 34 hour resets. I am currently taking one now in Palm Springs CA.
For those not up on the wonderful world of logging allow me to give you the crash course. There are 4 categories of time for the driver which must be graphed at 15 min intervals.
1- Off duty, self explanatory
2- Sleeper Berth, in truck but not working
3- Driving, also self explanatory
4- On duty not driving, the catchall for everything else - fueling, scaling, loading, unloading, inspections, etc.
Every time you change from one status to another you have to make notation of the city and state. So far not too complicated, but here comes every one's favorite... violations. From the moment you start working for the day there is a 14 hour limit. No work (lines 3 & 4) can happen after 14 hours. Within the 14 hour period only 11 hours can be driving. 10 hours of rest (either line 1 or 2) need to be taken before work can restart. At the end of each day add both the driving and on duty not driving hours together. Those hours along with all working hours for the previous 7 days can't exceed 70 hours. When you find yourself running out of your 70 hours you can reset the 70 to 0 by taking a 34 hour break (drivers weekend).
Violations are the first thing that the DOT will look for since for them they are quite profitable. If you had a violation 5 days ago it can compound with every following day until it is corrected. The most basic violations start out around a couple hundred dollars and an extreme case could hit thousands.
Tedious, yes but for your troubles you get a neat little graph of your life. Even if you go to The Bahamas for a month you still have to fill out a log for each day stating that you were off duty in The Bahamas. With utmost certainty I can tell you that on 8/24/08 at 1:15 am I had just stopped for the night at a rest area in Monteagle TN. As I recall it was also raining.
Well enough of that fun, my last post was from SC and so much has happened since. From SC I headed up to the nice parts of NY (not NYC) I was killing time before my delivery with a bike ride around Dansville. It was a nice small to medium town (big enough for a McDonalds) that still had a nice main street with open businesses (small enough for no Wal Mart) I stuck close to town as the one shortcoming of the singlespeed is that it isn't the best for straight out road riding. That and the occasional sprinklings from above threatened to turn into a full rainstorm.
In my wanderings I found a huge field with windmill parts. I don't know if this was a manufacturing plant or merely warehousing, but they had quite a few turbines there and none to be seen on nearby hilltops. It was however quite windy with the approaching storm, and the opposite side of the road was the end of a small airstrip. Dansville has a local glider group and one of the pilots was out for a little afternoon spin. I continued riding around town and was beginning to have my fill of Dansville. I headed back out to the airstrip to watch the glider come in for a landing and that was when I saw "The Castle on the Hill".
At least that's what the woman at the gas station called it. Not so much a castle as a huge Victorian resort. She gave me a very basic history which included that it was a wealthy party spot back in the day that is now closed due to vandalism. She mentioned that it recently got purchased and may be reopening. From the way she put it it sounded like a version of the Playboy Mansion in small town NY.
I went up for a closer look but the property was gated and posted. Extremely well posted I might add. Although I really wanted to wander up through the woods to check it out I decided that a picture from the road and later Internet search would have to do.
Apparently this building is the birthplace of... (wait for it)... GRANOLA!!! Around 1854 a water cure health spa was built here. It was a Hydropathy destination for many years and it's second owner Jackson is credited with inventing the first cold breakfast cereal (called Granula). The original wooden resort burned and Jackson built the current brick structure. Later in 1929, it became the Physical Culture Hotel owned by Bernarr McFadden, a former pro wrestler and bodybuilder. The building has been empty since 1971 and earlier this year grant money has been obtained for a possible revitalization. More info at link
http://dansville.lib.ny.us/historyo.html#castle
I had my first snow of the year in Conklin NY, and later that day was stuck in the first raging winter shitstorm of the year. I had just left Syracuse and was deadheading (empty trailer, as opposed to bobtailing - no trailer) to Chicago. It was one of those sort of rain freezing ice slushstorms, with high wind. Part of what keeps a truck driving straight in the wind is the weight of the load. This weight also supplies the downforce to make the brakes work. Needless to say my night was sucking in a big way. The precipitation lasted halfway to Buffalo but the wind kept up until I stopped on the west side of the Ohio Turnpike. There were 60 mph gusts around Erie PA, nothing like towing a 53'x13' sail to make for stressful driving.
And nothing like the free (and very clean) showers of the Ohio Turnpike Plaza to put a good end to a bad night.
I only made a quick stop in Chicago to get a load for Missouri. I swear, every time I get on I-55 I have to hit 3 miles of gridlock hell that takes an hour to get through. It doesn't matter what day or time.. I just have the worst luck with I-55. And I only went there cause it was the only 3 miles of interstate not currently under construction in Illinois. (yes, I'm raging and shaking my clenched fist at Illinois highways again)
Missouri led to Tennesee, where I had some more fancy type cheffin'. The usual pepper onion potato mix, with the usual broccoli and asparagus, but this time I found these nice pork tenderlions wrapped with peppercorn bacon. Next time I really need to come up with a different veggie and side.
I continued east into NC and got a load of Campbell's Soup from Maxton. This is the kind of town that only exists because there is the soup plant there. It's not a bad place, just entirely forgettable. I've been there three times now, (once stuck for 30 hours) and I can't think of one unique feature of the area. This is the first place I was propositioned for "company" by a lot lizzard though. So if you need soup or prostitutes think Maxton NC (hopefully the people with the Maxton tourism council will run with that one)
One of my favorite lines in the movie Dogma is "Don't underestimate the staggering drawing power of the Garden State." And NJ drew me and that load of soup in for a tour of 4 wonderful Shoprite stores. Local delivery is not much fun for the OTR driver since our trucks are meant for... well over the road use. Those 55' daycab rigs are meant for local delivery and the loading docks are designed for those smaller trucks. Get a 75' truck in that space and it leaves little room to maneuver. Add the other smaller vans and trucks, and the fact that every vendor is on a tight schedule and you have 8 hours of NJ fun!
I did get to visit the Jersey Shore (well, close to it) and passed through the Pine Barrens (despite the name one of the unspoiled natural areas of the state... well maybe a little spoiled). I made it through that endeavor unscathed and settled in for a 34 hour break in sceinic Paulsboro NJ.
I worked back down to NC and on to Atlanta, then by virtue of lack of freight I got to deadhead to Phoenix AZ, a mere 1900 miles away. I'm not going to fuss since I get paid the same empty as I do loaded. But wasn't there anything between Atlanta and Phoenix that needed to get as little more west? The trip went well, no major traffic due to the weekend and I stopped at out of the way areas to sleep without the congestion of the truckstops. I was doing my showering during the days and knew that the cooler nights would bring the noise of two trucks idling beside me. The new comforter I got kept me quite warm with overnight temps around 30. Nothing like a good view and some peace and quiet.
I had my best daily fuel mileage to date (9.2 mpg) on this trip. Thankfully the weather was better behaved than on my last deadhead... until the last 100 miles.
Actually it was windy the whole way from El Paso on, but I hit this wonderful little hailstorm just before Phoenix. The curse of the western raincloud follows me still. Actually I think it was right here that the curse started.
I had a few extra hours to burn as I wanted to arrive at sunset (keep the truck cool). My planned excursion to Picacho Peak just happened to be in the middle of the storm. I had climbed it several years ago on a trip with my brother and recall the sunset was nice from the peak. Well, not this time.
I left Phoenix early this morning with intent of taking a 34 somewhere en route. Being such a fan of wind turbines I decided to stop in Palm Springs, just east of a whole mess of em'. As I type a cool evening breeze blows into my truck from the west. I can see several turbines spinning in the sunset. Not a bad way to spend an evening I must say. I spoke too soon, a truck just backed in beside me and idles despite the nice temp and laws prohibiting idling in CA. Oh well...
With all the time I've spent in NC recently I tought I should showcase a fine Carolina product for this dose of church.
Here we have the pride of Carolina Country Snacks, BBQ Fatback... with skin attatched. The discriminating consumer knows that fatback just aint' shit without the skin. So what makes this 53 grams of lovin part of this column, why the bible verse on the package!
It's the mac daddy of em' all John 3:16! Now the folks at Carolina Country Snacks want everyone to know (via their website) that if you're looking for a satisfying lo carb snack why not crunch into some saturated fat? After all if you believeth in god's only begotten son you already have a ticket to the big upstairs. So why not speed up that meeting with JC by chompin' on fatback... ummm... can I get some lard to dip these in?
And what do the people have to say?
http://carolinasnacks.com/page/mgmi/Customer_Comments.html
Can I get an Amen!
