Lazy Day Weekend

Well, we're still in Dallas, Tx. Got here Thursday and waited until afternoon Friday before getting a load for another destination. The only problem is that it doesn't pick up until Monday late afternoon. That means a long, lazy weekend in Dallas. A chance to get caught up on a few things like sleep, laundry, showers, grocery shopping, post office, etc. It's just a wonderful feeling to be able to go to bed and NOT set the alarm for a couple days in a row.

I've been playing on the computer and getting some reading done. We bought a new toy for Ron and he's having a ball playing with it. We got a gps for the truck that has all the latest features available--points of interest, truck routes, construction zones, traffic delays and more. I'm not that familiar with it yet but he seems to love it. He can even program different voices. Right now the voice belongs to Samantha. She seems to have an attitude problem. We tried her out on the way to the post office this morning and Ron said he may have to delete Sam and add Tom if her attitude doesn't change.

When we leave here we have about a 4 hour drive to our pick up and then another 5 hours to the delivery point--a fairly short run for us. The problem lies in the fact that we pick up at 5 in the afternoon and don't deliver until 7 in the morning. So we will have to find a place to lay over. If we get held up a little late during delivery (it happens a lot here) we may be able to have lunch with my sister Lori. Our delivery is about 20 miles from her in Arkansas. One thing about this new job--we've seen family more this past few months than in the past few years. LOVE IT!!

If the sun stays out a while longer I may get a picture of the outside of the truck. If I do I'll post it for you. We get stares all the time. Until next time we'll keep dodging!!!

Rest Areas

Well, no grass has been growing under us again this week! We had breakfast in St. Louis on Monday, in New York City on Tuesday and in Waco, Texas this morning. What a trip to New York! We drove down 5th Ave., Madison Ave., Broadway, and got to see Central Park. Of course there wasn't much to see at 4:45 a.m. By the time we left though, the sun had come out.

I feel that it is my duty to inform everyone, now that travel time is approaching, about the curiosities of interstate rest areas. In the short time I've been on the road I think I have accumulated enough experience to be an expert on the subject!

I've discovered if you are planning to drive though Rhode Island, don't go at night. The rest area washrooms are locked from 10:00 pm. until 7:30 a.m. Doesn't Mother Nature visit during the night there? And be careful in Alabama! The first time I was ever in that state--they shut the water off in my face at the door. Can you believe that? The attendant locked the door in my face and told me she didn't shut it off--all while I was dancing in front of her.

And watch out for the states that are upgrading their rest areas. In southern Illinois they have them shut down for renovations. It would make sense to shut every other one but NNNOOOOO- they have 2 or 3 in a row closed with no forewarning. That is definitely a hardship, especially when the distances between areas are anywere from 15 to 112 miles. Now deal with that!

I've saved the best for last. The most intriguing rest area I've seen so far is the one in Idaho that time forgot! We were in the middle of absolutely nowhere with about 3 more hours on the road when "the urge" announced itself. We pulled up, I looked around because the place looked like it had been deserted with the ghost towns of the old west. Ron announced that "he didn't have to go". Of course not! As I walked up to the door that looked like it was ready to fall off its hinges I saw a sign on the outside stating "These premises are under video surveillance!" Now, do I or don't I? Sometimes men have it so easy! I walked in only because I didn't have any other choice, and found a stainless steel commode, about a dozen rolls of TP in various stages all on one rod with 3 padlocks, and the oldest scuzziest sink I have ever seen with no running water. At least the toilet flushed! After that experience I wanted to take a long bath in my hand sanitizer!

I promise to have a better subject next time. I hope you got some insight into my life on the road. Thanks for sharing my ramblings.

Our New Home

Greetings from St. Louis! We are here for the weekend and enjoying some much needed down time. We will pick up Monday a.m. for a return trip to New York City. We have some mixed feelings about this trip. The delivery is Tuesday a.m. We are hoping to arrive before rush hour, the streets and traffic are still going to be horrendous. Hopefully, with good weather the scenery will make it all worth while!

I've been playing with this machine and have downloaded pictures of our home-away-from-home. Here are a few of them. When you walk into the sleeper section on the right side is the closet area. An upper cabinet with a picture frame (Robyn & Caleb taken just before our wedding and some beautiful scenery I took on some of our trips west.) on the wall to add a touch of personality. The table is at the rear of the berth with windows on either side. The bed is the back wall. It pulls down when we need it and the table folds automatically with it. Very conveniet. The sink has running cold water, a fairly large counter space (check out the crock pot) with a window that is now covered (cold when I took the pics), and a light. Above the sink area is the microwave with a grilling element and next to it is the tv. Yes, we do have satellite Directv in motion. I can watch as we go down the road! And if you look closely you can see one of my favorite features--Mood Lighting! It circles the ceiling on 3 sides. It's great for movie nights when we can't get tv or nothing else good is on.

We are able to manage quite well so far with laundromats at the truck stops and occasional trips to Walmart for our other necessities. We bought a separate GPS in order to find locations of stores, churches, attractions in the area. We've been able to see a few movies, find churches for Sundays (providing they have parking space for the truck) and eat at some great restaurants. Now you can imagine how we are living. We do miss family and friends. Coming home has taken on a whole new meaning! Thanks for sharing.

46th State

We have made it to state #46--New Hampshire! It's very pretty so far. We are along the New Hampshire/Maine border and settled in at the local TA truckstop for the night. In the morning we pick up in Massachusetts and deliver Friday a.m. in St. Louis, Mo. Still no grass growing under us. We had a little snow this morning and rain most of the day. Ron said it's a good thing we had the day off until morning because he is a "fair weather driver" and can't deal with all the precipitation!

After dinner in the truckstop diner we walked around just to see if there was anything different than any other stop. I FOUND POSTCARDS!!!! A few days ago I wrote about the difficulty in finding postcards for Robyn. Well, I found New Hampshire and Maine so I bought one of each for her. I know we haven't been actually in Maine yet but we don't know when we may get back to this area so I decided not to take a chance. Call it a bonus. Robyn was thrilled when I talked to her earlier.

I'm hoping to get to the pictures this weekend and maybe get them loaded onto the site. It's too hard trying to work on the computer while the truck is moving. I tried it and it just doesn't work for me. Especially with all the other issues I have with this darned thing! And a lot of our loads lately have been straight through runs going all night. Have faith, I will get them done!.

I need to go now. It's going to be an early morning tomorrow and a longer night to get to St. Louis. Thanks for reading, I hope you are enjoying.

Contrary Computers

Greetings from North Carolina,
The weather here is great for spring already. We've seen white, lt. pink, rose, lavender and yellow trees in bloom and several colors of daffodils in yards since arriving this morning. BEAUTIFUL !!!

I've decided to write about my biggest pet peeve since being on the road: Contrary Computers! My pc at home is wonderful. Ron's laptop, which is what we have in the truck, HATES me. While reading my email it will trash several before I can get them open. While scrolling down, it will delete. While typing a message or this blog some letters will not print or the cursor will jump to some obscure place on the page, sometimes even in the middle of another sentence and continue from there. There have been times when it will lock Ron out of his email. (Maybe it's not just me!) Whatever the reason, this machine seems to have a mind of its own. I have found though, that using the wireless mouse is a big help.

So, if you find that you simply can't make sense out of a word or sentence you might read here, don't blame me---IT'S THE CONTRARY COMPUTER !!!!!

I'm closing here today. We are on the way to a pick-up and then heading for New Hampshire. I just hope the groundhog didn't lie about an early spring up there. Thanks for reading my ramblings. p.s. I'm working on pictures.

We Have Survived

Has anyone been to New York City lately? What a ride! We delivered on Saturday morning so traffic wasn't too bad. That was the good part. Getting thee was another story! I thought the roads in Illinois and Indiana were bad but New York has them beat hands down. With potholes big enough to swallow the whole truck I'm amazed anything is still intact. Trying to dodge the holes and drive around all the construction to the ultimate in concentration and skill, especially while competing with the NY taxi drivers. I've decided to try to get buttons for us that read: I have survived the streets of New York! We can now say that we have been to Queens and I have a new respect for the casts of all the Law & Order series.

So, today is a totally lazy day for us. The past 2 weeks have been long with trips from Michigan to Utah to West Virginia to Pennsylvania to Connecticut to Michigan (again) to New York to New Jersey and tomorrow to Virginia. The past few days we've seen a lot of rain, a little snow and some flooding. I have no idea what I'd do if I were to evacuate my home because of flooding. After seeing houses with water half way up the door I can only pray that these people find the help and provisions they need to cope with the coming days.

I've been asked to show some pictures of the inside of the sleeper berth. I'll try but I'm still trying to figure out some of these things. I'm taking pictures today and will try to post them in the next day or 2. I have gotten some really wonderful pictures of glorious sunrises in Colorado, sunsets in Utah and snow-capped mountains in the Rockies. We saw some beautiful ice crystals glistening on the bare branches in New York but, naturally, the camera was not in reach. Even though the weather hasn't been too bad for us we are looking forward to warmer stuff. The trip to West Virginia was during a snow storm and the customer said it was just a little spring snow. I don't want to be there during the winter! The only real winter weather we encountered was driving to Dallas the day before the Superbowl. 2 inches of ice on the major highway from Louisiana to Dallas. It seemed to take forever and not a salt or sand truck in sight the entire way. Texas could learn a thing or two from the midwestern states.

I've been thinking about different subjects to talk about and have come up with a few to get me going in the next week or two. I hope to keep you all entertained as well as keeping this journal for my own sake. Thanks for taking an interest.

Postcards

Have you tried to buy picture postcards lately? My daughter Robyn collects them. I thought that maybe she hit on the one souvenir that wouldn't break the bank to take back to her. Boy, was I mistaken! The cost is still very inexpensive by today's standards ranging in price from 25 to 59 cents each. The problem is that unless you are in a tourist shop they are almost impossible to find. We have been in 45 of the continental 48 states and have gotten fewer than 20 cards for her.

When we got married we got some advice to mail ourselves a postcard while on our honeymoon. This is a way to have a record of when and where we've been and to keep it with the vacation pictures to identify with years later. What are we to do if we don't vacation in a popular tourist area?

We've found most of them at major truckstops and a few is some small shops. Most chains don't carry them at all. Cracker Barrel would be an ideal sight but no luck. And I was very disheartened to be told that when Pilot Truckstops merged with Flying J cases of postcards were simply tossed into the trash. Why? They don't have an expiration date and the clerk said people have been asking for them. I guess the higher-ups just don't want to be bothered. In the meantime we keep toodlin' down the road and I keep my eyes pealed for those colorful little cards that have become so elusive.

Thanks for sharing my ramblings.

Too Much Info

How many people know absolutely everything about you and your life? I don't think I want to know! After enduring the hiring process and finding our way along the highway and company procedures we were handed applications for Department of Defense clearances, one for each of us. One application is about the size and thickness of a magazine. They wanted a history of jobs, addresses, a listing of friends, total list of relatives, you name it. So while we were home for a weekend we set about filling them out-Ron on his laptop and me on my desktop. After a day and a half we finished. Now we had to go online and repeat the entire process from the paper ones. Once each section was finished the site let us know if all was in order before moving on to the next. If we were to print them out mine would be 47 pages and Ron's 68. We then waited! My clearance came through in 2 weeks but Ron's took 6-7. Then we had to get TWIC cards (transportation worker identification card) in order to be able to do government loads in and out of ports and military bases. If we have to get any more cards I will have to get a bigger wallet to carry them. Add to this ID cards made at individual company sites so that we can load and unload. These cards are good for one year so we have to keep them also. Ron said that now the feds know more about us than we do. Scary isn't it!

After all of this we were able to go back to the company base in Green, Ohio for a 2-day class in the next level of the job--White Glove. Included in this was training on explosives and radioactive materials. We are now certified to "blow and glow"! This is a promotion of sorts. We learned how to deal with art loads, escorted loads, government surveillance loads, etc. A job is a job with all the ups and downs but we are thoroughly enjoying ourselves. Isn't that what life is all about? Thanks for sharing with me.

On The Road Again

Just a little background info to start with. Ron and I were married on June 12, 2010 after being single a combined total of 31 years. Since school was out and I didn't drive summer school I was able to ride with him in his semi from the first day after the honeymoon. I loved it! We stayed mainly in the midwest and were home on weekends. LIfe definitely is different from an 18-wheeler view. It wasn't too bad--an electric cooler, electronic logbooks, satellite radio, twin bunks (but we never used the upper one). I took along books, electronic games, crocheting & knitting and learned that I could get used to this. As the summer wore down I realized that I had to go back to driving the school bus soon and Ron would have to go out on his own with the company informing him that he wouldn't get home for a few weeks at a time. Definitely NOT the lifestyle for newlyweds.
A week before school started we were offered the chance to drive a straight truck for FedEx Custom Critical and be on the road together. After much soul searching and prayer we took the job. Changing jobs was no easy thing. We both needed new DOT physicals, I had to get my haz-mat endorsement on my driver's license, drug tests, background checks, the works. Our first day was September 1, 2010 with 3 days of training in Ohio and then straight out on our first load. And that is the start of an adventure of a lifetime!
Now we are on the road for weeks (sometimes months) at a time and home is in a sleeper berth. It's not bad really. We have a refrigerator, microwave with a griller, table and benches, full size bed, 2 closets, a sink with running water, lots of cabinet space and directv in motion so I can watch tv while he drives! I have also brought a small crock pot, toaster, and a small George Foreman grill. All the creature comforts except a bathroom. Not to worry! I have a built-in travel agent that always manages to find a parking place at most rest areas and truck stops. In these first few months we have been in 45 of the continental 48 states. More on that next time. Thanks for letting me share with you.