Friday, December 24, 2010

Run In with Low Clearance

I wasn't going to post about this, especially after the 'kind words' I had to say about the guy in the truck stop in Gilroy, CA back in October, but Collin said it would be okay. And since he was driving, his is the voice that matters here.
So what happened, you ask? In a nutshell, inattention at a critical moment. We were coming home on Christmas Eve, and we were talking about our plans for the evening, when "CRUNCH" - we struck a low structure built over the road. It is a place Collin had driven under several times in the old truck, so he wasn't thinking about clearance issues in our new, taller truck. Me? Collin was driving, and I just totally wasn't thinking about our route.
But like the neighbor kid told Collin, "Sh!t happens."
My lesson is the classic "Judge not..." You can be sure I will be far less quick to call someone else a genius for inattention when all it really takes is a quick moment that makes the difference between a good move that goes unnoticed among dozens of others, and that one event that will be something to kick oneself about for a long while to come. Yes, it was totally avoidable, but it happened. Nothing to do but go forward, since we can't go back and undo it.
The end result is that we did nearly $20,000 damage to the truck, and even worse, it looks like 3 weeks of down time while the truck is in the shop. That is the worst, the downtime. We will rent a truck to do some runs and mitigate the hole in our income, but the profitability of that is pretty slim.

Thursday, December 23, 2010

Electrical Storm

Drove into the teeth of the biggest storm I've seen in a while, last night. Lightning lit up the sky for miles around, and seeming minutes at a time. Rain so hard I could hardly see the road for the standing water, and wind buffetting the truck. I'm happier driving a semi in that stuff, except we have a load of coiled rebar on.

I mean, I know we're not grounded because of the tires, but still... I was nervous enough to call the best voice of reason I could think of when it comes to vehicles. Thank you Johnny for your reassurance. ; )
 
We were coming out of Kingman, AZ and hit some weather that had the emergency broadcast system going, then the one I mention here was approaching Barstow, CA. Drove through some of the areas that were flooded but today they're mostly dried out.

Tuesday, December 21, 2010

Spaceport, America and My Birthday

Delivered some more of these insulated panels to Spaceport America near Truth or Consequences, NM.

This is the building being constructed for Richard Branson's commercial space flight program. Kinda cool that we have a small part in what is surely an historic project. The site is heck and gone from just about anywhere - thirty miles outside the town of Truth or Consequences, which in itself could classify as the middle of nowhere. There IS Elephant Butte Lake Park, which looks like a nice place to be, even in December. They have houseboats to cruise around the lake on, and nice picnic areas with little shelters to keep the sun out.

Sunrise over New Mexico
Yes, we finally found the sun on this trip.

Today was my birthday - we ended up at Route 66 Casino and Hotel. Took showers at the truck stop, got a little dressed up, then ate at the buffett, which was pretty darn good. Then we gambled just a tad. We each got $20 and Collin burned through his pretty fast on the slots and video poker. I made $10 last for over a half hour. Then we found the place we should have started - the arcade. Spent another $10 there driving (and crashing) race cars, and motorcycles. Much more fun than gambling.

Nice birthday.


The Ball & Chain at Spaceport Amercia (under construction)
Elephant Butte Lake

Birthday Load - crushed cars

Those are Buffalo out there
The Mighty Rio Grande


Very Large Array

Driving through New Mexico, in the plains of Saint Augustin, 50 miles west of Socorro, I spotted what looked like old fashioned satellite dishes lined up in an X.

I actually recognized what it was from the movies - a Very Large Array. Who says you can't learn anything from movies?

In order to be better informed, I Googled it and found out this is 27 dishes that are 82 foot in diameter, and can be moved on tracks to cover an area as large as 20 by 20 miles; linked together they form a single image of the radio source being studied. They are part of the National Radio Astronomy Observatory Very Large Array, and the information it gathers is combined with information from other facilities at Green Bank, WV, Tucson, AZ, and Charlottesville, VA. It was constructed between 1974 and 1982.
National Radio Astronomy Observatory Very Large Array


Monday, December 20, 2010

Tehachapi in the rain, at dusk.

A complete polar opposite from the last time I drove Hwy 58. Last time I was driving the 2000 Volvo with pink clouds heralding the dawn, and the windmills gently turning were just about the only other things moving besides us. I could hardly tell there was a town there - it was light enough for street lights to be off, and I got the impression of a tiny hamlet just out of view from the highway.

Today we came out of Bakersfield in rush hour traffic, climbing the hill with RVs, other commercial trucks, and I assume commuters, in pouring rain. (We are beginning to wonder of we will find our way out of the rain this trip.) No sign of the windmills in the fading light, but the streetlights showed me how big Tehachapi is - I would never have guessed from my first drive through.

Thursday, December 16, 2010

LA Driving

First time driving in LA for me. Drove from Kingman, AZ and missed the best opportunity to pull over and let Collin drive. Since we were in a hurry, I just kept driving. It wasn't too bad. We were ahead of the lunch rush, and I didn't try to keep up with the fast traffic, opting instead to hang out in the right lane and leave stopping distance.

We did miss our exit onto the 605 due to construction, and I had my first experience being behind the wheel while we were lost in LA. Not fun driving on surface streets, but I pushed through and got back on track.

When we missed the next exit due to a difference of opinion about where the exit actually was, I got out from behind the wheel at a stoplight and let Collin drive while I used the iPad to figure out where we were in relation to where we needed to be.

(The iPad needs a little redemption, by the way. If I had been using the direction feature on the mapping program, I would have seen that it actually is pretty good about telling what the signs say, and it gives decent written directions. I still like to verify with directions given by a person who is actually at the site, though.)

The truck continues to be hinky on us. This time it didn't want to start, and we were afraid we were going to have to call emergency roadside service to get out from our pick, but once we were loaded, it started for us. (We took it into the shop again on Saturday and they said it was batteries.)

Tuesday, December 14, 2010

Tonopah, Nevada

Drove through the town of Tonopah, NV. Strange little town perched near the top of a mountain. The whole town is on a slant. Couldn't see much purpose to it's location, although I reckon there is/was a mine involved.

Going to meet up with Dad and Donna for dinner tonight in Pahrump - and hopefully Sheldon and Tammy.

All were able to come, including Donna's son Henry and his girlfriend Tammy. We had dinner at Terrible's Town at the buffett. Yummy.

Monday, December 13, 2010

We Are (officially) Not Terrorists

We now have our TWIC cards in hand. Hoorah! I'd post a picture of it, but that would probably be a bad idea.

Saturday, December 11, 2010

Delays

The load we have on will deliver at Longview Fibre in Longview, WA. This outfit requires a signed Safety Standards form before you can even set up the delivery appointment. Makes delivery on Monday dicey, since I didn't get the form returned until Saturday and there were only two appointments left. We have to leave Monday morning on the hope that we will get the 9 am appointment we asked for, and we won't find out until we are already on the road.

If we miss the 9am we still have things to do in Portland, like picking up our TWIC cards.

Thursday, December 9, 2010

LAX

Had our first experience getting inspected at a regulated port - LAX of all places.
The guys were nice about it, overall, except that they insisted we have our escort with us before we even come up to the line. We were early to start with - hadn't even called for our escort the first time - but the second time the escort had found us, and was on his way back to his vehicle and the guards tried to turn us away again because we were ahead of him.

Anyway, for those of you concerned about the safety of our ports... I'm not sure our experience there will make you feel especially safer, but they did search under the chassis, looked inside the cab, and under the hood, they checked our load and licenses, and in general chatted us up - mostly about Buddy. That's where the 'meh' comes in. They seemed easily distracted by a big dog, and us ordinary looking folks. Not that  I wanted to get super searched or anything, and we did have 3-4 guys crawling over everything. I guess it was an okay experience. I'm just glad Collin didn't tell one of his jokes that he things is funny but I think will just end up with us getting body cavity searches done... : )

While we were waiting, the Goodyear Blimp flew over us

Tuesday, December 7, 2010

Gail, Texas

Gail, Texas - possibly the most remote place I have ever been. Looks like a black hole on my iPad map from a distance. Closer up, you can see the grid is only about 6 streets square.

Driving through at dusk, there was a church with a lit nativity, and one other building with lo ely Christmas light on it. Didn't see a soul stirring, not even any dogs, cats, or birds.

Left me feeling a little sad.

Monday, December 6, 2010

Retirement Idea

I figured out what I want to do in retirement. We'll move to West Texas and I'll pick cotton up off the sides of the road - it's everywhere! - and clean it, card it, spin it, dye it and weave it into stuff: linen for shirts, or banners or whatever.
We decided we rather liked Texas. The people are friendly and polite, including the kids. The weather is sunny, and there is a plain beauty to the flat landscape.
So maybe we wouldn't live there full time, but maybe in the fall and winter.

Sunday, December 5, 2010

Break Down! (again)

We took the week off around Thanksgiving, thinking it wouldn't be that busy, so why be out on the road, stressing?  Well, for future reference, Holidays = bigger pay for the loads that need to go.
We had already decided to put the truck in the shop for its 500,000 mile tune up.  Once we had it in the shop, we started getting calls - lots of them - that we had to turn down.  : (

So we had lined up a string of loads - we were taking a 'quick' load from the OSU Forestry Center up to an Electric company in East Portland, then picking up some aluminum coils in Kalama going to Vacaville, where we were going to pick up another load going to Salinas.

Things started going south a little sooner than we were planning.  The load from OSU - more reclaimed wood from a construction project - took +3 hours to load. Collin was helping to hand stack the wood, and the guys weren't very fast running the forklift. It was just as slow coming off.  What was supposed to be a quick load to help us get up to Kalama with a paying load was taking so long it was cutting into our driving time for the next load. We got loaded in Kalama by 8:30, which meant we weren't going to make a 7 am delivery in Vacaville, since it was a 12 hour drive. Plus we were both tired - I had been trying to sleep, but not getting much rest. We were stressing, because it was raining like crazy and we were expecting snow in the mountains, and we were running late to a customer we had already been late delivering to at least once. What was supposed to be a gravy run was turning into a bit of a nightmare - or at least a bad dream.

Then we were given our excuse for being late - we stopped at the Shasta scales to switch drivers, and Collin noticed that the passenger side of the truck was covered in oil. Um... that's not good. We limped down to Redding, CA, worried about an engine fire, or at least burning up the engine.


All the shiny? That's oil...

To shorten the story, when the shop that did the tune up was putting the valve cover back on, they pinched the gasket, and that's all it took. Our excuse to the receiver was very true - we had to wait for the dealership in Redding to open at 7am. What they didn't need to know is that we only waited about 10 minutes. : )

Even better, because it was a recent tune up at a dealership that caused the problem, we didn't have to pay for the repair. Sweet!

So we rolled in to Vacaville around 12:30pm. We lost out on the load to Salinas, but instead picked up a load of fabricated steel out of Pittsburg, CA that was a 5 drop load. We got done with that in enough time to get loaded with some lumber bound for Somerton, AZ - near Yuma. From there we got a load of hay out of Tolleson, AZ going to Lubbock, TX - where we are right now.

Tomorrow we go pick up some cotton from Plainview, going to the Dallas area. From there we hope to get a load back to Sacramento, or there is a multi-drop load ending up in Portland, OR. That would be ideal, since we need to get to Portland to pick up our TWIC cards (Transportation Workers Identification Credentials) that will let us get into regulated ports around the country.

It has been nice being here where the sun is shining and it is pleasantly warm. I understand it has been raining non-stop at home.

Saturday, December 4, 2010

Red Roof Inn

Holed up in the Red Roof Inn in Lubbock, Texas to watch the Civil War Game. Ducks won!

We decided we like Red Roof Inns, because they have trucker discounts, pets and wi-fi are free, and at least in Lubbock, the staff is nice and friendly.

Thursday, December 2, 2010

North of the Border

Drove within spitting distance of the Mexican border today.  Saw the infamous fence, and the border patrol hard at work.