Reely Spooly

Drove to Malvern, Arkansas to pick up 5 reels of cable bound for Oregon. Four to be delivered in Prineville, one to be delivered to Portland. An opportunity to go home and put the truck into the shop for some pressing work that needs to be done.

It took better than 3 hours of waiting before we could get our reels loaded, but we got them chained down - again we have the 'one chain short' issue we will have to remedy when we get home. Because of the lateness of our departure, and the Prineville customer not being ready, we won't deliver until Thursday after lunch there, and in Portland on Friday morning. We should be home Friday afternoon.
 
After a crazy night of driving over the Blue Mountains in a pretty significant snowstorm, and then winding our way past John Day on Hwy 26, we arrived in Prineville about four hours later than we planned, but still three hours ahead of schedule. It was good that we had pushed on, given how slow the going was once we got into Oregon.

Delivered four reels to PacificCorp in Prineville, OR to a job site that turned out to be a new data center for facebook. It took a while for them to be ready for us, since it had recently rained and made the unloading area a soggy mess. They had to spread more gravel and grade it in order for us to get in without getting stuck.

While we were waiting, we happened to be sitting across the street from a place that makes custom tarps. They happened to have a set of nine foot tarps in yellow that a customer had failed to purchase after ordering, so we got them on sale. A nice case of being in the right place at the right time.

After we got unloaded, we drove over Mt. Hood in minimal snowfall, and spent the night near a mill in Boring, Oregon, before heading in to Portland to deliver the last reel to General Electric on SE 17th.

On the way home we crossed the Woodburn Scales and got pulled in for a random level one DOT inspection, which we passed, including the logbooks. A good thing for our SMS score.

We were home by noon. Ah!