THE BUTCHER, THE BAKER, THE CANDLESTICK MAKER

The only tie in I have to the title of this entry is that after sitting at the Flying J all morning, we finally got a dispatch for a 2pm appointment, 7 miles away, to pick up over 44,000 pounds of flour. Said flour is being delivered to the Fall Bloom Bakery in Newark, CA.

We located the shipper in a large industrial complex in Spokane Valley, and waited as they fork lifted the load into our trailer. Then it was off to the Flying J again to scale the load. This time however, we weren't happy with the read out, as we were almost 2,000 pounds overweight on our trailer axles. We slid the trailer tandems as far back as is legally allowed in California and went around again to be reweighed. As Charlie Brown would say...."RATS" Still about 600 pounds over. With a quick call into our fleet manager, it was decided to drive into the yard and do the flour shuffle.

We first filled up with what fuel we were suppose to have and then reweighed again at the yard. Then it was off to find a parking space and Craig then went to work rearranging about 1,000 pounds of flour from the rear of the trailer to the front of the trailer. A quick drive onto the scales showed we were about 200 pounds under the 34,000 pound limit. With not much driving time left in the day, we made it about 70 miles down the road before calling it a night at a little Conoco Station on Hwy395.

Up and on the road by 4:30 this morning we were headed toward the Oregon border and our first weigh station of this trip. I held my breath as we slowly crossed over the scale and I watched the read out of the weights. First set of axles okay by 500 pounds, second set of axles, no problem there, only 32,600 and then the trailer axles...... exhale with a sigh of relief, we were under and got the green light. Even though we had scaled at the yard, it is always nice to know you are legal going through the official weigh station.

On our route down US97, up ahead I spot a tree. Now this tree did not have any leaves on it, but you couldn't help but notice stuff on the branches. At first I thought it was a flock of birds, but as we got closer, the entire tree was covered in shoes! Yes, that's right, shoes. From one of my earlier posts, I had commented on the traditions of shoes hanging from electrical wires and trees, but this wasn't just one set of shoes, but many. Makes you wonder way out in the middle of nowhere just how they got there and why.

With limited driving hours available today, we could only make it just outside of Weed, CA for the day, and will spend the evening at a rest area. We plan on waking up at midnight and hitting the road for the last 330 miles before our 8am delivery. Only problem will be the Bay Area traffic in the morning. Both Craig and I, being very familiar with the commute traffic, are of course hoping for the best. After all, the Baker does need his flour!