CHAIN GANG

Oh don't you know that's the sound of the men

working on the chain gang

I know Sam Cooke wasn't singing about the chain gang I saw working at 3am Friday morning. The past two days has really been a blur of trying to sleep at odd hours, driving on ice covered roads, and trying to decipher the weather satellites to always be either ahead or behind a storm.

With our 12am wake up call on Christmas morning, we took off to Fresh Express to pick up our loaded trailer. Really, loaded is not what I would call it. We only have 1900 pounds of lettuce in this trailer. This had to be the left overs from a fully loaded trailer, but the lack of weight doesn't make for ease of mind when traveling on the roads we were going to be on.

So off we head towards Sacramento to hit Interstate 80 and attempt to go over Donner Pass. As we neared the Company Yard in French Camp, all indications on the computer websites was that Interstate 80 was closed due to heavy snow fall. We pull into the yard and hunker down and get a few hours sleep. Upon awaking, we are checking for road conditions again, and find out that they have opened I80, but not to trucks. It was so much more important to get the four wheelers up the hill to the Casinos than it was to let truck traffic through.

We had now logged another 10 hr break, and finding out that trucks were still restricted, we thought we would at least head that way, after all, they couldn't keep us off that road forever, or could they? By the time we hit Sacramento, still no trucks allowed, but thankfully, Craig knew a place we could park near where he used to work, so we hunkered down again and got some more sleep. By the time we had recorded yet another 8 hour break, we saw that they were now allowing trucks with chains required.

At Applegate, we were screened by CalTrans to make sure we had enough chains and was told that at Baxter we would need to put them on. Sure enough, we arrive in Baxter and trucks are lining up and down the road and the drivers forming their own version of a chain gang putting on chains. Not to feel left out, we parked and went to work. Now when I say "we", you all know that really means Craig. But if I do say so myself, I did a superb job of holding the flashlight.

With chains on the appropriate tires, we headed up the hill at the next CalTrans checkpoint, to make sure we had enough chains on. Given the okay, we took off and had no problems getting over Donner Pass and into Nevada where we had a fuel stop at Sparks and we took the chains off. Thankfully, we had no need for the chains the rest of the day, although Nevada websites and 511 failed to update with that information.

We finally called it a day in Wells, NV where we took a well deserved hot shower and had a nice warm meal. We still have 600 miles to go for our delivery on Sunday morning and as Craig told me, once again, we would have yet another 12am wake up call to hit the road Saturday morning. Nothing like getting an early start!