We made it into Selma, CA yesterday afternoon, and had the pleasure of spending some time with Craig's Mom and Dad, enjoying a great Mexican dinner at Sal's, and then some down time at their house. Craig was once again spoiled by one of the women in his life, with a bag of his favorite cookies and some pumpkin spice bread. I thoroughly enjoyed the pumpkin bread, it was so moist and flavorful, I may need to think of a way to ransom Craig off to get some more when we pass through Selma again!
This morning we were both surprised to realize that we had slept in until 6am. We knew we had a relatively lazy day ahead of us, so there was no rush in hitting the road. We made it as far as Wheeler Ridge, where we stopped at the Petro to do a load of laundry, which gave us the excuse to walk across the street to the Starbucks for a late morning coffee. Of course, just the sun coming up every morning would be a good enough excuse for us to partake in a Starbucks, especially when truck parking is close by.
With laundry done, and the last weigh station passed, we pulled into the Flying J at Fraizer Park, just a few more miles down the road, to fill up the tanks and reefer. We have over 45,000 pounds of frozen french fries, and with our tanks only half full when we loaded, we had to plan carefully for our fuel stops since we were only 100 pounds under the maximum weight allowed (80,000 pounds). With full tanks, we headed towards the greater LA basin and to our super secret special spot that we have to park at in Vernon, CA. This will set us up nicely for the 18 miles we have left to go in the morning into Long Beach for our 8am delivery and having to interact with Mr. Grumpy. Maybe a nice thick slice of the pumpkin bread might sweeten him up a little bit!
3 comments:
Frazier Park was one of my favorite places to take my kids when they were little to "experience snow." I knew little about snow then....if only I had paid attention.
The last 2 pictures are amazing! The green and the mountains, just lovely. The view of a Starbuck's brings tears to my eyes. I haven't had a Starbuck's mocha latte in months. The nearest one is 3 hours north in Burlington!
Maybe we should close down the cookie biz and become truckers.
I have some questions though. What's the bathroom situation??? If I drink lots of coffee (or anything for that matter) I need to make a lot of pit stops, is this an issue?
How often do you both get to go home for a few days? What's the shower situation? How often do you get to do that? Do you own the truck, lease it, how does that work?
My husband had about a million questions when I was telling him about your front door last night!
Laura -
I don't know how you do it with a Starbucks so far away. Even with an espresso machine at home and the ability to make them just like at the store, there is just something about going inside and sitting and enjoying the coffee while people watching.
I can now whole heartedly recommend trucking to any couple thinking about it, whether you both drive or not, now that I have been living life on the road for three years. As I have said many times before, I never envisioned myself living life like this, but now that I do, I can't imagine not living this lifestyle. It has been a true gift!
The pit stops are not really an issue. There are always rest areas and truck stops for that bodily need, but we also carry a small porta potty so that we are never without relief, if you know what I mean!
With our company, and with most, you get one day off per week, which we accumulate to take several days off at a time. We like to stay out up to 8 weeks before taking time off at home, but are trying to get home now at least once a month for 3 or 4 days.
As with the bathroom situation, showers can be had at any truck stop, and you'd probably be surprised like I was, how modern and clean most of them are. There are of course exceptions and anyone out here on the road would be able to tell you. Some people take showers daily if their schedule allows them to, we usually take one every 2 days.
Craig is a company driver and we prefer that. We went into this as an early retirement gig, and did not want the headaches of owning/leasing a truck and worries of break downs, insurance etc to weigh on our minds. yes, you can make much more money with owning/leasing, but that really wasn't what we were looking for.
Watch out, Dave just may get the bug and you may end up living like gypsies and loving every minute of it like we do. At least until we find another adventure that intrigues us.
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