Friday, April 17, 2009

WHAT DAY IS IT?

I know exactly what's up with him and how he feels! The past few days have all melded together and I am constantly looking at our little calendar in the truck to make sure exactly what day it is. I guess I should follow up with that last assignment we were on, because it seemed like that assignment would never end, and we would never get rid of it.

Just when I thought I would be crawling into bed for some good old fashion sleep, Craig walks back to the day shift guard and asks about the possibility of us getting unloaded. For the record, the possibility, let alone probability, was at ZERO %. He informed Craig that our appointment would have to be rescheduled, and oh by the way, they only receive between 3pm and 2am.

With that little tidbit of information, we send in a message to dispatch, who first tell us to head to the yard, then start asking about how much product we have left on the truck. After sending them the information they requested, dispatch informs us that the last drop will work around the product and to head towards Los Angeles. Oh Vey.......this day will will never end!

Thankfully, because of the delay in San Bernardino, as we headed towards Los Angeles, most of the commute traffic had dissipated and a little over an hour later, we were at what was suppose to be our last drop. Good news is that they unloaded us quickly and only charged us $10 in lumper fees. With just about an hour left on Craig's 14 hour driving clock, we headed back to the yard with two pallets of frozen french fries still occupying our trailer at a crisp, cool, minus 20 degrees.

It wasn't until around 4pm when we finally were told to drop the trailer and put the last bit of paperwork in the compartment in front of the trailer, as the new appointment time for those last few fries would be the next day at 7pm. Woo Hoo.......you didn't have to tell us twice. We were more than happy to wash our hands of that load.

We did enjoy a very restful night's sleep and lounged around most of the day yesterday waiting to see what we would be assigned next. There were well over 10 other drivers sitting in the yard over the past two days that we saw coming and going, and when the beeps of the QualComm started coming across, I swung into action to see where we would be heading.

The good news was that we would be dead headed to Bakersfield, CA to pick up at the Dreyer's Ice Cream plant, the bad news was that we had to be there at 3:30am this morning. Yes, you guessed it, we would once again be hitting the road at 11pm at night and driving like the night owls we have become lately. Hello middle finger dude, I feel your pain.

Presently, we are about one hour out from our final destination for the day at the Flying J in Ripon, CA, and it's only 7am! We plan on getting our sleep clocks reset to normal on the rest of this trip into Spokane, WA, where we will make our delivery on Monday. Then after almost 10 weeks of being away from home, we plan on taking a couple of days and pay our little house a visit. With any luck, we'll fix that deck problem that the snow pack caused, and be able to enter the house through the front door. I'm getting too old to hurdle that front porch railing!

2 comments:

Mark Krusen said...

Ah the middle finger... It walks softly but carries a big stick doesn't it? Enjoy your home time. 10 weeks is a pretty good stretch.

rosemary said...

There should be no snow, maybe water standing around and hopefully your time home will be relaxing. What a story!!! All because of French Fries!

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