Saturday, July 31, 2010

JUST LIKE ONE OF THOSE DREAMS

Have you ever had a dream where no matter how hard you tried to move, you feel as if you are moving in slow motion?  That's how I'm feeling today.  It always happens, every time we  put in for home time, we both get antsy to just get home.  It's really funny, because we could easily stay out longer than two months, and we did that a lot when we delivered boats, but as soon as we decide to go home, every day out on the road just drags.  Adding to that misery, is the fact that Craig will run out of driving hours to get us to Spokane on Sunday.  So we will finish this load assignment Monday morning with the delivery of wine, and happily start our home time then.
Both times we have had this particular run, it has been on a Friday, and just like last time, traffic played a big part in our day.  I used to think that my commute from the valley into the bay area was bad, but I gotta tell you, Highway 101 out of the bay area into the Napa/Santa Rosa area is worse.  Of course throw in major road construction and you got the double whammy of frustrations.  At our first stop, we were in and out quicker than we had been before.  Appointment time 11am, and out thirty minutes later.  If it wasn't for some nice scenery along the way, it would have been more painful than it was.
Oh, I almost forgot.  Craig said I must include these photos for the guys that read my blog,  that they would appreciate it  One of the delays on our travels was because of this back hoe that flipped over on it's side.  We had to wait, while the rather large rescue vehicle made it's way, very slowly to the site of the scene.

I have always loved the symmetry of grape vineyards, chalk it up to my Type A personality, and I got to enjoy my fill of them on our drive to our second stop.  Who wouldn't love sitting out on a grand veranda, sipping a great glass of wine, and enjoying looking at acre after acre of vineyards.  Peaceful and relaxing, and that was the thought I tried to keep in my mind as we did battle with bumper to bumper traffic.
At our second stop, with it's wonky dock set up, I got out to coach Craig in via our cell phones, then enjoyed sitting in their cool warehouse while the forklift guy went about loading pallet after pallet of various wines from all over the country into our trailer.  The last one to be loaded were some wine barrels, that we surmised would be used for displaying wine bottles.
After finding what was listed on the Internet,  "as the only public scale between Ukiah and San Francisco", we headed south on Hwy 101 into Petaluma to scale.  And I have to ponder......with so much wine being distributed out of the area, why pray tell, do they only have one scale that you can find before hitting the weigh station near Fairfield?  Not only that, but the hours of operation were only 7am - 11am and 1pm to 4pm!
Any way, we scaled out great and continued on our way, only to run into major traffic jams on Interstate 80.  By the time we finally rolled into Dunnigan, CA for the night, we spent almost two extra hours of Craig's driving time on traffic issues, and with the new electronic logs, there isn't a darn thing you can do about it but eat the time and realize that your home time will be delayed by a day.  I think I'll go back now to visualizing those grape vineyards for awhile.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

I guess if the trailer is over weight you have to start drinking to get legal. LOL :>)

all things bradbury said...

i sure feel your pain!....we were supposed to be home friday, plus we need to get home to take care of things from the breakin, but instead have been in portland for a week with the truck inthe shop!...finally got it out yesterday and came up to sumner, wa to pick up a load, which was all up and on the front and we couldn't get it legal and they couldn't rework it till this morning....so there's another day shot in the butt....ugh!!....i guess it's a good thing we don't have your load or i'm pretty sure by this point i'd be in the trailer.....lol.....i do love the vineyards in napa tho too....so beautiful......

want 2 drive said...

Thanks for the picture of the backhoe and excavator.

Txjerry2 said...

Diane

Hey!...Not sure if you did anything but now I can click on the pictures and go to the original pic. I was gone for a week and all the pictures in the intervening posts all worked great....thanks.

Barbara said...

OMG, you were in my neighborhood! (Sonoma)

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