A TALE OF TWO CITIES

"It was the best of times, it was the worst of times; it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness; it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity; it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness; it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair; we had everything before us, we had nothing before us; we were all going directly to Heaven, we were all going the other way."
-- Charles Dickens

I could very much relate to this quote from Charles Dickens after the last couple of days. With the jubilation of Craig getting cleared to go back to work, to the disappointment of calling in for an assignment and being told to wait to see how they wanted to proceed. If anything was shown to us these past three months, "waiting around" is not something we do well. With the information regarding the recovery of the truck in Oregon, we thought we would hasten the decision making by offering to have me drive Craig to the truck. It took a good 36 hours before the previous driver found a way to clean out his belongings and we were given the go ahead to drive to Oregon instead of Craig taking a bus.

We enjoyed our drive up, taking in the beauty of the changing leaves. We had a late start Tuesday afternoon, and decided to stay for the evening in Redding. Up very early......too early for how comfortable the bed was at the Hampton Inn, we proceeded on into the city of Coquille and our new home which awaited us. It was easy to find, as the previous driver had called to give us directions, and we set about doing a safety check on tires and lights. As pleased as we were to have a truck again, we were dismayed, to learn all too quickly, that the previous driver was a smoker! There is just no amount of Frebreeze to take away that smell. We had it just about taken care of in our old truck after a year of airing it out, to now have to start over with this one.

Since this truck is an International and not a Freightliner, we were happy to see there was much more room inside the truck, along with an adequate amount of windows for the upper bed which we did not have before. But with all that extra room, we noticed a big difference in storage areas, or lack of, in this truck. But given time, we will have this truck feeling like "home" in no time at all.

Once Craig had put what little he had brought with him inside the truck, he called for information on where he should go. We had thought, they wanted him ASAP back at the yard in Spokane, WA as there is some minor body work that needs to be done on the truck, plus his re-certification on his return to work from the back injury. But, we thought wrong, which of course isn't the first time that has happened. He was told to sit and wait, and there would probably be a load of boats for him to pick up in Roseburg, OR but that they didn't have the full information yet. Left with not knowing how long he was going to have to wait around, we decided that I should start the long drive back to Modesto.

This is where the jubilation we felt about his return, turned into some wet eyes and some long hugs. You would think, that having been together non stop 24/7 for the past 18 months that a little time apart would be okay. It felt like a part of each of us was ripped away when we parted ways and I drove out of the parking lot. It wasn't but an hour later that I had hatched a plan and called Craig. He had done some thinking of his own and was telling me to pack what I needed and hop on the first plane to Spokane and meet him there over the weekend. Me, always the planner said, how about I go to Selma, rent a car, pack up all of our truck stuff and drive to Spokane. If I left Friday morning, I would be there Saturday afternoon, we could put our house, er I mean truck in order, and be back in the groove of things pre 7/22/07. Well that sounded great to Craig, so now we will wait and see if the company does indeed head him into Spokane. If they don't we will just have to come up with Plan B.

I thought you would enjoy, as much as I did, this picture of Craig back in the driver's seat. We both prayed for this day and our prayers were answered. He couldn't have been happier, and I couldn't of been more proud of him for toughing it out and getting well enough to return to work. If all goes as we hope, by next week, I'll be reporting from the front lines once again. Yes, these are indeed the best of times.