FEELING CHUBBY

When we arrived in Buttonwillow, CA Sunday afternoon, one of the first things we did was walk across the street to the Starbucks. We took advantage of their nice air conditioned surroundings and the big soft club chairs, and sat back and people watched. It was interesting to say the least. As we were leaving about an hour later, Craig kept looking around until I asked him what he was looking for. He matter of factly stated, "I'm looking for the rest of the circus trucks". You now get the idea of how entertaining the people were that walked in for coffee.

As promised, after our showers Monday morning, I treated Craig to a nice sit down, hot, fresh cooked breakfast at the Denny's across the street. I say treat, but what it means was that I was more than happy to accompany him and partake in this special meal. He, of course paid. After all, I no longer carry a purse with me, so I like how that works out.

We drove only a few hours on Monday to get us into the Company yard in Bloomington, CA. On the way, with our bellies full, and our weight capacity almost to the limit, I joked to Craig as I always do when trying to lumber up a hill....."Feeling a little bit chubby today are we"? As we started up the Grapevine, the truck slowed to a crawl. Every few miles there were reminders to others to watch for "SLOW TRUCKS", of which we were definitely one of them.

At the yard, I took care of what dirty laundry we had and then we sequestered ourselves away inside the truck with the heat shields up and the AC blasting. Seems we hit the LA inland area in the middle of a hot spell. It was well over 100 degrees outside.

This morning, with only 12 miles to go to our delivery location, we were able to sleep in a bit. Having checked out our receiver's address on Google Earth, we knew it was going to be, well, let's just say it was a cozy docking situation. Every dock except one, was filled with their own trucks acting as cold storage units. We were lucky, in that when we arrived, we were given the open dock, as big and small trucks arrived after us to be unloaded, and they formed a nice little conga line off to the side to wait.

They filled up one of their trucks and then had to scurry to find another one to fill with the remaining frozen french fries that were still in our trailer. All in all, it took them only about an hour to get us unloaded and we were back enroute to the Company yard to await further instructions.

Our new assignment is to head to Tropicana to pick up yet another heavy load of almost 45,000 pounds of chilled juice which is to be delivered to the Safeway Distribution Center in Auburn, WA. It's a nice little 1200 mile trip that looks like it will lend itself to having Craig drop me off at my Mom's house for a visit and hopefully take care of the wide band of white hair that is growing from my scalp. I also think it's time to cut the hair short again. As thick as my hair is, I'll be willing to do my part to help make us just a little bit less chubby going over those hills when Craig comes back to pick me up.