Upon arriving in San Diego, and calling the receiving house to see if they were ready with the load, they had to stage in National City, just a few miles away to wait for their Ecuador organic bananas to be ready. But by noon they had been called into a dock and loaded and moving north towards Pullaylup, WA.All along the way north out of the LA basin area, Craig was sending me commentary on their route. You can see from the first picture, just how serious he is taking this passenger seat duties. I guess from watching me the last three years, he learned quite quickly just how comfy it is to put your feet up and enjoy the views.
Although they left rather late from San Diego, they didn't run into too much commute traffic, since Don was following his routing, instead of what Craig would have normally done, and cut north to hit Interstate 210 to totally avoid the heart of the City of Los Angeles. It may be a few miles longer, but it saves so much time wise and sanity wise.
Craig continued to send me photos, along with this shot and comment asking, "Why do they call it the Grapevine, when there are no grapes and only weeds"? Which made me comment back to him, "It's amazing what you notice when you're not driving, right"? With so much time on his hands to sit back and just enjoy the lack of scenery in this particular section of California, his mind was working overtime. I about snorted out some water I was drinking through my nose when I read this comment he sent me before shutting down for the night...........I see so much in this seat. Haven't missed a turn yet. I think I may use the time to be a blog correspondent . First piece. What is new in 2009 trucker fashion. With pictures. A new meaning to the belly shirt.
Now you know why I love this guy so much....never a dull moment!
Usually when we return to the road after home time, I get in the truck and put things away. Craig made no bones about it, since I wasn't going to be on the truck, that he would put things away the way he wanted! Ahem, I guess he told me, so off down the road I went to tend to my wounded ego at the nearest Starbucks. Pretty hard for my controlling personality to be in charge when I am 50 miles away and my mind has been deterred by a nice latte!
Since parting ways, I have been enjoying my time in Walla Walla, marveling at the vast array of flowers that have been in bloom. My friend probably planted over 200 bulbs last fall and has been rewarded with an abundance of flowers to fill not only the guest cottage, but the main house as well.
Craig on the other hand, with not a flower in sight, and probably thankful for that, has met and got acquainted with his trainee Don, who has some previously truck driving experience, but it has been over 12 years since he has driven. They spent most of the day talking about themselves while waiting to receive a load. Wouldn't you know it, right out of the shoot, he gets something we have never had before.......a pick up at two different places.
The dispatch was to respond to Americold in Wallula and pick up some boxed meat there at 3pm, then at 6pm, go across the street at get loaded at Tyson. Normally, at Tyson it is a drop and hook, but he was told to drop the trailer there and come back in the morning. Hey, what a deal! He'll take all that detention pay and get a good night's sleep.
Today should find them headed to the Los Angeles area, where they will have three different drops to make on Monday, including the dreaded Ralph's, where the parking and dock area are so tight it's a miracle anyone can get in and out without scraping something.
As for me, I'm going to enjoy another day in Walla Walla, and the beautiful flowers, and wonderful sunshine, before heading back up to the homestead, where I'm sure I will find lots to keep me occupied until Craig comes home for a visit in 3 or 4 weeks!
So with the truck loaded down with a few stepping stones, and some bark nuggets, we headed to the house and were anxious to see the results. First of course, I had to supervise the placement of the stepping stones. There was some debate between us, but in the end I think they were placed perfectly for stepping from the house deck to the storage shed. 
Then the spreading of the bark began. As I said before, we only bought the least amount of supplies so that if it wasn't what we liked, it would not be a huge waste of money. As more and more of the bark was spread, we knew we were on the right track to making our lot look ever so much better.
We stepped back and surveyed the results and were quite happy with them. Then we started calculating what we would need for stepping stones to the street behind the house, and then the bark and greenery we wanted to spread and plant to fill in the rest of the open spaces. This was just to the rear of the house and OH VEY! Let's just say that we will have to take baby steps on completing this project, but it does feel good to at least start the process.
With plenty of time for rest and relaxation, we kicked back and watched the one channel we could get, while playing on our laptops. With an 8am delivery, we could sleep in, but wouldn't you know it, we were both up by 5am. We took showers and then decided to load up our pick up with all the stuff we were taking home with us, in order to make our exit home that much quicker when the time came.
We arrived a little early at the receiver, and were told to go ahead and back up to the dock for unloading. In under an hour, we were unloaded and headed back to the yard to drop the trailer and park the truck, but only after cleaning and 
Now we are finally headed home. It has been almost 10 weeks since we have both been at the house. We should have great weather to enjoy, a few little projects to do around the house, and a whole lot of sitting back and relaxing to do until we go back out on the truck on Friday morning!
So with that said, imagine if you will, Craig has crunched the numbers, and even with the limited driving hours he had left on his 70 hour clock, knew we could make the delivery dates listed on the dispatch, and even went as far as to advise dispatch to make the first drop in the late afternoon. Around 1pm on Monday we start receiving the appointment times.......Excellent! First drop is in Needles, CA at 10am on Tuesday. Not a problem, we can make that, and then comes San Bernardino, CA at 7pm that same day. What the what?!?! The original dispatch had that delivering on Wednesday along with Los Angeles, which now had an appointment of 7am.
With that tidbit of information, we try and grab a few hours a sleep before hitting the road again at 11pm to drive into San Bernardino. We had positive thoughts, that when we arrived at 3am, we would be unloaded and still be able to make the last drop. But sadly, it is 8am and we are still sitting on the street looking at a closed gate, leading to the dock area, that we had hoped to have already occupied. Upon arriving, the night guard said to check back in at 9am. We once again let dispatch know the circumstances and and got the "Will try and repower the load" message again. I amused myself while watching the birds pick at the gummy worms that someone had thrown onto the ground. It didn't take long for them to figure out those worms weren't meant for eating!
So there you have my sad little tale, but I wanted to be fair, and let those who are thinking about going into the business know that life out in the truck can be a bit frustrating at times. Things will go amiss, appointment times will be missed, equipment does fail, but our experience is that it doesn't happen very often, and when it does...........we just roll with the punches........'cause that's what we do!
Immediately after going empty, we were directed to deadhead (drive empty) 233 miles to the Tyson Meat plant in Wallula, WA and drop our trailer there. Then we were to bob tail to the company drop yard in Pasco and wait for a loaded trailer of frozen french fries to be delivered there. It was a drizzly, overcast, foggy drive into Wallula, a perfect day for some great Northwest pictures, if I wasn't in a fast moving vehicle. The waterfalls coming off the rocks were awesome!
After dropping the trailer we waited for our loaded trailer to arrive at the drop yard. By 2pm we were hooked up and heading to the truck stop to fuel and scale. We didn't have much more time left on Craig's 14 hour clock, but we wanted to get as far as we could because, as usual, we will be working on a tight time schedule to deliver to three different locations on Tuesday and Wednesday. We will be going to Needles, San Bernardino, and Los Angeles with these frozen french fries and it will consist of a lot of very early morning, if not night driving, to make those deliveries.
Tonight we are staying at Deadman Pass Rest Area, after climbing Cabbage Hill in Oregon on Interstate 84, so named, because if you look up at the side of it, it looks like a head of cabbage. I'm just happy to pass over it in daylight, and with clear, dry pavement. But you got to love the views from up top, as you can look out over the valley below.
After hooking up, doing an inspection, having the guard come and seal the trailer, fuel up back at the Pilot, we were ready to hit the road a full 5 hours ahead of schedule. This would allow us not to have to drive at night since this load delivers at 4am in Clackamas on Sunday morning. We made it to Corning by 9pm and called it a night, knowing we would have to hit the road as soon as our 10 hour mandatory break was over.
I had calculated our miles and knew that we would be able to get to Brooks, OR where there was a Pilot Truck Stop we could stop at and take showers. On top of that, with Craig's birthday only two days away, I wanted to make sure we had an opportunity for him to have a nice meal out and enjoy a date night. Cleaned up and hungry, we made our way across the parking lot to a nice little restaurant that we have enjoyed before. I made sure to insist that he have a nice dessert after dinner, which I didn't have to twist his arm too much for him to agree to my suggestion.
After a nice quiet dinner and with full tummies, we waddled back to our truck, knowing that 2:30am would come much too quickly for us to have to get up. Our plan is to be on the road by 3am to drive the last 38 miles to the Safeway Distribution Center in Clackamas, OR. I won't even venture to guess where we will be sent next!
So here we sit at the Pilot truck stop in Salinas waiting to receive our next dispatch. If history tells us anything, it will be well into this afternoon before we hear the cheerful beep of the QualComm. I really can't complain, the last two loads with 8 drops, kept us hopping pretty good the last week. Having the opportunity to sit and just be is fine with me.
The pictures were taken yesterday on our way through the Monterey/Salinas valley area. The green of the landscape was just breathtaking and beautiful. How could you not be happy just being able to witness it. Reminds me of this saying I saw :
With a cleaned out trailer, we headed towards Toppenish, but with one very quick pit stop at the rest area in Prosser, where conveniently we made use of the Starbucks and grabbed us a nice frothy drink and a chocolate chip cookie. AHHHHH that made the drive into Toppenish just that much better!
This particular dispatch has us delivering to 4 different locations in the San Francisco Bay area and one additional stop in Castroville, CA. With the delivery times, we knew we had to make the most of the time we had left, in order to make them on time, and with that in mind, we pushed on and made it to LaPine, OR around 9pm. Wednesday morning at 7am found us back on the road with the company yard in French Camp, CA as our destination for staging for the deliveries Thursday morning.
The two deliveries in Fremont went smooth as silk, and off we headed to Livermore to U.S. Foods. Well, so much for things running like clock work. Although an hour ahead of schedule, once again the planners scheduled our last appointment giving us only one hour to get unloaded in Livermore and then drive 100 miles to Castroville.......and we were on such a good roll too! On top of that, we had to wait well over two hours to get unloaded, and deal with the screwed up dock area that was cluttered with tractors, which made it almost impossible to get into our assigned dock. By the way, we only unloaded one lousy pallet of meat here too and being charged $45 by the lumpers to unload it!
We really needed the extra time to sit as Craig was getting low on driving hours, but what made matters worse was that all we could find with our TV was PBS. We both puttered around on our computers and then a funny thing happened. Most other nights we are both ready for sleep come around 8am, even with TV shows on that we really want to see. Not last night. We were both wide awake and watching PBS until after 11pm, which actually had some great musical shows on, but we did have to put up with their pledge drive intermissions! 
By 1pm Monday, we were back at the Fred Meyer DC and picking up our loaded trailer. This particular run will have three drops, Yakima, Wenatchee, and Richland, WA. Another interesting thing is that we will travel on some secondary roads which we have never been on before. But leaving out of Chehalis we got a return trip on Highway 12 which we had the pleasure of driving on once before. It proved to be just as beautiful as the first time we traveled it. 
Our drop in Yakima went smoothly and we were headed to Wenatchee which is the apple capitol of the world or so the sign said, but I was too slow on the draw to get the picture of the sign. Everywhere you looked in the rural areas you saw nothing but apple trees. Must be a sight during the height of apple season! Craig never one to sit idle, helped with the unloading of the 18 pallets of goods, and for his hard work, the manager awarded him a gold star pin for his hat. He said he awards his employees one when they go out of their way to be helpful and wanted Craig to have one as well.
With our drop in Wenatchee completed, off we headed south towards Richland. I was a bit disappointed since nightfall had come, and any new sights to be seen on the uncharted roads would have to wait for another time. I just knew I was probably missing some great photo opportunities since we followed the Columbia River for quite awhile.
Arriving in Richland at 10:30pm for a 4am delivery, we were happy to have them unload us early. Don't know what the planners were thinking when they have us picking up at 1pm and not delivering our last drop until well after the 14 hour clock has expired. But no worries, we were in and out within an hour and headed to our company drop yard in Pasco, WA a mere 11 miles away. Now it's time for some well deserved sleep!
By 6am on Friday morning we were headed north with our sights set on the Starbucks in Santa Nella, CA as a spot to stop and treat ourselves to a nice cold refreshing frappacino. While walking back to the truck, Craig noticed a trailer tire that needed to be replaced so we headed to the company yard in French Camp to have it replaced. About 90 minutes after arriving at the yard, we had a new trailer tire and were headed to the casino in Corning as our place to stop for the night.
We have made our final stop for the day in Aurora, OR tonight, with only 23 miles left to go in the morning to Clackamas, OR to deliver the bananas. We never quite know what to expect whenever we go empty in Clackamas, but if I have my choice, it would be a return trip to Tillamook, OR., but I'll just have to wait and see where the weekend dispatcher ends up sending us.
