BERRY BERRY GOOD

So we didn't drive to Santa Nella, CA Tuesday night, and instead stopped in the company yard in French Camp. We figured, why rush it, we had plenty of time on this run, and we could still get our Starbucks as we passed through Santa Nella Wednesday morning. We had no need for the repaired APU Tuesday night, as it was quite breezy, and our windows were rolled down all night.

Wednesday morning, about one hour after hitting the road, we pulled into Starbucks for a morning coffee and pastry. We sat outside and enjoyed the nice weather and did a little people watching. It wasn't going to be too hard of a day, only about 5 hours of total driving before we would hit Wheeler Ridge, CA where we would stage for our Thursday morning delivery. Only bad aspect of it, was the 3am wake up call we would have this morning to take showers before hitting the road. By 4am we were headed towards Wilmington, CA to a place that Craig had been to before without me. As we pulled into the tiny little alley way to get to the check in shed, Craig suddenly remembered this particular receiver and how tight the dock area was. But with just a few adjustments on his back, he had us securely docked and waiting to be unloaded. We went empty around 11am, and received our next assignment picking up strawberries, which had two pickups, the first being in Oxnard, CA about 75 miles away. With limited hours left on Craig's 14hr clock, we arrived a couple of hours early hoping that we could get loaded, and onto our second pickup. Yes, you guessed it, they didn't call us into the dock until our appointment time, but with only two pallets of organic strawberries at this first stop, we were leaving for stop #2 in just 15 minutes. Now we had just 2 1/2 hours to get to Santa Maria, CA before Craig would have to shut down. The freeway Gods must have been with us, as Hwy 101 was clear sailing the entire way there. On top of getting there right at our appointment time and the end of Craig's hours, we also got to enjoy some great scenic views along the Pacific coastline. Once checked in, we rolled down our windows to enjoy those cool crisp ocean breezes.We'll be able to stay on the premises tonight after getting loaded and have two full days of driving ahead of us to get to our destination of Puyallup, WA and the Fred Meyer Distribution Center. After the somewhat challenging day we had today, the next couple of days should be berry berry good indeed!