WE'RE GOING WHERE?

This past Friday, I drove 950 miles in 17 hours to get from Modesto, CA to home in Usk, WA.  A quick stop over to pack up a duffel bag, grab my passport and port credential, and get some much needed sleep.  Saturday I drove to the Company yard to await Craig's arrival with a load of apples he had just picked up in Moxie, WA.  We were able to hit the local Wal Mart, grab some dinner, and get situated in the truck.

During the course of all that, I learned that the load he was assigned, and which will be my first run with him in almost a year, would be headed East instead of the usual South.  In fact, once again, Craig is what he calls the "guinea pig" on a trip that would take us to the Chicago, IL area.  In the past, TWT used to send teams to Chicago all the time, but it proved too difficult to get loads back headed West, so they discontinued going
so far East until now. Even rarer, is that it is a solo run.

So imagine my surprise, and almost disbelief when he informed me of the details of our load assignment.  It definitely brought back memories of the time we delivered boats and the I90/I94 corridor was one of our routine routes.  What a great run for my return to the truck, and we are both looking forward to seeing some old familiar areas through Montana, North Dakota, Minnesota, and Wisconsin before arriving in Illinois and having to deal with toll roads without the benefit of the electronic toll pass adhered to our windshield.

Since we will be dealing with different time zones, and working around Craig's 70 hour driving clock, we have been having some very early mornings, or as some would say, some very late evening driving start times.  We started out from Spokane, WA at 4am on Sunday morning, and this morning we were hitting the Interstate at 2am.  I don't even want to think about what time Craig told me we would have to get up and be on the road Wednesday, or should I say Tuesday night to make our delivery in Franklin Park, IL at Fresh Express.  I'll just deal with that when I have to.