Starting

My husband Josh and I are not total strangers to the trucking world. He has driven for many years for different companies over the years and has had some other types of jobs in between, but he really enjoys trucking and has decided to return to the trucking world again. The big difference about the current situation is that I will be his handy sidekick full time. I have been on the road with Josh and the longest I have been out with him was two weeks. This is going to be a whole new experience for us both, especially me!

I have always been a homebody. I have always enjoyed being at home and all the things that go with it. I enjoy cooking and even ran a home based bakery out of my home for 3 years. The list of things that I loved to do at home included: gardening, canning, crocheting, knitting, quilting, sewing, cooking, and I have even dabbled in having chickens and stained glass. I guess I should say a lot of those were my hobbies as my first and most important tasks were raising my two boys. I am very grateful that I was able to spend most of my years at home with them but now that they are out of school and starting to branch out into their own lives it is starting to feel like an empty nest. It has been a difficult time for me to let go and let them do their own thing without wanting to control the things that they do every step of the way, but more about that later.

Josh and I know that the only way to make good money truck driving is to be OTR (over the road) driver and we don't want to be apart from each other for weeks at a time so our solution was for me to go with him. He has tried to talk me into getting my CDL so I could drive too and be a team but I assured him that was NOT going to happen. I have a good driving record but I am not a good long distance driver as he found out on a trip to Florida, I only drove one hour of the trip. Plus driving a large truck does scare me. I could do it if pushed to but there is no drive to do it and I'm not willing to even try. This leaves me to be a passenger.

We are starting out with a new company called McLeod out of Decatur, Illinois. We are hoping this is going to be the perfect fit for what we are wanting to do and so far it has been. Josh had to do 3 days of orientation and I was invited to come along. They pay for our ride here and our hotel and while I am not joining Josh at the actual orientation I get to stay at the hotel on what Josh calls my mini vacation of doing nothing but watching television and playing on the internet. This is giving me time to do some research on things and get started on my blog.

I have so many ideas of things I want to write about on my blog that it is hard to stay on topic and keep wanting to branch out before I even get the first topic finished but I think this will be a fun way to keep friends and family updated on what we are doing and hopefully explore new ideas that I can share with other truck drivers. I plan to learn how to use my wonderful new camera and share pictures on our travels. I am very excited about seeing new parts of the country that I haven't been to before as I haven't traveled too much. I realize most of our time will be on the interstates but I believe that I can still find some exciting things to capture and hopefully master with my camera. I am trying to be creative on the things that I can do to occupy my time in the truck and I figure photograpy, crocheting and blogging will be the main items to start with. I am thankful that my best friend Michelle for suggesting to start a blog as I think it will be a great way to share my thoughts and exciting adventures to come.