Irritations a plenty!

It has been a very bad week and it doesn't seem to be getting any better. Stress levels are high again and I am right there with him. Lets start out on Monday, my birthday. We sit at Frito Lay in Virginia for 7 hours waiting to get loaded and of course the clock is running down while we are waiting. We finally get the call that our load is ready and just from moving across the yard it starts the clock again from off duty to on duty which really twerks Josh's butt since we only had another three hours and we would have had a 10 hour reset on the clock and would have had time to drive in the night but now as it stood we had 7 whole minutes and the nearest truck stop was over an hour away. With that we drove to the truck stop illegally and not much we could do about it. Once we get to the truck stop it is 7 o'clock and the place is filled except for the reserve parking and we once again didnt have much choice but to go pay $14 to park there. Josh was wanting to at least give me a shower on my birthday and so we went inside and and paid for a shower, $13. We then went to the restaurant there in hopes to get some cake for my birthday but instead I got apple crisp with ice cream on top. I know Josh feels bad that he couldn't do much for my birthday but he more than makes up for it with all the little things that he does for me daily and I can't complain because he is a good man and glad I got to spend my day with him. :) We spend the night there and the next day we spend driving but still not enough time to make it to our stop which is in Chicago. Today we make it there and they say they can't unload us til midnight, we are there at 10 a.m. Call into dispatch and they tell us to take the load to Joliet, IL drop it there and pick up a empty trailer and head to our next load pickup which is in Chicago again. Traffic is of course crazy in Chicago and it is even crazier when you get stupid people around you that have no idea about what is going on around them. We had a man jump in front of us and then slam on his brakes so in turn we had to slam on our brakes hard and luckily we weren't loaded and was able to shut down the truck before hitting him but it was close. When you slam on your brakes the system reports this to the company and in turn you get an automated message on the qualcomm wanting you to explain what happened and why did you have a "critical event". I was feeling my oats and asked Josh if I could do the reply to the message and he agreed as he was way too angry to do so. I am sure now he wishes he didn't let me as here was my response:

What happened? I pushed the brake pedal very hard. But I am sure you are wanting to know why. A man had a suicide wish and decided to pull out in front of me, which in general cars think that is a safe thing to do, and then he slammed on his brakes. He is lucky I didn't have him for lunch.

I think that more than explains what happened don't you? Josh is now worried that he will get repremanded for not being "more professional" but with the mood we have been in they are lucky that it didn't have foul language and other "non professional" lingo in it. I have to have an outlet and this was my way of letting them know that things are not all hunky dorey in the trucking world and we don't just magically make from point A to B without incidents.

Once we are loaded we are heading to Ohio so it should be a nice short trip and here is to hoping that things start to look up and try not to stress too much. I almost forgot! We also had our first blown out tire! Yep so we spent a good portion of day on Tuesday getting to the place to get the tire fixed and getting a new tire on there. It was a trailer tire so it wasn't too bad but dang did it make a noise! I was sitting in the bunk when it happened and I immediately ask Josh what he hit, but he said it was the tire. We even saw the tire remains on the road after we turned around to get to the tire repair place, I was so proud, it was our first contribution to all the tire debris on the road, our first laid alligator. LOL!

Here is a pic for my "favorite" niece ;)

Rock quary in Chicago, it spans just as far on the other side of the road