GOTCHA Tennessee!

I must be getting used to being in the truck as I have no more swelling or constipation and my butt must be getting used to it too as I don't shift as much in my seat as I did before. Josh is going to start keeping track of what eat from now on too as I love salad but salad doesn't agree with me and I was to the potty 4 times this morning and we ran out of chemicals to put in the potty to help with the smell. Today he said I could pick out where I wanted to eat lunch and I said I wanted a salad and he was not amused to say the least. *evil grin*

Before I get into our day and what happened I would like to announce that my youngest son is now officially sworn into the Air Force and we cannot be prouder of him. We hope for many great things for him and I believe this is a great start. I hope he learns to work hard and have some self discipline and that would serve him greatly in his future. I know he wishes to travel too and I can't hardly wait to hear from him in a different country. It is exciting and painful for me at the same time as I know I won't be seeing him very often and he won't need his mommas help anymore.

Our day on the road has been different to say the least we have hit traffic jam after traffic jam on the interstates and one in particular delayed us for an hour and once we found out why, the delay didn't matter. A trucker had an accident and a horriffic one at that. I am not sure if the driver survived but the tangled mess of the truck I would be surprised if he did. His accident happened at 5 a.m. and we drove through at 5 p.m. and they were still cleaning up. We can only speculate as to what happened but from the look of things we think he must of fell asleep at the wheel as there were many scrapes on the concrete of the bridge before the truck went through the metal railings and he plumetted down and must of rolled the truck. We saw two more accidents happen because of the back up of traffic, I swear people go crazy when they are in hurry or think they don't have time to wait like everyone else. One of those accidents happened when we were going 10 mph... not sure why but a guy just rearended the person in front of him and must of hit them pretty good as there was damage to both vehicles. Here is some tips for when you are in a traffic jam:

1. Pick a lane and stay in that lane until you know if you need to switch. Jumping lanes repeatedly will not get you there any faster and you are putting others in danger each time you do so.

2. The shoulder is not a safe place to pass everyone and should be left clear for emergency vehicles and the like.

3. Be patient, we are all waiting and getting mad and blowing your horn or yelling isn't going to do anyone any good.

Luckily all the other times we were in a traffic jam it was because of construction (it is everywhere!) or because it was a busy time of day. I am getting into the point where I am having a bit of road rage myself and I am not even driving, people need to have more courtesy to each other and quit being selfish idiots, and also remember to give truck drivers more room as it is harder for us to stop and move, dodging in front of us is never a good idea.

Today Josh discovered cleavage jam. Yep, sounds disgusting right? Wrong! In our travels there are some foods that we cannot have in the truck unless it is refrigerated and we currently have no way of keeping said items cold and so I have resorted to stocking up on some useful items a little at a time when I see something I want and jam or jelly is one of them. We have taken jelly from our table at restaurants before we usually have our shower bag with us and put them in there, today we didn't have our bag so Josh asked where I was going to put the jam and I took two of them and put them in my bra, you couldn't tell since they were nestled in the middle. Josh asked if I was going to put that on my blog and said sure I am not ashamed! :) I am sure I could have walked out with them in my hand but that wouldn't make a very good story now would it?

I finally got a picture of the Welcome Sign in Tennessee! a real one!! One point to me, zero for Tennessee! Game and match!

It's A Dogs Life

We made it to our stop in South Carolina and now they have rejected our trailer saying there is a dip in the floor and they deemed it unsafe to load. We are trying to patiently wait for someone in dispatch to respond as to what we are supposed to do now. It is quite frustrating to sit and wait and you have no idea if they are even working on the problem as we haven't even talked to a person yet as they are not answering the phones. We have had this problem a lot and even if you leave a voice mail you might as well not expect an answer as I don't even know if they even listen to the voicemails as we have never gotten a call back from anyone that we have left messages for.

Yesterday when we were in North Carolina we got to see something cool but I didn't get a picture of as it happened too fast. We were sitting at a stop light and we hear this large rumble and as it got closer we realized it was a plane and about that time we look up we see two fighter jets flying by and they were flying quite low but not fast enough to break the sound barrier. Further on down the road we did see four, what seemed to be cargo planes from the air force. I love seeing those kinds of planes and would love to ride in one. One other neat things is when you are driving in the mountains there are signs along the road saying that speed is controlled by aircraft and one day we did see helicopters hovering over the road and using radar to catch speeders. They bob and weave over the peaks of the mountains and they seemed to be silent as we didn't hear them at all. After seeing these I was on alert and watching for helicopters hoping to get a picture and I saw a dot in the sky and was about to say "hey there is one" when I saw four other dots in the sky that were evenly spaced and realized that it was power line with those little balls on it. It was high enough in the sky I couldn't tell til we got closer. Josh of course teased me about that and now everytime we see one of those balls he brings that up.

It is fun too see all of the dogs that a lot of truckers have with them and sometimes there are multiple dogs and large breed dogs. Once in a while you see a trucker with a cat but not very often. As Josh and I are looking at this rather large dog get out of the truck he says " I would never have a dog in the truck it would be cruel to the dog as he would have nothing to do but go from bed to seat." I agreed with him but then later on I was thinking, hmmm that is what I do. It would be cruel for the dog but it is ok for me.. am I less than a dog? LOL! I guess I am better than a dog anyway as I can make drinks and food! BWAHAHA Also he can take me into stores without having to put on my special working animal vest.

Hold onto your hats as I am about to unload on our day! Whew and what a day it has been! When I last left you we were waiting on a call from the company as to what we should do about the trailer being rejected. They called and we got a place set up to take the trailer for repairs. We get there and the trailer guy says the trailer is fine, it had a place on the side where something had happened to it before and it was repaired and the repair was good and there really wasn't anything that needed to be done. Josh showed him the inside of the trailer and where they said the floor looked weak because they could see daylight. Repair guy says yes there is a gap there because that is where your wiring goes for your lights. We have repair guy call our company and explain the situation and they decide between them to put some caulking in the area there was daylight and call it good. We go back to get loaded and as soons as Josh backed into the dock the guy there says "same trailer I am not loading it" without even looking at it after we told him we had it repaired and passed a DOT inspection. I am getting a bit mad (ok a lot) and I call the loading company and asked for shipping department. I get a guy on the phone that is hard as heck to understand but I am using my polite "professional" voice and explain that the trailer has been repaired and I need to speak with a supervisor. He said he didn't realize that it was rejected twice and he will go see what is going on. When he comes to the truck and talks with Josh he says Josh's supervisor is on the phone and we need to get this straightened out! LOL! Yep Im Josh's supervisor!!!! hee hee.. If I would have know that I would have played my cards a bit more agressively. Anyway he barely looks at the trailer too and tells him that the trailer is being rejected because of the repairs. So my little call did nothing that I was hoping for and we pull out again and wait for McLeod to get ahold of us again. Josh is so mad at waiting and mad at the loading company that he gets out of the truck with our toilet in hand and empties it next to the road by that enters the loading company. His theory is if they are going to s%^t on me Im going to s%^t on them literally! Yep. We waited for quite a bit and Josh decides to head to a truck stop so we can eat and take a shower. I was really hoping that would help our mood but OH NO! I decide to get an extra towel for our shower and there is no one around so I help myself. Little did I know there were no towels in there at all and so we still only have one towel. I get in the shower and the water was barely warm. We go to eat at Wendy's and the food was nasty, the burgers we got were soaked in grease and dripping out of it when we pick it up. Nice. We get back into the truck and still no word as to what to do now. I lay down and eventually fall asleep, when I wake up we are on the road BACK to North Carolina to pick up a different load. This load is weird to say the least. The instructions on this load says that it is a double blind load meaning we are not to tell the shipper where this is going and we are not to tell the receiver where it came from. Plus when we start getting loaded Josh had to physically count the pallets on the load as the shipper wasn't supposed to tell us how many pallets we were getting but Josh had to call the load broker to tell them how many we got and they had no idea what was going on either! When Josh called them and told them 28 pallets were loaded they wanted to know if they could fit anymore, um no... trailer is full... they thought we were supposed to get 29 1/2... Josh explained that is what was on the pallets 29 1/2' long board pieces. Oh.. he says.... geez. Just makes you wonder what is up with all of the secrecy! I asked Josh are we hauling drugs or guns or something... makes you wonder and I really hope we aren't! We leave the shipper and haven't found a place close to weigh the load and not too far down the road is a weigh station and of course it is open. Nothing we could do so we hold our breath (to make it lighter..ha ha) and we get a green light meaning our load was ok. Later down the road and we went into another weigh station and got a green light there too, thank goodness! Josh is still wanting to get the load weighed but I am thinking that is unnecessary now. This load is going to Illinois and we are hoping that we get to go home this weekend as we have a special 3 year olds birthday party to go to and we NEED a break. Stress levels have been high and it is wearing on both of us as proof this morning, neither of us wanted to get up out of bed and Josh is fighting a headache since yesterday. We also had trouble finding a place to park last night and we went over our clock by 30 minutes but finally got into a rest area and quite early this morning we had a woman knocking on our truck, don't know what she wanted as by the time I got to the door she got into her car and then stopped at the truck ahead of us then she left on the interstate. Whatever. I guess I've typed enough for today, have a great day! :)

　

　

　

Air Force airplanes that we saw

Yes that is a large hat on top of there!

Picture of skyline in Charlotte, NC

Game on!

We are in Tennessee. I finally got a picture of the welcome sign, it is even in black and white to give it that old world feel.

Ok I guess I can't fool you, this isn't an actual picture. I didn't realize how close we were to the Tennessee line and I was on the phone with Ethan when the sign went by, it is funny how I have been through Tennessee how many times and I have yet to get a picture, game on Tennessee, game on.

We are headed to North Carolina today and of course this is a screwed up load too. They originally gave us a load that was to go to Ohio but they changed their minds as another driver that had a load was at time at home and they didn't account for the fact that she was to be home for three days and they only wanted her to be home for one day. We are quickly finding out that this company doesn't like for you to go home and when you do they try to cut it short. Anyway we had to call up this lady driver and ask her where the load was and we went and picked it up and made it to a truck stop for the night and we need to be leaving now but we are parked in by a four wheeler. I don't know what they were thinking parking right in front of us but now we are waiting on the owner to come back to move it. I don't think I would know how to act if things went smoothly! :) We did get our next load info and it is for South Carolina, yep the same dang place that we had to wait for 6 hours to get loaded. I guess I will have plenty of time to get my crochet on! I just don't know what else to do with myself today just feeling a bit out of sorts, not feeling content I guess, I am wanting to accomplish something today and there isn't many choices of things to do. I think I am feeling a bit frustrated as I would rather be home in my garden weeding as the weeds are tall enough now the plants can hardly be seen. My kids keep telling me that they will help but that is yet to be seen. I am also frustrated as Josh told me last night that basically my idea of living on a "farm" type area isn't going to work as my proof of my garden. Maybe he is right but right now all I am feeling is defensiveness. I gave up everything to be in the truck with him, so we could be together and try and help him out. Ok enough rant.. I am emotional and not thinking clearly and will try to be more objective later. Hope you all have a great sunny day!

What is in our future?

We are sitting in London, Kentucky now. This company can't quite figure out what they are going to decide on and it gets a bit frustrating. Last night we had the load for North Carolina and was sitting in the truck stop in Decatur and Josh and I stayed up a bit late last night as we knew we would have time to sleep in this morning since we weren't supposed to be going anywhere, but bright and early the QUALCOMM starts going off that we have a new messages. When Josh reads them it says to bring the load that we have now and drop it in the yard and pick up the load we now have going to Kentucky. It doesn't deliver til tomorrow so we are now sitting in another truck stop wasting time til we can drop this load. Something that kind of made me a little mad is when Josh was talking to the dispatcher last night and told Josh that is ok to be overweight by a few hundred pounds and he could go ahead and take the load as it was. First off we were overweight by 740 lbs, not a few hundred, and secondly if we did take the load and go into a weigh station the DOT would fine Josh and it would go on his drivers liscense and the company wouldn't be responsible for it at all. I feel sorry for the person that does take that load and wonder if they will have him take it as is or if they will actually have some of the weight taken off.

Now onto the subject of men and how sometimes it so hard to understand why they do the things they do. Of course I will only be using Josh in this comparison but I am sure everyone can relate that sometime men and women do things differently and it isn't always clear to either sex why they do it that way.

Example 1: Josh had asked me the other night if I wanted to stay in a hotel overnight instead of sleeping in the truck. I said no because that is just another expense that we don't need and the subject was dropped. Last night when the dispatcher told us we would have to sit with that load til Monday he did offer us a free hotel room to stay in and Josh declined and when I asked why he said he didn't want to stay in flea bag motel room. I am only going to guess that they are only flea bag motels if they are free otherwise he is getting his moneys worth? Sigh.

Example 2: Josh had stopped in a CB shop and was wanting to price some items and maybe get his old CB working because in his mind it is the "best" and we also found out that it is now illegal. He has a CB in the truck and it is hooked up and it works but the distance on it doesn't work very well. The shop told him that they could put on a better antenea on his truck for $200, and we didn't have the money for it then but he is fixated on this now. He only uses the CB whenever we get in a traffic jam to find out what is going on up front and which lane he needs to be in. He would often roll his eyes at what some of the truck drivers are talking about as most of them are being gross or just plain mean to each other. I told him I didn't think we needed to spend money on that because of the little use. He is now turning it on a lot I guess to prove that he needs it and would use it and talks about it all the time. Sigh

Example 3: When we are at a truck stop with nothing to do Josh always wants to "trash around the truck stop" meaning he wants to go look at things in the truck stop. I don't mind this usually as it is a way to get out and stretch our legs but he seriously shops and looks at everything while we are there. These truck stop don't vary much in what kinds of items they carry and even then it isn't anything that is of interest to me. I think that I am going to see if I can talk him into doing some walking around the parking lot instead.

Example 4: Parking. I am not a truck driver but I do understand mostly what it entails to park a semi, Josh is constantly driving around and around the parking lot looking for the perfect parking spot. He has had to do some interesting manuevers to park and I understand that but the constant circling the lot and complaining about other drivers doing the same is irritating. When the clock is running down and we need to park and he refuses to park in a certain area because it isn't to his liking and I am screaming in my head "just park the dang thing!"

After rereading some of these I think I am just complaining more than anything but there was a point that I was trying to get to. One night Josh and I had a discussion on what our current goals are, which direction are we going, and how to achieve it. We don't seem to be on the same path anymore.as neither of us are sure where we want to go and this seems to be a bigger problem the longer we go. Things have drastically changed in our lives such as our children are now grown and we feel we have more freedom now and we are trying to decide what to do with this new freedom. Our first and short goal is to get caught up on bills and try to get some things paid off and be able to maintain at the very least. Josh has asked me many times how long I am going to stay in the truck and I have no answer. I know I don't want to do this for many years but exactly how long I don't know. He is interested in being an Owner Operator and buy his own truck and I am too afraid of doing that. I want to buy some land, where I am not sure, but I would like to own our own property with lots of acreage to build up something of a farm and to be able to garden. We won't be able to afford to do both and so we are at a stand still. We are lost to say the least and there is no easy answer for either of us. Josh has always said the we are like Ying and Yang, even though we are total opposites we fit together and complete one another but now it seems our differences are not strengthing us anymore. Sometimes I wonder if we are putting too much thought into this and maybe we should just wait and see what happens. Who knows what the future holds.

　

Mac Daddy

We have spent the past couple of days doing short trips in Northern Illinois again and not too much to report. We just picked up our load that will be going to North Carolina and we will be dropping off at the exact same place we went to last time. I think Josh likes this as he know where it is and how things work. We don't know yet what load we will get next but we are really hoping it is not the place in South Carolina where we had to wait for 6 hours to get loaded. I'm keeping my fingers crossed.

I have been a total bum lately and my hygiene is showing it. It is funny how I have used the thought process that "who cares what I look like I am sure I won't see these people again" has changed my habits and routine. Stubbled legs, messy/oily hair, and wearing underwear for more than one day doesn't bother me much anymore. I have seen many woman drivers out on the road (more than I ever expected) and they seem to be quite put together. One woman in particular that I saw had on all of her makeup, hair was done, and was dressed nicely, not a wrinkled cloth in sight and I was impressed. I am wondering if she was a local driver and was home often or if she really put in that much effort each day. I was never one to take much time on my appearance, the only time I wore even a bit of makeup was in high school, I guess after having kids that type of stuff just wasn't important to me anymore. Tonight is shower night and I am looking forward to it as my hair is driving me nuts, sticking up everywhere it almost feels like it is floating on my head, and yes clean underwear will be implemented as well.

Change of plans again. I don't think this company knows how to handle weekends. We pick up our load and knew it was going to be a heavy one and Josh was dreading taking it over the mountains as we were going to be maxed on weight, but we only got to the local truck stop to weigh it and come to find out that we are over max weight by 740 pounds. Josh calls dispatch and they tell him to take it to the manufacturer, the first place we stop tells us that we have to go to a different area where this product is made and so we head there, we get there and they tell Josh that no one is in the buildings to change our load on weekends, we will have to wait til Monday to have that fixed. They tell us to take it to their truck lot and drop it there, once there they tell us they can't take the load either! So we make it to McLeod lot and we find out that they want us to stay with this load instead of giving us another one. That means sitting in the truck until Monday morning til we can get the load fixed. Nice. This load was scheduled to deliver on Monday too.. hmm.. don't think it is going to make it on time.

Earlier today when we were in Champaign, IL a storm came and if anybody knows me I do not like storms. If I am someplace where I feel safe it isn't so bad but the wind came up quite strong with the rain and we were sitting in a parking lot and I could feel the truck rocking with the wind. My mind always comes up with the worst senario, tornado. I have always had a fear of them and have dreams about them all the time. I wasn't worried about a tornado picking us up rather I was worried that the strong winds would break something loose and it would come through the truck. I miss the days of living at home and my bedroom was in the basement and felt quite safe there, no matter how bad the storm I could hide and usually if the storms were to get bad we always had some family come over to be safe too and that would take my mind off of what was going on most of the time. I love the child innocence of mind and think that as long as I was with my parents nothing bad would happen. I truely believed that my dad has superman vision when we would be driving in the rain as I couldn't see nothing but he always drove through it without a problem.

The is the daddy of all Mac and Cheese!  This large noodle is sitting in front of Kraft in Champaign, IL.  I am not sure if I like the words on it though....plus I am enjoying the view of the guy that must be picking out belly button lint. :P

 If you look very very close on the guard shack it says no cameras so I had to take a picture of it! I can't tell you where this was taken because I think they might call the County Mounty to erase all my pictures of industrial espionage.  If you don't hear from me again you know what happened! Hee hee

　

10-4 Good Buddy

Today I decided to share a bit of trucker lingo, as some of it is funny and soon you all will be talking just like us truckers. lol.

Deadhead = Going anywhere empty

Bobtail = No trailer attatched

Drop and Hook = Leaving an empty trailer and picking up a preloaded one

Chicken Coop = Weigh Station

Pickle Park = Rest Area

Chicken Hauler = A truck with a lot of lights on it

Four wheelers = a car or truck

Parking Lot = Car Carrier Semi Truck

Lot Lizard = Paid short term escort.. ahem...

Tanker = Semi hauling Liquid

Drop Deck = Semi with a two level trailer

Flatbed = No sides or coverings on trailer

Pete = Peterbuilt brand truck

KW = Kenworth brand truck

Freight Shaker = Freightlinger brand truck

10-4 = alright or OK

Hopper Bottom = a truck that unloads from the underside

Wiggle Wagons = any two or three trailered semis

Bears/County Mounty/City Kitty/Po Po = Police

Hiding in the weeds = Police using radar gun on side of road

Sitting in the median = Police waiting on the asphalt sections between two interstates

Covered wagons = Flatbed with sides that is tarped on top that is rounded

Spread Axle = Any truck where the tires aren't set together

Jake Brake = is an engine retarder that is used to slow the truck without using the air brakes

Reefer = A refrigerated trailer

Super Single = refers to a single tire instead of a pair on a truck or trailer

Van = any dry non refrigerated trailer aka dry box

Day cab = no sleeper on truck just front seats

Cab over = a truck with no hood where the truck sits over the engine

Conventional = any truck with a hood

Flat top = a truck with a shortened height sleeper

Schneider egg = Any orange barrels or cones from construction zones

Fifth wheel = part of the truck that the trailer connects to and rests on

King Pin = an actual pin on the underside of the trailer that connects the trailer to the truck

Pig tail = the electrical cords that connects the truck to the trailer

Governed = having a truck that is restricted to a certain speed

Any my all time favorite is......drum roll please.....

Hauling Sailboat Fuel = empty trailer

Here is a little tid bit too that you might not know is a lot of the chain truck fueling stops have reward cards and they are quite a little gem to have and almost a necessity if you are a truck driver. When you fuel at these truck stops they will give you points on your reward card that can be used to buy almost anything in the store. They also let you earn shower rewards so you can shower for free otherwise it cost anywhere up to $10-13. We use this card frequently for drink refills and last night was able to use it to buy some pillows for the truck! You know I missed my pillows and was more than happy to have them back. Right now Pilot (which is where we are authorized to fuel) is giving double points all summer long! :) I believe right now we have around $25 on our card and each time we fuel we get more which isn't hard when you drive as much as we have lately. The only thing that I don't like is that when we are in a truck stop they always charge you for use of the wifi...and it is quite costly and you can't use your points to pay for it. I mean come on.. it doesn't really cost them hardly anything to provide wifi, most places like restaurants have it for free but I guess I shouldn't complain as we do get quite a bit on our reward card for free.

Fun with night time camera in Tennessee

This picture was also from Tennessee.  I have yet to get the elusive Welcome to Tennessee sign yet.

Rembering old and making new memories

Thank goodness the place where we was to pick up our load was the right place because we waited for 6 hours to be loaded. Josh never did confirm that indeed it was the right place and I believe we got lucky on that. After getting loaded we still had 6 hours of drive time left on the clock and he wanted to shut down, I was not wanting to do that, we had sat in the truck for 6 hours with no pay and now it was time to make some time and money. He relented and headed down the road but as we both know it is harder to find a place to park for the night the longer you are out after dark. Luckily we found a place with a whole 30 seconds to spare. We did end up in Tennessee but was unable to get a picture of the welcome sign as we didn't see one.

Driving in the night through the mountains was amazing, probably not as much for Josh as he is the one driving but it was so dark there, no street lights, no city lights and if there wasn't so much cloud coverage I bet the stars at night would be amazing. I am so wanting to find a place just like that for star gazing and to be able to see the Milky Way again as I did as a child. I have one memory in particular that I love, it was me and my grandma Mabel driving home from church that was in the country and it was so dark I laid in the back seat just watching the stars and I thought they were following us. I told grandma this and she stopped the car and turned off the headlights and explained to me that they weren't following us and she also pointed out the Milky Way and of course big and little dipper. I didn't think much about it then but that memory has stuck with me. Another memory that has stuck with me is seeing the northern lights. I was sitting in the back yard and began to see these red fingers of light coming across the sky. I hollar for mom and dad to come see this and we are watching together trying to decide what it was. It never changed color it was only red and we figured it had to be the northern lights. We teased that knowing our luck it was radiation from a nuclear bomb being dropped and here we are sitting outside just watching it.

I didn't get many pictures of South Carolina as there wasn't too much of interest to take a picture of.. The further west we got the more mountains there were but for the most part it is a flat land with lots of trees. We did notice that once we got on the interstate it wasn't a very well kept road as it had a lot of potholes. I was also surprised that once we got into the bigger towns they weren't all that big. No large buildings or even heavy traffic. I do believe that it must be a poorer state than most. We did see a lot of swampy areas around and Josh teased that now all we needed was a gator and a banjo.LOL.

Our view for 6 hours...

Batmans secret lair isn't a secret anymore I guess.

Beautiful silver lined clouds of South Carolina