Wednesday, January 3, 2018

Well, here I am again at the same diner/truckstop I was at a few nights ago. Like for New Year's Eve.  they have some great food here.  But, when I came here New Year's Eve, there were hardly any trucks in here at all. Tonight? I drove around in here twice looking for a spot and finally just parked, partially blocking a lane. Went inside, had some great food and conversation.  Cool place.  I sat in there for an hour and came back out and just sat in the driver's seat, hoping someone would leave.

Would rather not stay in the "lane", tho this truckstop is a dive. Not a branded name truckstop, at all lol.  The "Travel Center" is half the size of any convenience store you might find and nothing is marked for parking lanes.  Just find a spot . Anyway, a truck came whizzing out of the hole it was in and I went whizzing right back into it haha.

So what's new?  I'm just biding my time, getting through this one day at a time.  A couple days before 2 weeks is up, I'm definitely telling them it will be time to go home.

_________________________________

That was last night. Got too tired to do anything but go to sleep.
Now, I'm back in Canaan, NY at a Love's Travel Stop.
I pulled in here thinking I was going to find a place to park - not.  I found a "space" that had had snow piled up but maybe, perhaps I could get the trailer backed in there. Well after a couple of pull ups, I had the thing lined out to get back into that space - but - I hit the unpacked snow and started losing traction.  Yeah, I said the hell with that. 

I pulled around front to leave and low and behold, a place where trucks prolly aren't supposed to park but other trucks there, I pulled in the last remaining spot.  I've been here for several hours and no one has said a word to me, so I'm here for the night.

I got the thing shut down, got the APU fired up and got the heater going in the sleeper and then went into the store - I need a shower.  I have several free showers on my Love's card.  I don't have to pay for them but I literally haven't had a chance to take a shower in 3 full days - yup, disgusting.  I got into the shower room - it's quite large just for a shower.  I mean, considering being stuck in a truck, it's rather "luxurious". I got into that hot shower and just stood there for 30 minutes.  It felt so good to just get away from all this fiasco that has been going on with this ordeal coming up here. 

I mean, on top of everything else, I found out a blizzard is coming through here tonight or tomorrow morning.

How did I find out?  I'm sitting in the driver's seat, waiting for the truck front heater to heat everything down so I can turn on the APU - it takes a while between the two - and here comes this SUV buzzing up, parks right next to me, gets out and goes up to the dude that is offloading his tanker full of diesel into the underground fuel tanks. The SUV didn't have anything written on the side so I just thought they were friends.  But, they didn't talk long and then the came directly over to me, this one dude with a huge video camera in his hands.  They knock on the door, so out of sheer curiosity I opened the window. What's up?

Hey, we're with whatever news agency, I wish I remembered what they said, can we do an interview of you?  Well I guess, what's up?  How do you feel about the blizzard coming in?  What blizzard?  I heard there was going to be some snow but just light.  Nah bro, up to 16 inches of snow.  I looked on my Iphone on the weather app and it shows anywhere from 4 to 18 inches depending on what part of this area you are in, PLUS, 35 degrees below zero wind chill factor coming into tonight or tomorrow morning.  WTH. 

I didn't sign up for this.  I haven't been in this kind of cold in years.  I really can't even remember the last time I was in zero degree weather, nothing recent that's for sure.  I started cutting it up with them. Yup, I had both of them in stitches.  What's to fear? They got me, the got the front of the truck, the side of it and the rear of it on film. Albany news station. Whether any of it makes it on there, unknown. Maybe a 2 second blurb, who knows.  Maybe not at all. They take 30 minutes of video and put 5 seconds on lol.  Whatever the case, umm, were they exaggerating? According to the newscast I just watched, not really.  Not to where I'm going anyway. \

I just got off the phone with a lady truck driver who also was sent up here from the location I'm out of.  She was disgusted.  They originally told us freezing babies and senior citizens, we get up here and find out it's - a university.  Well send the kids home and shut the place down, it's a holiday week anyway, there aren't any classes being held.  Not that simple, obviously, even if you send people home, you can't shut the heat off to everything and you can't shut all that stuff down without a major, time consuming ordeal to fire it back up. 

I'm just curious as to what I"m going to wake up to in the morning.  Nothing? 8 inches of snow? The alleged 35 below with wind chill factor? Who knows. I intend on getting up earlier than I need to to get to the place on time if possible.  Like I need to be there by 9 am.  It's almost 11 pm now.  I figured get up at 6:30 am, see what's going on, get the fuel filled up and get up there. It's 67 miles from here, just over an hour's drive - under normal conditions.

Well, I would go on but I really need to get to sleep. I've been on the phone and texting people literally for hours now.



 Sunday - early 20 minutes until departure time.  I don't much care for delivery on Sundays for it takes a while to get security to the ...