Day 22.
On the road.  I weigh myself a few times at the truck stops but it's after I've already had coffee and drinking water and eating, plus heavy clothing on cause it's cold up here, so not really an accurate reading.  Thankfully.  Drove all the way to the Love's in Hamel again yesterday, and that with problems with the quaalcomm. There's always some kind of problem when you switch to a different truck.  I was amazed I made it that far considering the time lost.

And the truck, gag.  Dirty inside.  I was afraid of that and hence brought a lot of cleaning supplies.  The steering wheel was sticky, filthy dirty and so was the rest of the truck.  I scrubbed most of it down and sprayed spray everywhere including that stuff you spray on fabrics - Febreze - to make it smell better. It took 3 times on the carpet in the sleeper before it finally started smelling nice in there.

I can't sleep with that in my nostrils much less do anything else.  It's a nasty atmosphere it creates and I really don't understand how people basically living in their trucks live like that.

I got up here - Mapleton, Illinois - hoping that I would get some detention this time. It's been several times up since I got any.  So I pulled into the plant truck parking lot, walked to the security shack, they called. She was on the phone much longer than the usual "okay, I'll let him come in". That was a good sign.  Security guards actually don't know anything about what's going on, they just relay messages.  Anyway, she said, ok go on in, they're going to have you park somewhere.

Yeehaw!  That means drop the trailer and leave, they can't take it today! And sure enough, the guy was out there waiting.  Yup park it over there.  But I had to call my manager first. With all this new stuff from this company take over, who knows what they might want to do. But no, she said go to the hotel. And hotel I am.  3rd floor too, I love the top floor.

Well I dunno what I'm going to do.  Maybe nothing.  I'm still hacking away with this cough.  I can't get rid of it, but then again, I've had coughs that lasted months in my history so nothing new there. But laying in bed and resting certainly couldn't hurt.  I woke up last night just hacking away, took an hour for cough medicine to stop it enough to get back to sleep. I'm really glad now that I think about it that I didn't have to head back today. A day of rest and get paid for it. They're still paying detention for this run anyway and apparently the hotel is in the contract.  If they make use leave in the tractor without the trailer, it's automatic hotel.  It's also automatic loss of 10 hours out of 24 for pay, but I'll take it. I'll get minimum 20 hours of detention.

I don't necessarily need to go home anyway. I"ve spent plenty of time there in recent days and I have enough diet food to last me. Even if not, WAlmart is across the street I can get some more food that will work for this diet if necessary.

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Well, I went to Walmart anyway. Got a nice tub of roast beef - zero carbs.  And some more heavy whipping cream for my coffee.  And now I'm nicely running around in my skivvies in my motel room. Well why not? There isn't anyone else here, no one is coming and I intend on resting.  There's a few good movies on and this place actually has HBO at least.  I'm sitting here making money, nothing better than that.  It's nice and quiet too. No loud neighbors, no one above me, just the hum of the fan.  It's rather cool here at 50 degrees, that's my version of cold really so I have the heat going a little. 

I've gotten much more used to be away from the dogs, tho Addler very much doesn't like it when I leave him at the other house.  But he gets over it quickly.  Rene sends me videos of the 2 zipping around the back yard and playing, his version of playing is like a galloping horse, lol. I'm thinking Rene should really get a dog of her own tho.  When I'm home, she misses my doggies a lot and I just think she should have one of her own.  I know she can't afford dog food, I already bring over a lot of it anyway, if she got a small one it wouldn't be much more on my dog food tab per month.