Well. 

Tuesday late afternoon.

The company where we drop the loaded trailers wanted the lights fixed on it before they would take it.  My manager called me - on speakerphone - you'll have to take it to Harlingen and get it fixed. Why on earth would I want to do that? It's just lights I can fix them myself.  The mechanic, listening in, offered to order the parts at the local Peterbilt and I could just go pick them up and not have to front money. 

30 minutes later, he calls and says they didn't have the parts, but FleetPride does.  Over to fleetpride. I assumed they were the right parts, they 'looked' like the right parts, but our mechanic is pretty good so I didn't question any of it.

But, that's exactly what I should have done. I should have brought the rubber light holders from lights that didn't get broken so I could match them up.  Yup, I ended up having to back. But, they didn't have the right ones, so I went to another place down the street. They had the right rubbers, but not the right light.  Lol.  So, I went back to Fleet pride to get that light back. I had returned it because it came with the rubber thing to hold the light and I didn't want to have the company paying for duplicate. 

Anyway, back to the yard, but I had gotten the wrong light for the side marker.  Gag. BACK to the store for a THIRD time, but I got it right this time, fixed all the lights and they immediately hauled it out of the yard and to the port crossing.  Well now I know what kind of lights all of them are on those trailers, I won't have to guess again when this happens in the future.  I was very happy to get done with that as it's almost 100 degrees out and very high humidity. Great day for the beach! 

Instead, I went to Wingstop, got 21 Cajun spiced wings and headed over to the local hotel. America's Best Value Inn.  I was going to go to Residence Inn - but their prices went back up after I had found  the price down and I'm not going to pay $179 for a room.  Im not on vacation and it just isn't worth that much money to me. It was disappointing tho, really wanted to stay there.  This hotel is nice enough for the money, which I can assure, is nothing even remotely close to $179 or even the Residence Inn's normal price. 

So here I am, relaxing on the couch, watching TV, perusing the internet and out of that truck.  30 hours in the thing, I had had enough.  A small dent in the amount of detention pay I'll make on this trip, well worth it to me.  Don't get me wrong. There are trips where I'm in that truck over 90 hours, but Brownsville is different, getting paid to sit around and do nothing. And finally, a 2 day layover after the last what, 4 trips down here getting no detention pay at all?  Yes that makes me happy.  Oh an yes, I verified for a last time with the manager of the yard down here - how many more empties coming back today? 1, only 1.  Good, I thought, Joe will take that and I'm getting a piece of this detention pie.

I'm still in awe at how much has happened in the last - very short period of time.  A man is killed by a police officer - of that I am not questioning and it was merciless, brutal, savage and outrageous - but then the whole nation erupts into riots and protests...and then....they now demand to eradicate or defund entire police departments?  I''m not sorry to say that they aren't interested in defunding the police, I'm pretty sure this is a power grab move.  I'm not going to go into that excepting to say that no one in their right mind wants entire police departments. There is more to this story than what we are hearing. Even Joe Biden - a person I wouldn't vote for in my worst nightmare - is saying he won't support defunding the police.