Darn alarm. Goes off at 5:00 am. I set it a half an hour after I should have left this morning, but I was soooo tired last night.  And so it was, I was dead asleep when that thing went off. Last night I pulled into a truck stop that I figured would have a lot of spots.  I was wrong. There were 2 left and I got the one and shortly after another person got the other.  It was pouring rain - I've driven in rain the last 3 out of 4 days.

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Friday - morning.  Day off. Truck needs all kinds of required services, the mechanic said, he's going to do that today.  Plus the air leak, they need to find that and fix it.  It's gotten worse and I'm not comfortable with it. Yes the giant air compressor on the truck can more than keep up with the leak.  I reported this problem 2 weeks ago and now I just forced the issue: time to find the leak and fix it.  So it should be in the shop there now.  It'd be nice if it went over into tomorrow. I don't mind a couple days at home. 

However, talking with the manager yesterday - who is never very chatty - but he let get the info that next month is going to be extremely busy.  he said there were 160 loads to do.  Uhh, I thought, we can't do that many, even if we drove every day for the entire month. He agreed. He said he just tells them we can do it because they always cancel.  Yup, Brownsville, Oklahoma and probable Cheniere always cancel some loads.

Cheniere, however, is firing up a new "train", they call it.  Turns natural gas into liquid and then they ship it overseas in giant tanker ships. When I say giant, I mean giant. You can see those things sitting in the port.  They attach what appears to be 24 inch diameter pipe to the ship to load it.  I can't guarantee that size because you can't get close enough to really see it well enough, but just the point: huge lines attached to fill them up.  I assume overseas they convert it back to gas.  They say a lot of it goes to Australia.  

Anyway, there are over 50 loads going there, so I know I'm going to get some of those runs - or a lot of them, I dunno.  There are equal numbers of Brownsville and Oklahoma runs. The driver trainer expressed his hope that the other driver that came over from another division - who does only gravy runs - will have to be trained to offload so we all get equal shares of those crappy runs. Tho, this is the cheniere in portland, at least there is some miles in it - 400 each way.  But it adds hours onto the delivery time to have to offload - they make you jump through a lot of hoops to get into either of their facilities.  You can easily be there 3 hours before you even get to start unloading the truck.

Okay, enough of that.  Just hold my breath and hope for equal amounts of decent runs with the garbage ones.  I went and voted, just got back. No way was I missing this election by being out on the road on election day. I prefer to vote on election day, but it's whatever at this point and the job I have, just don't want to take the chance.

There was no line, thankfully. I drove by there last week and there was a huge line and there were pics in the press of long lines as well.  Taylor says she thinks it's cause' it's cool and weather - even just a little coolness - makes people not want to do anything lol. It's Texas lol.  I was particularly concerned with this city's desires to give themselves far more powers than they currently have.  I voted against all of it excepting a couple of them. One was giving citizens powers to start recalls and have 15% of registered voters.  Anything that gives citizens more powers than the city? I'm all for that, for the most part.  Don't want anarchy, either, but this town has enough power, most of it was directed towards taxation and....no thanks.  I did vote for the extension of  1/4 of 1% tax  to maintain the roads.  I don't think they are necessarily spending that money well, this town's roads are horrible.  Maybe they should have put a "repave the roads" initiative on there and I probably would have voted for a temporary tax increase.  Anyway, I was happy to get that over with and done.

Taylor asked me to go to Longview with her to get Phoenix (the 5 year old) a Halloween costume. She ordered one on line and it got hung up in Houston.  Jaxon's already arrived from another company she had ordered on line.  The boy's little feelings would be hurt, lol, if he didn't get the costume he wanted, especially considering the 3 year old got his.  So I thought why not.  I was wanting to do that concrete thing in the back yard today, but I really have little energy.  Too much time on the road does that too me.  I usually need a recovery day - which would be today. 

Would you want Warren and Bernie on finance committees, knowing their views on "democratic socialism" and spending?  We're going to have a nightmare, IMO, for a federal government if Biden gets elected.  I don't care what you think about Trump, what we are going to get with that disaster group is going to be far worse than anything Trump has done.  That's all I will say about that here for now.  Election day is almost upon us. It's reported that Biden has a team of hundreds of lawyers in all states ready to file lawsuits or whatever for any "issues" in voting.  I hope the courts are ready to make quick decisions on all of this.  Whoever wins, we need to have that answer sooner, not later.  We don't need the election dragged out for weeks - which is what it appears will happen at least in some states.   

In other news, the dealership called asking if they could give me a quote for trade in value for my vehicle? I've been thinking about it. Really undecided. Pay this thing I have off and then get my truck, or get rid of it, trade it in and get the 2500 HD GMC pickup she just sent a pic of to me.  141k miles, not too bad tho it's only a 2015 so someone's been driving it pretty good. it's 4 doors, 4 wheel drive.  Very tempting, but she didn't give me a price. So I'm going to look up bluebook values for it and take it from there.  I just like this SUV because it's the long version and the dogs easily fit into the back with ample room.  The truck would either be the back seat or have to have kennels for the bed.  I don't like the idea of transporting dogs without having them nailed down somehow.  i see people with dogs running around in the back of their pickups and I just am not comfortable with that, at all.  I doubt that truck will last long, it's a Denali HD, they are pretty popular - but I know they're also pretty pricey.  

Well, time to go to longview. 

g'day