That's a long day.
Left the house in the rental pickup at 6:00 am, arrived in Amarillo around 2:00 pm. My truck wasn't ready, they told me, they just went to Peterbilt to get it.
I hadn't been informed that the truck I was taking wasn't ready to go or that it had issues.........lol
Well, I've been to the Amarillo terminal many times now, I headed straight for the driver's lounge, where there was no one else, shut the lights off and went to sleep. I mean, I drove 526 miles with a "rest break", of which I am accustomed to stopping between 300 and 400 miles and taking a 30 to 40 minute snooze, get up and finish out the run.
I had it in my head to go ahead and run another 100-200 miles in the truck and get a start on the trip. So some other driver came looking for the keys to my rental truck. Huh? Yup, I'm taking it to the hotel tonight. Well you aren't taking it now, I have all my stuff in there and I have to unload it unto the truck whenever it gets here.
Must have slept longer than I realized, the truck was there, it was in the shop and a mechanic then came looking for me. Come with me, I have something to show you. That isn't exactly a good sign coming from a mechanic. But it's whatever to me, I'm on the road, if the truck is broken, I'm getting paid to wait.
The truck had been fixed at the Peterbilt shop only to have it code (engine light) after they left with it. Mechanic tells me "I tried to get it to shut off, but it wouldn't".. yes, please tell me what's the deal? I've driven lots of trucks with engine lights on, is this serious or what? Well, it's (some sort of valve I've never heard of before) and it's sticking. But it (should) work.
Another dude, a manager, says: Well you can just drive it, if it fails you'll have to deal with it somewhere. Meaning have it towed or limp it in to a Peterbilt shop. It's whatever again to me. They're sending me out in a truck that has a known issue and they don't exactly know if it will make it to PA. I'm fine with that, this came from them, they know about it, I'll run with it. If it fails? I'll be stuck somewhere for however many days and I will get paid for every single hour the truck is broken down.
This trip is really a make up trip for all the lost hours not only this week - 5 days off - but also before my last run where I was also off for several days - unwanted days off. I'm going with the flow here. Drag this thing out. I have until Christmas, I don't care if I go home at the moment. That will change, of course, after being on the road a long time and doing mega miles every day. But, I'm going to get back what I've lost in time off - I'll be running minimum 600 miles a day, every day, car and truck, that's going to be a couple of very nice paychecks.
Anyway, this dude - other driver - for some reason wants me to run with him. But, he's out of hours, he drove a truck into the yard, I drove a pickup truck. I had full hours, I don't have to log hours in a passenger vehicle. He's really pushing it, I have no idea why, but then he said, are you okay with getting up at 3am? I thought, no, why the heck would I want to do that? It's 3:00 pm, I can get some good miles in before I finally cave into one of the longest driving days I have had since my dad died and going to see him, I can sleep all night, wake up the next morning, feel good and go about my day.
I didn't say that, I just played this out. I finally said, well let me text Brandon and see what he wants us to do. I'm thinking, if he says go with this dude, then fine, I'll deal with it. There is a host of reasons I do not want to have to be hooked with another truck going to the same place, but it would take too much time and writing, so I will just say it really causes problems. Brandon calls me 10 minutes later, dude, you just do your thing, however you want to do it, don't worry about this other guy. This other guy also is under Brandon - but a different division so I had no idea who he was.
He said that and I said C'yall later, I'm outta here. Truck nasty. Smoker truck. Not sleeping in it, my manager says he'll get me a hotel. I'm all down for that. He says back, yea but don't throw this on me last minute, let me know well ahead of where you intend on stopping. Of course! Which I had no idea where I was stopping at that point, I didn't know what driving mood I had left and figured I could deal with that on the road.
Leaving there, as I was driving I started thinking, well, I need to get enough miles done so I can get there by Sunday night, drop the truck off Monday morning and get a ride to the car rental place. It's just my truck driver thinking, get this stuff over with as fast as possible. And have some off time while I'm at it, they won't show up til 8:00 am Monday, the sooner I get there, the sooner I can relax in a hotel and bask in the glory of doing nothing after a long day of driving.
I ended up in Tulsa, some 370 miles later. I'm 3 miles short of having had driven 900 miles today. My eyes are bloodshot, I'm not tired, I could have driven another 300 miles, but hey. The company isn't going to complain about that many miles legally driven in one day. I fully intend on driving back from PA in 2 days. It amounts to about 850 miles per day.
My manager got me a very nice hotel. It's the Holiday Inn Suites. A 6 story affair, this room has a separate living room, kitchen and bedroom. I was amazed he got me something so nice. I don't ask for anything specific, I just hope for the best.
Tomorrow I'll try to hit Indianapolis or further. If Indianapolis, I might look up an old friend. He's apparently unhappy about the divorce with Valerie and hasn't spoken to me in a long time. Relationships in this modern age seem to be meaningless values with no set parameters. I've known him since the mid 80's. Good guy. Don't know if I'll look him up or not. I'll think about it tomorrow.
Otherwise, I'll try to make it to Spiceland, Indiana. Not because it's anything special, but because it's the miles I'd really like to get in tomorrow and leave less for Sunday. I always plan, plan, plan my routes once I know my starting point.
With that, I think I"ll take my bloodshot eyes to the bed and sleep for a while.
G'nite.
