The yard was void of trucks. Good sign? Sure, just need a bit to recover from this trip, I ran that one long and hard. Did almost 700 miles yesterday, those are near record breaking numbers in the company. Admittedly much easier to drive along with no trailer on the back or an empty one versus a loaded one.
Got to Witchita Falls and decided to stop at the Flying J. Both the Flying J and the Loves there have equally unimpressive reviews, but I've been to the Loves and it's always busy and it's always dirty. I was surprised to find the Flying J had this itty, bitty little parking area. Not at all what one would expect from that brand. I was just short of shocked when the lady at the register told me $15 for a shower.
What? No, just no. I'm not paying $15 to get into a shower stall. I get showers free at Love's, but that partciular Loves is nasty. I figured $8 or so for a shower at Flying J.
Anyway, got up early - 4 am - got dressed and got out of there. Drove clean through Dallas/metro area without a hiccup. Couldn't say that for people coming into town once I got on the other side - I saw the lines of cars and thought, this is exactly why I got up so early, to avoid this nonsense.
Back to the yard, another surprise. There were only 2 tractors in the entire yard. So, the loading plant must have got it going again or people are being sent out all over the place. I'll guess the former - a lot of those drivers will refuse to do trips like the one I just did. Whining babies, they like their comfort zone. Well, I just make a good chunk of change doing that drive and it was pretty easy stuff. Even the trailer didn't offer any issues, which was amazing considering that it was obvious the thing had been sitting around for quite a while.
I knew this because of the thick coat of dead pine needles all over it that I had to scrape off.
My manager isn't doing dispatch - for now - but he informed me I"d either be going back out tomorrow or the next day. As much as I'd like to sit around town and do my own thing, I've lost too much time to snow and sickness. It's time to get back to work. I've got 35 hours left on my 70 hour clock, that's enough for a Brownsville run : ) We'll see. Brownsville would be a good finishing touch to next week's pay.
On the way home, I stopped at a 44 acre parcel of land about 4 miles south of town. It would really be a great property excepting for 2 things. First, the large amount of water that was to be seen all along the roadway for hundreds of feet. Second, the price tag. At $114,000, it's out of my range - yet - the price is great for that much property. I figured there must be a reason why it's been sitting on the market so long. Who wants a waterlogged piece of land? What are you going to do with it? Besides the pools of water everywhere, there are 2 large streams running through it. That is actually a bonus, but the pools of water - are not. I don't want to have to add water drainage to the list of things that need to be done on any given property.
I haven't nixed it yet, it could be that it's just that portion of property. I'll need to go back with my waterproof boots and take a walk into the woods and see what the rest of it looks like.
I did find another piece of property at a great price, but it's pretty far away. Somewhere around 25 miles. I also didn't see if it has water and electricity available. Now that I'm home, I'm going to look on my computer and see what I can find.
That's it for now, I want to take a look at a couple of properties I found online - on my phone - and see much larger pictures of them on my computer.
Later gator.
