So, yesterday, I got up at 4:45 am, got rolling at 5:05. Left the truck stop casino parking lot - and no I didn't do any gambling, I just went to bed after the night before not sleeping but maybe an hour.
Got oto Paris, Texas, stopped at Love's to refuel, coffee, water.
Pulled ouf of the Love's to the 4 lane highway, it's highway 271. There is an acceleration lane for trucks turning right to get the speed up a bit before attempting to merge into traffic. I turned right into that lane, started shifting through the gears.
Another car was coming, but it was in the passing/inside lane, so at the end of the acceleration lane, turn signal on of course, I merged into the outside lane.
This car comes speeding up in the inside lane and then slows down to match my speed, right beside my trailer. I thought nothing of it - at first - they were supposed to slow down for the slower speed limit, tho not that much. 45 mph, we were going 35. I just sat at 35 thinking he would just speed up and get past me.
He did not. I needed over in his lane to make a left hand turn at the light about 1,000 feet up the road. So I accelerated to get past him and get over. He accelerated when I did.
It was then I came to understand we were going to have a problem. +I slammed on brakes, slowed down way faster than he did and got behind him. He slowed down to 20mph. I just slowed down even more. Note there wasn't any other traffic out there, it was early Saturday morning. He limped his old, junky looking car up to the light. I'm calling it as it is now.
He made the left turn, got onto the on ramp to the highway and sped up a bit. Got ahead of me and then put his arm out the window, replete with the middle finger. I don't know if he thought he was making me angry, I was just at the point of attempting to determine whether I needed to call state troopers and started taking video of this nonsense.
He flipped me off for a while - bad mood? Juvenile? Just lost all his money at the casino? Thrown out by his girl friend? Just a wanton as*****? Who knows. I do know that I did nothing to warrant him acting out against me like that. I was literally minding my own business. I don't look at people in traffic much anymore, they tend to get up set and the first thing they do is call the company and make up a story about how I cut them off or something like that.
He then took off , got about 500 feet ahead of me and turned his lights off. Even tho it was dark, I could still see the outline of his car in the darkness. Why he did that? No clue. He then got off the highway at an offramp and pulled up to a red light down there. I accelerated, not gonna wait around to see if he's still going to play his games.
I got past the on ramp where he was the other side and up to a light on the highway. I passed through it and it turned red afterwards. Yup, he got back on the highway and .... ran the red light. Didn't even slow down. He comes racing up to me, flashing his lights from high to low beams, straddling the center lane. Where are the police when they could be useful for something?
I had had enough. I started to pull over to the side of the highway. I was going to stop the truck, get out, get his license plate number and call the police. He had kept himself just out of sight enough for me to get that number, otherwise the police would have already been called. Consequences be damned - and there can be a lot of them even tho the CDL driver has done nothing wrong. Companies tend to believe drivers that "have gone out of their way" to make that call to them. They judge and jury the driver before even asking them the first question about the incident.
I thought about that, but I also thought - I have a video of most of what this idiot was doing. If they fire me, so beit. I'll find another job. But it didn't come to that, this guy saw what I was doing and took off. As I said, I had had enough. If he had a gun, a knife, whatever, at that point I didn't care. I'm getting that license number and calling the police and then come what may. I was never able to get the plate number, unfortunately, for even after the fact, I still would have called and reported this guy.
I haven't had anything like that happen in a long time. What set this person off? I did nothing, literally, to this person.
That was the beginning of my day yesterday. Fortunately, the rest of it went rather well. When I got home, we went out to Longview to try out a new restaurant. It's called Hook and Reel - a bit on the pricey side bit it's seafood and it's always higher priced plus inflation right now is killing everything. Delicious, wonderful food. Great service, it was really worth the drive over there. I had heard good things about it.
Today/Sunday. No load today, thankfully. Didn't want one tho I never said anything about that to dispatch. I'll pretty much take whatever they give me without complaining. I'm going out early tomorrow. 2 Oklahoma's in a row - but - there are a lot of trucks sitting in the yard and there are a lot of those unbelievably bad Cheniere runs going out. I'm glad to have no part of them.
Today? Continue on my closet project and probably take the doggies for a walk. I'm still grounded by mama Facebook. I doubt at this point I will ever get rid of the account myself, they'll just have to do that for me, which I presume is coming sooner or later. Whether I end up starting up another one with a different email address, who knows.
Rain - it's been raining here, the only reason I might not go to the property. The ground will be wet and in the back, I dunno if that equate to mud or not. I would like to traipse through the front portion tho and see if there are any obvious water channels running through anywhere. Mark them on GPS for future reference. The rear I don't much care about, but I also would like to see if the stream has picked up any. It hasn't been running very heavy in recent times. I bet that's different now.
I'm going to start looking for a blogging platform that also allows for uploading videos. This one doesn't do that. Every time I try to upload one, even a short one, it won't do it. If Facebook goes away for me, I want some platform to be able to show videos of some of the stuff going on. It may or may not attract that much attention, but I want the option available.
Tomorrow, I'm going to start calling the water install guy once a day, every day, until he answers his phone. That's the only way I know of to get a hold of him. If he doesn't answer tomorrow, I will follow it up with a text, which he probably also wont respond to, but trying to get him to get out there and give me a quote on land clearing.
I will also call the electrician and see if he's had a chance to get out there and take a look. Again, another guy that is hard to get a hold of, it seems like they all are. I'm not a regular customer of theirs that takes priority. But, patience. It's pretty obvious that even if I had all the money I needed to do everything right off the bat? It would take a year to get it done. I've read this from other people trying to build new parks, it's just a slow process and don't be in too big of a hurry. I'm not, now, it's winter. I'd love to open up next month and get the operation going, but realistically? It's probably 6 to 12 months off. I can't see it taking any more than a year tho. It really shouldn't even take that long.
Well, the day ain't getting any younger and I have things I want to get done today.
G'day.
