Saturday - mid afternoon

Internet back up, James must have fixed it for the internet company wasn't coming out until Monday. 

I said I wouldn't ever get involved with 401k's again, but here I am, contributing close to $100 per paycheck to it.  Whatever.  It won't be a lot when I quit this job, but there will be a little bit in there for whatever.  I won't be charged a penalty fee, either, I'm beyond the minimum age now for that to happen.  

Anyway, let's get to the meat of today's matter.  On Saturdays, the plant in Gurdon is normally "closed".  That is, no logging trucks so the scales aren't opened either.  The plant is open 24 hours, it's just that certain things aren't opened.  So, when we show up on a Saturday or a Sunday, we pull up on the scale and call security, who sends someone over to weigh is in and out.  

1st call sitting on the scale: I'll send someone right over. 15 minutes, 2cd call: I'll call him again.  3rd call, half an hour.  Are you going to send someone over here? It's been 30 minutes.  Hemming and hawing, the man says there are only 2 of us here today and I can't get a hold of the other guy and I can't leave here.

Well what are you going to do? I can't sit here all day long waiting for you to weight me in, it's a 60 second operation.  Well what do you suggest? Call the plant and have an plant employee come out here. 

20 minutes later, call again. Well a lumber person was supposed to come out there...I had already talked with my manager who was just shuffling it off on me.  But at this point? No.  You need to call someone at the plant.  I've been here 90 minutes, this is absolutely ridiculous.  

Next thing I know, there is a massive search going on at the plant for this security guard for he had disappeared off of the face of the planet.  We got ourselves a winner! Hiding in a security car somewhere on the (huge) property, sleeping.  2 hours and this dude shows up.  What happened?  He doesn't answer. Why did it take you so long?  He had nothing to say, I didn't know at that point he had been found screwing off and doing nothing.  

He doesn't even know how to operate the scale printer, so I had to help him with that, but at that point, my goodness.  

Oh, I forgot to add I ended up leaving the scale and going to the plant supervisor who tried making calls on his radio to both the plant base AND the security guy. Even the plant was responding!  I went back to the scale and that's when my manager started making phone calls.  Yes, if I'm going to suffer with this ridiculous nonsense, everyone else is too. That includes the plant manager who was off for the weekend and his lower level manager.  In other words, make this such a big deal that they won't ever want to have to deal with this again.  They can deal with the security company who most assuredly doesn't want to lose a cash loaded deal with a company like that.

Welp, I got over to the offload shack, got signed off on, hooked up, started unloading and got back into my truck.  The boss of the security comes driving up profusely apologizing.  I accepted the apology and let it go, the damage was already done. I had lost 2 hours of my day and his company was going to get reamed by the plant.  

I don't know if he fired the dude, but he was sent home, the dude caught hiding out.  When I got done, the security boss came over after he had called another security guard to come into work and did the paperwork himself.  I mean, what the hell were these people thinking?  They know we are coming in there every single day of the week regardless of whether everything else is closed or not.  They know we need to be scaled in but now? They ALL know.  Kudos to them for doing a massive search, everyone started thinking maybe something bad had happened to the dude.  

I was the person that paid for it, but a massive correction has been enacted so the end result should be that I never have to go through this again.  

I was heading home after the 3-1/2 hours in that place and got a text from Allen: the park host is moving in.  I looked at camera footage and sure enough, there was a clip of the trailer being pulled in and a very nice looking trailer at that. 

That's what I want, decent looking trailers. I don't want trailer trash appearance, that just drives people away.  I didn't get to meet them, the student and his mom, they left to go get cash, apparently.  I dunno, I'll collect from them at some point, I'm not worried about that. 

Meanwhile, Robert was out there weedeating the doggy park and I'm asking Allen why is he doing that? Allen shrugs his shoulders.  Wasting his time. Yup, I'm fixing to get into my notes and find out when they arrived and then, give them a date to either pay or leave.  Well, I think I'll do that search right now.....

 Saturday - early

I was typing out a blog entry yesterday, when unbeknownst to me, a large branch broke off of the tree out front, fell on top of the cable that brings internet to the house and of course yanked it to the ground, ripping it out of the socket it was attached and effectively ending internet for the house.  

The political scene has erupted into some form of chaos, mayhem and heterdyne.  AS more and more democrats demand Biden step down and Biden continuing to refuse to budge, I just sit back and watch in amusement.  Sorry, but democrats brought this upon themselves. The "coverup" of Biden's mental condition has been no coverup to anyone that has been watching him for the last 4 years.  It's only getting worse.  

I'm really not making fun of the man, but he can hardly string a line of words together to make a coherent sentence.  Why would democrats back this man up until almost the point of no return?  Like, who are they going to bring in at this point if they so choose to do so that will "storm" the country? "I'll beat Donald Trump in 2020" he is seen declaring in a "rally" recently.  

Anyway, I'm hoping today will be better than yesterday?  I don't want to spend 3 hours sitting somewhere waiting for a problem to be fixed on a truck that is 20 years old.  

I don't have a lot of time here, it's just that I would have rather stayed home, stayed in bed, slept, lazed around, whatever.  The other driver is taking yet another weekend off.  I don't blame him, I'd do the same thing in his shoes but they could bring in more OTR drivers to cover the lapse.  

So, with that, I'm outta here.  At least the truck AC is working for the most part, better than it has been. 

G'day

 Friday - evening

 The day started at 5:40 am.  It just ended some 20 minutes ago, now almost 5:00 pm.  

Of course, that is not a typical work day for me, so some explanation is warranted.  

The issue started after I left the trailer washout, unbeknownst to me. It's about a 30 minute drive from the washout to the loading plant.  I did, indeed, look at the truck and trailer before I left the washout, there were no issues.  

I'm cruising down 59, maybe 15 minutes from the plant and a trooper comes racing up behind me with his lights on, gets in front of me as if pulling over the vehicle in front of me, who starts pulling over to the shoulder.

Nope, it wasn't for that person, he was for me.  Well, he wanted me to get into the U-turn lane and follow him.  ??  As soon as I stopped, I saw a lot of smoke coming up from the bottom of the truck.  Wait, what?  I wanted to get out and find out what's going on, the trooper wanted me to follow him instead. I was thinking, what if there is a fire going on under there? 

Well, I followed him several miles back to the inspection station.  I stopped over their pit, got out and saw diesel fuel gushing out all over the place, it was already pooling up in the pit it was coming out that fast.  I shut the thing off immediately.  He, however, was afraid the thing was going to catch on fire and burn their entire station down so instructed me to move the truck "over there!" immediately.  

Shutting the truck off shut off the flow of fuel coming out onto the ground and there was no fire.  Quick discussion, this trooper decided he was going to do an inspection on the entire truck ??  So, we did that and then went inside the office.  He handed me 3 business cards from 3 different mobile mechanics. 

I called my manager, who called the lead mechanic, who called me, got the numbers found one that was open and that was that.  Play the waiting game.  Well, the Troopers were a chatty bunch and one thing I have found with the various Troopers I have encountered, they love to talk politics.  So I just blurted it out about Biden, Trump etc and making it obvious I am not a Biden supporter.  I could tell by the way they were looking at me that they didn't want to open that potential Pandora's box if I were the opposite.

I mean, we talked for hours while they were doing truck inspections on and off.  They were also BBQ'ing chicken.  It was probably 2 hours and 20 minutes and they brought in a huge mess of cooked chicken, informed me that there is plenty there, please feel free to eat.  I hadn't eaten anything, I was hungry so I gladly wolfed down some chicken.  

The mechanics showed up, determined it was a busted fuel line, went to a local parts store, got replacement parts and had the truck up and running relatively quickly.  Thanked the troopers for their hospitality and the chicken and left.  Amazingly, I didn't have to wait long to get into the loading by and they started loading quickly. 38 minutes later they were done and I was drenching in sweat. 

It's hot out, the truck can't run while they are loading and it's just the feeling of sitting in an oven.  

I did get the one and only call today from the park: allen informed me that Robert once again did not come out to work as he had agreed. How shocking.  I didn't expect anyone to work yesterday, but there are still 2 days he hasn't done anything regardless.