Monday - afternoon

Stayed up a wee bit late last night, but that's because after 8 straight days of working, I finally got a day off.  That doesn't mean I didn't do anything, I just didn't have to get behind the wheel of a truck.  Anyway, I did eventually get out of bed, got up, coffee'd up, over to the park.  Figured out how to get that box blade attachment on there - it wasn't easy I can tell ya that - and got busy for about 3 hours of dragging the driveway. It was in bad shape and I had put it off too long. 

I could probably spend a couple more hours on it, but my friend contacted me and we decided to eat lunch and have a Starbucks. Starbucks has been closed all the way up until today because of the burst water main pipe and the requisite boil water advisory.  I think all of there stuff is just directly hooked to the water system and dumping bottled water into their machines was either not possible or just too much.  

So, the driveway is good enough until I get back on the tractor. I may carry on with it tomorrow for I'd like to finish it while the gravel and dirt are still pliable. You have to drive back and forth over it many, many times before it starts really getting into the subsurface and doing the repair work necessary. 

Work. Well, yesterday started off ridiculous. I got up there to deliver and some anal retentive dude said "you aren't supposed to be here until 10 am".  These people are clueless of how the trucking industry works.  It was 9:15, that's WELL within a window of acceptability to show up for either delivery or loading.  I was trying to bite my tongue, this guy was not being nice yet I wasn't starting any trouble with him at all. Just another person in love with the taste of limited power.  

Well, we have a 1/2 to 1 hour window for arriving.  Not good enough for him, I just said: Your tank is almost empty.  He didn't believe me. He got up without saying a word and went to the glue pit room.  He looked at the gauge and said, wow, you're right!  What, would I lie about it?  Please.  I didn't say that to him but I definitely had those thoughts.  He begrudgingly unlocked the valve, opened it and locked it up again.  I said thank you! Appreciate it! 

Beyond trucking and it's variables - traffic, truck breakdowns, etc - the only reason they came up with this new rule is to accommodate for the single tank in use.  They didn't want the second load run to show up early.  I was first load, I wasn't hours early and they were in NEED of the product.  In fact, there was room in that lone tank for THREE more truckloads - AFTER I WAS FINISHED UNLOADING. 

Anyway, the day before that loading? Well, after 2 loading events taking a total of 12 hours combined plus a tire blowout that added 3 more hours, I was really hoping to get in and out of there. Quickly.  

I got on the scale, they said Come on down! and so I went to that driveway to back in and...saw our loading bay completely blocked by a truck and equipment and men doing - whatever they were doing.  I backed down the driveway and stopped about 100 feet before the bay.  Obviously the loader guy didn't know that stuff was in there. When he came out, he went up, had some words with them and that entire crew proceeded to move all of that stuff out of my way.

Thank you! I thought.  I was in and out of there so fast it was amazing. 

Anyway, I am done with the park for today, just don't want to go back now.  I am going to throw in a load of clothes in the washer and get some cleaning done.  Oh, we had lunch a Taco Hell. Don't judge me! I LOVE their Mexican Pizza! and they have also been closed because of the water main break.  

My heart goes out to the family and friends of the now-deceased pilots of the Air Canada flight.  Horrible.  Whoever is responsible for that fire truck being out on an active runway, the pilots had zero culpability, imo, in any of it.  They were unwilling victims of someone's screw up.  I listened to the ATC conversation, it sounds as if the ATC controller  made the mistake and owned up to it.  It's just unthinkable that they could miss the fact that a commercial jet liner is landing AND they had a fire truck ON the runway at the same time.

The controller tries to get the fire truck to stop, which it obviously doesn't or doesn't in time and tries to get the pilots to initiate a go-around, obviously a command too late. A passenger stated that the instant they got the wheels down the pilots slammed on the brakes. An unimaginable set of circumstances they were faced with and instant decisions to do whatever they could to save lives. They are heroes in my book, they sacrificed themselves to save passenger lives.  

The bigger problem is the number of near collisions and controller errors that have been made in the last few years. I was watching Hoover - he's on Youtube, a pilot that does debriefs on air events - he showed one where a jetliner was lined up on the runway ready to take off - as they had been given clearance  - and another aircraft landing.  It was jumble of wrong  moves by both the ATC and the landing aircraft who simply should have gone around, but instead chose to land over the top of the aircraft on the runway? BAD DECISION.

But there have been lots of other close calls and crashed, such as the helicopter smashing into the landing jetliner.  I dunno what's going on with ATC nationwide, but it gives me pause to consider flying anytime soon. I don't want to be the subject of some human error and another statistic for the books. 

Then you have Iran allegedly wanting to make a deal and allegedly saying they will no longer pursue nukes. How many times have lied about that particular subject in the past? Too many to count, thanks.  I don't believe anything they say. It's a regime desperately trying to stay in power, as the continued executions of it's own citizens portrays and the big one that just happened with the Olympic wrestler being publicly executed for speaking out against the regime.  We've already gone this far with this operation, let's finish the job.  Because once we're gone, it isn't likely we'll be back there again any time soon. Israel may do that, but doubtful we will.  

There's a lot going on right now, but God is still on the Throne and Jesus is still the Prince of Peace, Lord of lords and King of kings!