Time Flies

What a week! I looked back to see when I last posted because I couldn't even remember!! So...all the planning in the world can't compete with DC traffic, truck restricted roads and orange barrels. It actually took us 2 hours and 45 minutes to go that 40 miles. Then we found out that first stop (we thought the shipper) was only an inspection site by Homeland Security. Our truck was inspected (as it is at nearly every military base as well as some manufacturing plants) and everybody met the boys and had to pet them. On we went to our next stop which was actually the shipper. We got there within our alloted time frame (I have NO IDEA how) but ran into new issues.

It seems they ordered and paid extra for a truck with a lift gate, which we do not have. They scrambled and got a fork lift brought over from somewhere so they could load our truck with pallets of records going to storage. I plugged our destination into Carmen the Garmin and she said ain't no way we were gonna make 1600 delivery time (this was at 1115). I notified dispatch and asked them to see how late we could deliver. Meantime, when calling for local directions at the destination we found out they don't unload trucks after 1500. HMMMMM

Well, as is typical of dispatch when they do something wrong, they just ignored us all day. We were tired, hot and wanted to stop for a meal if we didn't need to drive straight through and would have to wait to deliver in the morning. But noooooooo, they didn't have the decency to get back to us all day. Needless to say, we weren't having one of our better days.

Along the PA turnpike, we stopped at a rest area and Sosa got his foot tangled in my laptop cord and it crashed to the pavement, bouncing on two corners and shoving the power cord into the housing. Amazingly, the computer still booted up and ran, but I've got to get into it to fix the power adapter plug. Then, our turnpike ticket must have blown out when we were trying to catch the computer and when we got off the turnpike we had to pay the full $50 price! Some days it just doesn't pay to get out of bed.

Well, we got to the destination and the security guard said we'd probably have to wait until morning. At that point, we really didn't care. We just wanted to lie down and sleep. However, our story must have been sad enough, because two guys came out from another area, fired up the forklift and unloaded our truck. :) Finally, something good.

The security guard gave us directions to the nearest truck stop and we headed there, telling dispatch that our status was sleeping until 0700 (this was about 8 pm). We walked the dogs and were just heading into the restaurant to finally get a hot meal when they sent a load offer. We accepted it and went in to eat.

After dinner, we hit the road (see the pattern of ignoring us?) to drive back almost where we started from! We got to Virginia the next morning, loaded and headed to Fort Campbell, KY. We arrived there about 0200 Friday morning and slept until 0600. We finally got unloaded and left about 0930 after touring the post twice since security had no idea where they should really send us.

Headed out to Walmart for some sleep (yup, Cap'n, camping again) and some desperately needed groceries. Chinese buffet for lunch and then a load offer. We headed to Bowling Green, KY (where Dana was living when he found me), picked up almost 10000 pounds of aluminum cast housings and headed to Ford in Detroit. We offloaded those at 0600 this morning and here we are again in a Walmart lot. They are so much quieter that truck stops. Besides there aren't any decent ones near here.

so, now, I've caught you all up on the busy week. Next Thursday we move Alex out of the dorm in Athens. Maybe we can catch up with some of you then.