Ready to roll again

We ran from St. Louis to western North Carolina and then moved to Knoxville TN for a weekend with Idleaire. The truck was running pretty rough and losing power so we took it to our owner's house on Monday to see about getting some repairs. They already had one truck in the garage, so we stayed Monday night and Tuesday night at a hotel trying to find a rental car. We were in Dickson, about 40 miles west of Nashville and there wasn't a rental available until Wednesday. Once we got the car, we headed home to check on the house. After a short visit there, we headed back to Tennessee.

So now we are finally back in service, sitting in Nashville, waiting for a load out. And now ya'll are caught up!!

Moving on

Well, we decided to rent a car to get around St. Louis. We headed over to the Riverfront and couldn't have asked for a more beautiful day. It was in the low 80's with slight breeze and lots of sunshine.

We got our tickets to go to the top of the arch and got in line and then I saw the capsules we would ride up in...those of you who know me well, know that I am not a fan of amusement park rides and that's just what I thought of when I saw the capsule! LOL Anyway, we walked downstairs and lined up and joined three other people in the capsule and headed up. It was a little unnerving, but not too awfully bad. It was worth the ride!! If you've never been there and get the chance, you really should go. I took some great pictures and will get them uploaded today. Here's a picture of a group in the capsule waiting to go up:

After we got back down to the ground we watched a film of the building of the arch. I enjoyed it much more than I thought. It was wild watching those men work to build the arch over 600 feet in the air without wearing safety helmets or even hard hats!! And then to find out no one died during the almost three year project...it was just surprising.

We ate lunch at a little place called Sundeckers. We sat out on the patio and just enjoyed the beautiful weather. This place makes the best burgers and they have a condiment bar so you can "dress" it yourself. Kinda fun.

We went back to let the puppies out and Dana decided to stay with them while I went grocery shopping. We also needed a new air mattress...ours finally died. I'm surprised it lasted as long as it did with the dogs jumping on it all the time! LOL Carmen the Garmin and I set out for Walmart. I got there and found it wasn't a super center, but there was a grocery store next door, so I figured we'd be ok, but when I got inside, I found them in the middle of a remodel which meant their stock was way low and they didn't have half of what I needed so Carmen and I headed out to another Walmart.

After shopping, we decided to head out for dinner. We knew we were going to take the truck for an oil change the next day, so we headed in that direction to scope it out and found a FABULOUS mexican restaurant named Zapata's. OMG it was SOOOO GOOOD. Here's Dana enjoying margaritas:

The next morning I returned the car and we got the oil changed and the truck washed, got something to eat and got a load offer. We drove up near Springfield, IL to load and headed to Weaverville, NC, just north of Asheville. We delivered that load this morning and are now in Knoxville, TN. Monday morning we're driving to Dickson, TN to our owner's house to get the truck checked out because it still isn't running right.

Stay tuned.....

Californication

We finally got our fuel filter and it helped a little, but we think we got some bad fuel; we kept having issues off and on. We made it to China Lake and unloaded early and headed back to Barstow to a truckstop with Idleaire. We had a great breakfast and just got settled in for a nap when we got another load and needed to leave right away.

We drove to Santa Clarita, got loaded and headed out to Long Island, NY. Dana was so tired, since he drives the night shift and hadn't really gotten any sleep. We made it through the night and began looking at our logs and realized we wouldn't have enough hours available to take the load to NY. We calculated how long we could drive and how far in that time and called dispatch to alert them. They were a little surprised to get notice almost 24 hours in advance and we made arrangements to head to a UPS Freight location to made the swap. Later in the day, we got a call from the other team. They were ready to meet up and head out, but I explained we were still in New Mexico and we would be there in the morning.

Well, we finally made it to St. Louis and unloaded the truck. Immediately, the truck died thanks to the lousy fuel. After about an hour, we got her started again and headed to the truck stop. We made it through the fuel line and into a spot with Idleaire and we are now just chillin'. We hope to go see the arch tomorrow. We can see the top of it from here. I'll add a slide show of some pictures we took going through the desert.

Apparently I'm getting lazy...

Sometimes I just don't feel like writing. We left Florida and headed to Tennessee to get work done on the truck at our owner's house. We delivered our load to Alabama and immediately got another going to Mississippi...not exactly where we needed to go, but not way out of the way either. We accepted, had breakfast, got a nap and were just getting ready to pull out when the load cancelled. We headed to the other side of Birmingham to a truckstop with Idleaire and ended up spending the weekend. Monday afternoon, just when we were getting ready to deadhead to Tennessee and we got an offer to go to Fort Knox on a government load so we delayed the visit to TN by a day.






We got to Robert and Mary's house on Wednesday to find five other trucks there needing work. We got everything done and met some of the other drivers and then headed home. After a seven hour drive we were finally home. Dana had to renew his driver's license which meant he had to take the HazMat test again. We got Alex moved back to Athens and then Dana got his birthday present...a new tattoo. Here's a picture:



We then spent a lot of time cleaning the truck and getting all of the laundry done. My sincerest apologies to my aunt and uncles....we didn't make the trip north. We were exhausted and needed to catch up at home. We also spent some time with Dana's parents...we had a nice visit and dinner with them.

Tuesday brought a load offer, picking up near Pittsburgh and going to Cincinnati. We were taking the second half of the load and the other driver was four hours late getting there. It was so annoying. He actually went past the exit and was in Ohio before anyone noticed and got him to turn around. From there we went to Wright Patterson and waited for about 3 hours to find our next load wasn't going to make it that day so we hit a truck stop and returned the next morning. It took most of the day, but eventually we got loaded and headed to Indiana late that night to deliver the next morning. After unloading we headed right back to WPAFB to load again, this time going to California. So, now you are caught up....we are sitting in Albequerque trying to get a new fuel filter and are scheduled to deliver Monday morning.

Last time we were in CA, it took a week to get back out....let's hope it's not that long this time!