And I Lived to Tell the Tale

I went for a walk today (needed fresh air) because there's only so much time you can spend cooped up in a truck.  I think the walk did me good.

Going to talk to dispatch in the morning to see if I can just drive straight to one of the terminals in Montana to get my bunk heater fixed. It's mighty cold at night in these parts.

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Spent most of Thursday hanging out at Volvo repair shop in Spokane. They were looking into the bunk heater problem and they also put winter wiper blades back on my truck (when I was in Los Angeles, I asked told them that the blades were fine, but the wiper arms weren't pressing on the windshield hard enough... they just swapped out my winter blades for normal ones.... which would be fine if I were a local driver in southern California... but I'm not). It was after 5pm when they finished and so I drove a few blocks to a truck stop for the night.

My next load was picking up in Lewiston, Idaho and had to be picked up by 5am on Friday. I decided to take a nap and then drive over there really early in the morning. My bunk heater wouldn't come on.... so I tried to sleep for a while and then just gave up. I left at 1am local time and I'm glad I did, because it was icy out and I could take my time. I got lost in the town where I was dropping/hooking. It was dark and there were several huge factory/mill places on the same street along the river with multiple gates. One of the guys (the poor guy who had the on-call cell phone) stayed on the phone with me and gave me directions in. Once you get through the gate and past the guard shack, it's still about a mile until you get to the drop yard. The trailers were so close together that there was no way I was going to be able to drop mine in the empty row (not enough room to maneuver) so I flagged down a hostler and he gave me a different place to park it. Yay!

Hooked and did my pre-trip and was heading out right around 5am. I understood then why that was the latest I could pick up. That's when the early shift starts at the mill and there were tons of personal vehicles coming in. Makes sense.

It was snowing and visibility wasn't great. It was a lot easier to drive loaded than empty (driving an empy trailer in wind and ice is like trying to fly a kite in a wind tunnel, in my opinion). It was the first time I had to contemplate the to chain/ not to chain question (It was suggested, but not mandatory according to the signs). I was sitting in the chain up area (digging out my winter boots) and watching two cops help direct traffic around a truck that had slid/jacknifed off the road about 200 meters further on. Lucky for him, he'd slid into the ditch between the road and the mountainside and not off the cliff. He had passed me earlier going way to fast for the road conditions (in my opinion). It was snowing, but not much was accumulating on the road and it was above freezing, so the road was slushy and not icy. I chose not to chain. It was slow-going for a while, but only bad in the pass. After about half an hour, the road was fine, there was little snow and I could go at pretty much normal speed.

I made it as far as Boise (where I had a fuel stop). I had two hours left on my driving clock, but I was really tired from not having slept well, so I just stayed there for the night.

The next morning, the roads were terrible. There's a weigh station on the east side of Boise and some pick-up truck had slid off the road and flipped. He was actually blocking part of the left lane at the weigh station, so all the trucks had to go on the right.

The road was icy (and I saw three different plows driving around with their blades up. WHY!?) but about 30 miles west of Boise, the roads were fine. Either it was just a concentrated storm or the road maintenance just suddenly got a whole lot better.

I drove all day and made it to North Las Vegas (where I was doing a drop and hook). I had until midnight the following day to deliver (and I was tired), so I pulled into a truck stop for the night (where I had to stop for fuel anyway). I delivered this morning. WS doesn't have any loads out of the Vegas area until tomorrow, so here I am. I wasted a glorious amount of time in Walmart. I'm sitting in a McDonald's enjoying some free wifi. There's a Pilot nearby, but the lot is really small and I spent a good 20 minutes embarrassing myself earlier trying to maneuver into one of the two open spots. I gave up and called the Walmart and asked if they allowed trucks to park. Discretion is the better part of valor. Later, I'll probably drive back to the truckstop where I spent last night. I do so love showers and restrooms readily available.

I finally took the time to organize the cargo/tool compartment in my truck. We'll see how long that lasts. It might just be random truck housekeeping day. It's not like I have a whole lot else going on.

And so the bunk heater didn't work the first night after the repair, but it's worked for the past two nights. I'm just happy that it seems to be cooperating for now and I'm very warm at night.