I've been a trucker for the last ten years but now I am back home at "Camp Chaos" and I will be working at the Fontana terminal as a safety specialist. I hope now that I'm home I'll have a lot more time for blogging!


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Today is a combination of frustration and anticipation... My wife and daughter are, as I write this, flying to Paris. How I wish I could be with them... I'm looking forward to seeing the photos Brenda sends back on her blog.

I'm sitting in my truck. It is 6:00 pm Thursday Apr 28,2005. Yes, three days till May and I'm sitting in my truck. I repeat that on purpose. I'm not driving. I am sitting behind the wheel, with my antique laptop on my steering wheel. My laptop froze up on me for the fourth time. It seems it can't do more than one thing well at a time.(a lot like me!!) The wireless modem is busy transferring blogg data so when I plug in my little digital camera to download a picture taken out my windshield of all the other forlorn trucks just sitting here like me, (I'l explain in a minute) my computer just stops working!

I guess I shouldn't be surprised that a four year old laptop with dead battery(must plug into cigarette lighter just to boot up!) would complain when I ask it to comunicate via a wireless modem and at the same time download pictures from a digital camera. I am using Windows ME and that is probably at least part of my problem.

My student and I are on a Hurry-get-the-load-there-as-fast-as-you-can load. We are supposed to be in Kansas City, Kansas by 1:00 am tomorrow Apr 29 but instead we are holed up in Rock Springs Wyoming. Interstate 80 is shut down due to ice, snow and multiple accidents. I am thankful we made it to the truck stop. The last 10 miles were at about 15 mph because the road was solid ice.

Two weeks ago I had my winter tires changed over to some steering tires I wanted to use up (trucks have different tires for different purposes. Steer tires are used on the front to steer. They have directional stability but are not any good for pulling a load in ice or mud or snow. On the back of my tractor are my drive tires. They don't need directional stability, they need traction to pull the load. In the summer time traction is not usually a problem. I didn't forsee a problem running some steer tires off on the drives. They have a lot of good tread left but are below my standards to be used as a steer tire. I will have them re-capped when they are worn down some more.) I thought there wouldn't be any more snow or ice by the end of April. I was wrong.

Sooooo, here we are, stuck in a Flying J truck stop. I had an excellent week going till now... I get paid by the mile.

I won't be able to go anywhere tomorrow till the ice and snow are melted. I sure wish now I hadn't changed out of my big knobby winter tires... bummer

Stay tuned, Billy Jack has given me plenty to blog about, I just haven't had time to finish the blog. It should be up in a day or two.
posted by Tom at 4:45 PM