After sleeping in (yes!) I attended to maintaining the web blog site (that you are reading). I also called home and my daughter answered in a very polite and grown-up way (she's only 7-years old!) I'm so proud of her (as well as her brother!).
In the afternoon, after a delightful sunny ride through South and North Carolina, I arrived at the shipper. This load will be approximately 45,000 pounds. So I need to keep that in mind with the amount of fuel I take on or I will be overweight on the drive axles (Diesel weighs around 7-lbs per gallon. I've got two 80-gallon tanks. So, a full tank (both tanks) weighs around 1,120 pounds). I found out that after the trailer was loaded, the freight weighed only about 5,000 lbs! No need to scale that! The shipper said some items were on back order. Yeah--about 40,000 lbs worth.
So in late afternoon, I headed west on I-40. All told, I will travel around 2,300 miles on I-40. The evening sunset made the drive most enjoyable as I journeyed towards through North Carolina. It was dark as I crossed over the Great Smoky Mountains. For once, I was not stuck behind a slow moving truck (I.E. carrying a full load) going through the pass. So, I was able to glide around the winding road with ease. Later on when the road merged from two lanes into one lane, I of course caught up with the slower moving trucks. But the caravan/convoy of vehicles was almost to Tennessee where we once again were back to two lanes with no truck lane restrictions (trucks in the right-hand lane only).
I parked the truck in Knoxville for the evening, talked to the family by phone, and caught up on e-mail. My son waxed my wife in the game Battleship. She had 4 of his ships sunk but was unable to find his destroyer. He consequently found all five of her ships and sunk them to win the game. But then my wife waxed my son in a game of checkers.
The next 4-days will be all driving as I make my way towards California.
miles driven = 355
2:42:45 PM
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