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Sunday, January 16, 2005

One of Those Days
Peeked out of the truck this morning and it was snowing. It was light snow, but snow nevertheless.

Traveling wasn't too bad. Aside from a couple of slippery spots, I was able to maintain good speeds on the Interstate.

I had planned on taking a shower at a Pilot Truck Stop around Battle Creek, MI. However, they didn't have a shower facility (first one I've encountered without showers). I had been looking forward to taking a shower (it's been a couple of days since my last one. OK I'm starting to stink maybe just a little!). Most major truck stops have frequent fueler cards. One of the perks for fueling at a truck stop location is to receive a free shower (shower credit expire one week from the date you fueled at a given location; credits are good throughout a truck stop's national locations).  I shower at the fueling locations where the company I work for sends me to fuel which happen to be major truck stops. For some reason, there's not a lot of major truck stop chains in the area I'm traveling through Michigan. Therefore, I'll have to wait and take a shower when I come across a truck stop tomorrow where I can use one of my shower credits.

My inverter crapped out on me.  This is the portable device I bought to allow me to plug appliances into it so that I can have power for these devices in the truck (TV, cell phone charger, lap top charger) I was watching the 2nd televised football of the day when the circuit breaker tripped. All I did was move the inverter so that I could plug the laptop cord into it. I'm not sure what happened but something obviously did. So I tried plugging the inverter into another circuit relay and promptly blew that fuse. Great. There's something majorly wrong. The unit is less than 4-months old and it breaks down on me. After replacing the truck fuses, I called the manufacturer (Tripp Lite) and of course there is no one around to help me on the weekends. Tomorrow's conversation with them should certainly prove interesting.

I'm really steaming over this because I now have no way to charge my cell phone or my laptop outside of going into a truck stop and doing so. Even though I have the inverter unit under warranty, it will most likely take the company at least one month to repair it and get it back to me. I'm tempted to buy a new unit and return it within 30-days once the old unit has been repaired. I won't actually do that but I'm irritated that I'll be without an inverter for a long time unless the company authorizes a quick exchange at a local store. Stay tuned.

So...updates on this site may be brief for the foreseeable future unless of course I lug my laptop into the truck stop (for power) which I prefer not doing primarily for security reasons (I prefer not to advertise that I'm carrying an expensive piece of equipment with me and thus be the possible target of getting mugged).

miles driven = 329

7:16:30 PM       comment []    back to top

Trailer Swap
Got a daylight view of the Virginia mountains (Foot Hills) as I drove towards North Carolina. Saturday's traffic wasn't bad as I rolled through Winston-Salem and Greensboro.

Just after I got into North Carolina, I discovered that one of the trailer tires was low on air. I looked for the usual suspects (nail, bolt, etc.) that would cause a flat tire but didn't see any. Perhaps the tire just got "tired" of holding in all that air (groan). I stopped at a truck stop (the only one I saw on the way to my relay point to swap trailers with another driver) and their air hose was non-functioning. Grumble, grumble, grumble (at least they could have put up a sign saying so!).

I found the driver at the stop about an hour south of Greensboro without a problem. I told him about the tire. It was just slightly warmer than the other tires (the temperature was in the 40's) so that meant it was holding up well. He'd fill it up with some air on the way to Atlanta and monitor it all the way back. We quickly switched trailers and he headed for home (Atlanta area) and I for Zeeland, MI.

I retraced the exact route I had come that morning (160 miles) before I got into new territory.  I drove past the "other" city of Charleston, WV (as opposed to Charleston, SC) in the dark and made my ways into Ohio a bit before stopping for the night. As I drove through Charleston, my eyes started watering. I'm not sure if it was smog or what, but the air quality wasn't the greatest.

Some of the winding interstate curves and hills in West Virginia make for great driving if you don't have a full load (if you do have a full load, the drive is more challenging). Going towards North Carolina I had 44,600 lbs in the trailer. Coming out of North Carolina I had 5,500 lbs in the trailer. It makes a big difference how much freight you're haulin' as you snake in and out of curves. Obviously, the more weight you're carrying, the more careful you must be in handling your rig.

Towards the end of my ride today, the landscape was totally flat. Not very challenging, but it was nice not to be shifting all the time going up hills and applying the brakes going down hills. I just set the cruise control and thought about life in general as the miles whizzed by.

miles driven = 610

12:10:18 AM       comment []    back to top