Today's trip was accompanied by cloudless skies in the morning and puffy, fluffy clouds here and there at mid-day and in the afternoon.
Today's stops went smoothly (although my first stop delayed the unloading process about 30-minutes after the appointment time).
Rounding the bend in Madison, WI from 151-E to I-90/I-39 W/N, I almost nailed stopped traffic. Every now and then, every driver experiences a "missed 'em by that much" moment. I had one of those this afternoon. Construction on the Interstate north of Madison was scheduled to end (each day) by 3:00 PM. Today, they ran over a bit and didn't get the lanes all cleared up by the time they said construction would end. That caused a 10-mile back-up.
As I rounded the turn to get on to I-90/I-39 (one of those turns that are blind--you can't see what's coming up ahead of you), I glanced in my side view mirror at traffic and then turned my head to what was ahead of me. I noticed in a split second that traffic had nearly stopped in front of me. I hit the brakes and locked them up for one second. As I was doing that, I glanced in my right-view mirror and noticed an automobile in the right lane along side of me. I turned on my turn signal, let up on the brakes enough to let the vehicle get by me, and then turned into the right lane missing the vehicle in front of me in the left lane. Wow! It happened that fast. Even when you're doing the speed limit--even when you've got plenty of cushion between you and the next vehicle--even when everything appears "fine" on the road, you can never, ever let up your guard. Especially when you're driving a big rig.
After that, it was bumper-to-bumper until I made my exit for fueling. The drive towards Milwaukee, WI was far less "exciting"--but no complaints here!
Tomorrow, I'm heading to the Chicago, IL area in the morning and then I may have a late night load going to Madison, WI.
miles driven = 390
8:36:03 PM
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