waiting......in idiocracy.......

well, i feel like it's time to get out the spud bar....make a hole....and set a mailbox post.....yep, right here in the t/a parking lot.....i think we've been exiled to california and not told about it..........after the harrowing sliding down the mountain experience, we were in the shop for two days, then we sat at the petro in wheeler ridge for two days, then we ran up to santa clara and picked up a load of paper rolls and drug them down to irvine....and since we delivered them yesterday evening, we've been sitting at the eastern t/a in ontario......i say eastern because there are two of them here, one across the street from the other........we relish having a "down-time day" every once-in-awhile since we hardly ever get a chance to just set still and get caught up on truck chores or tv or facebook or any other personal pleasures......most of the time it's just "grab a shower and a sandwich and go".

freight is slow....especially in california....that's what my fleet-manager, a fancy new-fangled word for dispatcher, has been telling us.....she's kinda new to this business, but evidently, this time anyway, she knows from what she speaks, coz you couldn't cram another truck in either of these truckstops with a shoe horn.....the rows are full, the idle-aire lanes are full and the perimeter of the lot is lined with trucks hoping for a better spot......most of the time, in this particular area, if you're not in a parking spot by 1500, you might as well forget it, but right now you need to start looking for an opening no later than right after the breakfast crowd leaves........it's crazy.....and it's not just one type of freighthauler that's fillin it up.....there's flatbeds, and tankers, bedbuggers and reefers.......

california offers it's own personal set of complications when you have to sit here for a few days.....now, nevermind that the los angeles area has more highways traversing it's inclusion than any other city i can think of,.....i mean, theres i 5, i 10, i15, i210, i 215, the 405, the 605, the 710, rt 55, rt 57, rt 60, rt 91, us 1, us 101.....just to name a few......and most of these are, at the least, two lanes in each direction, some sprouting to as many as 6 lanes in a given direction.....and each of these lanes is usually bumper to bumper traffic at any given moment, with the only relief from this coming, if you're lucky, between 2-5am......now, i'm not a mathmatician by any stretch of the imagination, but if you could count all these smog-producing, oil-burning, gas-guzzling cars that pack the highways here at any given moment, i think the total would make the recent stimulous package total look miniscule.....and that's a real achievement.......anyway, i get carried away, but you can see my frustration when after dealing with all this endless traffic on the roads here, then when we get a chance to sit and rest and relax, california doesn't want us to idle our trucks......seriously......they have dot enforcement here who drive around the truckstop parking lot, followed by a state highway patrol car and if you're idleing longer than 5 minutes, they write you a ticket.......never mind the fact that we have to buy special ultra-low sulpher fuel and go thru a process called regeneration every few days, and have a big sticker stamped on the side of the truck that says we are "certified clean idle".....and never mind that it's 95 degrees inside the truck in the afternoon regardless of the fact that it may only be 65 outside......i can't idle my truck longer than 5 minutes at a time without risking a ticket.......it seems to me that if caldot was so gosh-darn concerned about the enviornment here, they'd have those officers out hoofin their way around the parking lot with their little ticket pads instead of having two cars on every detail......so here we are, hooked up to this wondrous (WARNING: Air is heavy with sarcasm here) invention called idle-aire....which puts a big yellow sleeve into your passenger window and gives you heat or a/c and electricty.....yeah, there's no light on it....you have to bring a little lamp from home....geesh.......and you get all these comforts for $2.99 an hour!!!!....yippee.....you can also get cable tv and internet for an added fee.......but it's down time.....it's relaxing.....it's unbelievably stupid, it's california, and it's coming soon to a state near you......and it's just one more thing for me to rant about.....it's ridiculous.....it's harrassment......it's assinine.............

but hey......i'm just sayin.........