well, it's sunday evening, supper is cookin in the burton ovens and we are enjoying our last nite, hopefully, in beautiful walcott, iowa ....our last nite for awhile, anyway.....we're supposed to pick up a load in de witt in the morning and drag it over to gastonia, nc......i can't really complain tho...walcott has been a gracious host to us for the weekend........
we've had a rough week......we spent the 4th of july in salt lake city, which was nice and they had a decent fireworks display....but on sunday, the 5th, when we went to pick up our load outta there, which was going over to montgomery, new york.....yep, good miles.....we dropped our empty trailer to find that not just one, but both rear tires on the tractor were wet ....seems we'd blowed both seals back there.....so we hobbled over to freightliner and spent the day and that night in the shop there.......after that we got a load going down to los angeles.....on the way there we got a message to go to fontana freightliner to have some wiring replaced.......another day and night in the shop.......finally they got that taken care of and we headed down to otay mesa to pick up a load going to chicago........everything was going good......it was a light load....and we always love the drive across western i-70 thru utah and colorado........but then we got to iowa city, iowa....and the monsoons had hit.......running thru torrential rains, lightening and thunder was daunting enough, but then all of a sudden the truck shut off on me........completely down......i managed to get it off to the side of the road, ignoring some comments on the cb about girl drivers being afraid of the storms, and got brad out of bed.......we could see an exit sign just ahead of us and we managed to get the truck started and running long enough to get up to the exit and off the road in a safer spot.....seems the belt for the water pump had come off the truck.....a call to breakdown brought us road service again.......i was never sure how serious to take the guy that showed up, but he tried to convince us that driving thru the rain had caused the belt to come off.....he put it back on, put in about 3 gallon of water and off we went again, heading first for a tire shop in iowa city since while brad was outside with the roadservice guy, he noticed we'd also gotten a flat on the trailer.......a quick stop in iowa city and then we were off again, heading for the t/a shop at the iowa 80 truckstop......the mechanics there got a good chuckle out of the theory of how the belt came off in the rain, did a little tinkering around with it and then had to send for some parts.......which, of course, wouldn't be in till the next day......so we had a lovely overnite stay with them.....the good news is that it was the last day of the truck show and so we had some entertainment.......at first it was still monsoon weather, and about all you could do was to feel sorry for all the vendor tents tightly closed up and making no money, and all the guys who'd buffed chome polish for hours, only to have to hide the effort under a tarp.......but later that afternoon the clouds dispersed and the sun came out .....the tent flaps got drawn back and the tarps came off and it turned out to be a really good show......it didn't take long for the iowa sun and a light breeze to dry the lot up........this was the first time we'd had the pleasure of getting to take in this show....and while it's a little smaller venue than louisville or some of the others, they do a good job here......there were alot of trucks in the show, alot of antique trucks.....one of my favorites was a black 54 autocar......sweet........there was another one that i wouldn't have been ashamed to have been seen running around in.....a blue peterbuilt with a fantastic mural of horses runnin on the beach on the sides of it......it had a big ole house on it.....all the amenities of home, even a fireplace!............we got in a nice visit with pam in the ooida truck and enjoyed a pretty good grilled dinner of pork chops, baked potatoes and all the trimmings.........
saturday they got our parts in and got us fixed up and runnin pretty quick.....we got our showers and enjoyed our supper and had a good restful night.......today we got our load assignment, and even tho we've basically set all week, it was kinda nice to know we just had the rest of the day free to relax......we ran across the street and had breakfast at gramma's kitchen......pretty good food and alot to entice you to browse the little shop as y ou head to and from your table......think miniture cracker barrel.........basically we've just been slugs the rest of the day......reading the sunday papers, playin on the computers.....the most exertion either of us has had was when babygirl made us take her outside.........as for now, supper is about ready.....gonna kick back and watch a little tv and then call it a night.......probably say a little prayer of thanks that this past week has ended and a llittle prayer for the one startin up.......ya'll be safe out there!
1 comment:
Yipes - you had quite the run. Glad you had some nice weather at the Walcott show and got to have a couple of nice meals. We use Tom the dentist there and absolutely love him.
Be safe.
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