Hi, there. I'm a napkin.

monday brad and i had the good fortune of picking up a load in emporia, kansas, which meant that we got to see our daughter-in-law, gwen, and the grandkids...... jj was out of the country on a business trip to london and tel aviv, so the best we could figure was that missing our visit was his loss....lol...... we had lunch with gwen and jacey at pizza ranch, a really cute pizza buffet place that has excellant food and a western atmosphere.......i always enjoy places that add a little nuance into the finer details......the little things.....and although i really loved the decor of this little place, it was the back of the napkins that did it for me.........

when ya think about it, anywhere ya eat.....anytime ya get takeout......you always need napkins.....and they do kinda have a somewhat thankless job....people use them, thoughtlessly, to wipe their mouth, clean up kid's faces and hands, wipe up dropped food off their own clothes and even blow their noses in them.........kinda seems to me like one of the toughest jobs too......

here lately, brad and i have picked up alot of trailers that other drivers have dropped with numerous problems that they should have taken care of...but didn't........we're also frequently asked to meet a truck and repower their load, that a) was a team load and a solo driver picked it up, b) is a hazmat load that a non-hazmat driver tried to pick up, or c) the driver doesn't have the hours to run the load........not to mention all the repowers we do in order to help another team get home or because their truck has broken down......

there are alot of names that people in our line of work get called.....some seriously, some humorously.....truckdriver, driver, freight relocation specialist, hand, professional tourist, asphalt cowboys,.......but after lunch at the pizza ranch i know we also have another name......napkin.....coz we're always cleaning up other people's messes.

jihad turkey!

brad and i've been having kind of a lazy weekend......we had been running so hard since we came out from hometime that we were both getting dangerously low on hours....so when we got this load going from nampa, idaho to jackson, tn and it didn't have to deliver until monday morning, we discussed our hours with our fm and figured out how instead of running it thru and dropping it early, we could use the weekend to do what is known as a rolling restart on our 70 hours ....that just basically means that when brad finished driving last wednesday, he started his 34 hour restart and i did all the driving thursday....then we shut down for thursday night, then he did all the driving friday and i had enough hours to do my 34 hour restart ....it cuts down your miles a little, but it gives you a slower pace and sometimes you just need that to regroup your spirits as well as you log book hours........anyway, we'd been enjoying it and having time to have good meals and long night's rests.....we'd stopped last nite in percival, iowa where a popular shortcut thru nebraska meets up with i-29 coming down thru western iowa and on into kansas city, mo......i usually get up and hit the road around 4 or 5 am but this morning i'd slept in a little and didn't start out till 7.......i'd been on the road about 2 hours and had just gotten off i-29 onto i-435, the beltway around kansas city.....it was an overcast morning with just a light drizzle every now and then......out of nowhere into my field of vision came this humungous bird....at first i really couldn't tell if it was a turkey or a hawk.....it was headed right for my windshield and before i had anytime to react, it slammed into driver's side of the windshield, shattering it into a million tiny little tiles of safetyglass......the glass actually buckled inward under the impact of the bird and a gazillion little shards of glass sprayed both me and the cab of the truck......i had a purple top on and when i looked down , it looked like my shirt was covered with glitter! instantly, i could no longer see thru the broken glass but i managed to get the truck onto the shoulder of the road and stopped . brad had been awake but hadn't gotten up yet and at first he thought we'd had a blowout.....but when i yelled at him to get up, i don't think he could hardly believe what he saw......the first thing he did was get our sweeper out and clean the glass off of me before he would let me move.....it's amazing that i didn't get any cuts and haven't had any glass splinters, so far anyway..........after he got dressed, and after all the calls we had to make about the incident, we managed to get the truck on down the road about a mile and a half where we could get safely off the road.......we spent along time cleaning up the truck and they sent another truck out to repower the load on to tennessee.......so here we are till tomorrow morning when they can put a new windshield in.......i'm figuring that we'll be cleaning up glass shards again after that.....i can't imagine that they could get this one out with out it coming all apart......

the whole thing did give us time for a nice visit this afternoon with virgil and cattleya and the kids......when they heard what happened, the drove up from kansas city and crowded into the cab with us for a couple of hours.....then they went and got lunch for everybody and again we nestled into the truck like sardines in a can......we had a great visit tho..........brad and i had just been talking the other day about how we will go for years without being hit by a small bird.....and then it seems like once one hits you, within a few days one or two more will do the same.....it's weird, i know....it always makes me think alfred hitchcock.....lol......i'm really hoping that only goes for small birds and not game fowl!!

kent to lost creek and back to kent again!

well, i'd kinda made a pact with myself to try and do better about keeping up the blog, so while we're sitting here in fife, washington, waiting on our load to be ready i thought i'd let you know what had been goin on since our last trip out this way and the previously blogged-about trailer incident.....lol......we finally made it out of kent on thursday and were headed east towards home.....we dropped that load at our company yard in indianapolis and picked up one from another team there that delivered in weirton, wv on sunday.....after dropping that trailer at the customer's, we headed off bob-tailing for lost creek.....we had a great time at home!!....no major excitement but alot of visiting with family and friends, some really good suppers, a little shopping and a pedicure!.....the rest of the time we just vegged out or worked on getting laundry done and the truck repacked......we headed back out on friday afternoon, going up near pittsburgh to pick up a load that had a stop in canton and then delivered in swanton, ohio late that night....from there we ran down thru the woods to columbus and got the one that we brought out here to kent.....we weren't sure just what we'd find on the way out here....we'd been hearing tales of snow just a few days before, but we were lucky for the most part....a little rain and a lotta wind, but no snow......yeah!!....lol.....all of our stops have worked out well, with trailers that have been in good shape......the only calamity was that we locked ourselves out of the truck at our fuel stop in billings, mt yesterday and had to have the locksmith come out.....ugh!!!....i'd had that happen once to me when i was a solo driver but this was the first time for me and brad together......we felt like a couple of rookies, hanging around the truck, which was still running and on the fuel island!)...waiting for the guy to show up......brad put the hood up on the truck while we were there so that other drivers would think we had a mechanical problem and we could save a little face!!!....lol....of course when he pulled in and parked in front of us with LOCKSMITH on the side of his van, it kinda gave the whole thing away.....lol......oh well, crap happens!....our other excitement came when the air hose going to the driver's seat came apart......lol....the sound of air whooshing in your cab is a little mind-boggeling when you're not expecting it.........we're not sure just what happened there.....at first we thought the pup got ahold of it, but then it looked more like maybe the seat came down on the metal trashcan and the rim of the can got it......anyway, we tried bending it double and taping it till we could get somewhere to get a coupling, but the tape didn't hold very well, so basically about 60 miles of the trip was spent with me lyin on the floor between the seats holding the hose.....lol.....what ya gotta do sometimes!!!!....lol.........when we stopped at the fuel stop, brad bought an airhose and installed that, so now when i don't feel like runnin the sweeper, i'll just open both doors up and blow everything to the ground!!...lol....i might like that.....maybe i'll end up having to have one installed at the house too!!.....anyway, we made our delivery in kent just 45 minutes late which i consider pretty darn good, since we were 9 hours late picking it up because they had us do that swanton, ohio run first, then we had about 2 hours of down time between the air hose issue and the lockin ourselves outta the truck issue.....and not to mention the gettin into seattle area at morning rush hour....it took me over an hour to get off i-90, down the 405, and down the 167 to the customer's...which was only about the last 25 miles ......geesh.....but i had a good cup of hazelnut coffee, so i just relaxed and did alot of people watchin as they scurried about tryin to get to work on time!