As I was getting the computer out, Josh said to me, “What are you doing? Lizzy is sleeping so well right now.” It seems that anytime I get on the computer to check email, pay bills, or write on the blog, Lizzy decides to wake up and scream. Here’s hoping she won’t this time…
Trucks have to go through scales every time they enter or exit a state and sometimes in the middle of the state. This is time consuming because of having to stop and then get back to freeway speed. Obviously, no one likes to do it, so they have a little device that sticks to the front window of the truck that can communicate with the scale house to let the people know who you are before you get there. Then the scale house sends a signal back to the PrePass (the device) that gives you either a green light to let you know it is okay to bypass the scale, or a red light that tells you to come in and get weighed. This makes it very nice because you can save a lot of time and fuel. Unfortunately for us, for the past few days, we have got red lights at every scale house. Apparently, the computer shows we have to come in every time for a “safety” reason. This is usually a fleet wide reason, but no one else in our fleet has been getting it, so our boss is looking into it. Hopefully that will be resolved soon.
The good news is that we are finally on our way home. It took some doing, too! After we got to St Louis we got a preplan that wanted us to go to Houston, TX. We called our boss, and he called the dispatcher, and after a while he called back and said we could get a load going to Oregon, and they could push the delivery back a couple of days so we could spend two days at home. We told them there was no way that would work for us since we needed to make a couple of repairs and improvements to the truck, and move all the stuff from our house to a storage unit. That can’t be done in two days. So they tried to find something different, and finally decided to have us pick up a load going to San Antonio, TX, and take it to Mississippi to meet up with another driver who had a load going to Salt Lake City. So we picked up our load and took it to Winona, MS and swapped loads. Right now we just crossed the border from Iowa into Nebraska (Iowa being our 33rd state). We should be able to get about halfway across Nebraska today and then to SLC by tomorrow night. We are very excited to get home and get everything done!
Friday, August 31, 2007
Tuesday, August 28, 2007
On your mark, get set, GO!
We took a load of Fruitopia and other stuff from Coca-Cola in Charlotte, NC to Coca-Cola in Nashville, TN. After we unloaded there we went to Evansville, IN to get a load of stuff from Whirlpool to take to Denver. We thought they would get us a load from there to home, but that was not the case. Instead, we are headed back to St. Louis, MO with a load of rolled aluminum. We talked to Bill though, and he talked to the dispatcher about getting us home, and he said that they would try to get a load from either St. Louis or Murray, KY to Oregon or SLC so we could go home.
We completely lose all track of the days of the week when we are on the truck. We had no idea that it was Sunday until Josh’s dad call us and said they were home from church. Whoops! We still have to drive on Sundays, but we usually go to church, and then don’t buy anything all day. We also listen to Sunday music in the truck all day. Since we missed church, we took turns telling scripture stories, and listened to our cd of Primary music.
When we were leaving Denver, we tried to call my Uncle Dea, but I just had to leave a message. He called me back about an hour later, and I found out that we had been within a few miles of his house. By then we were too far away to get together though, but if we go through there again we will try again.
The last couple of days, Mitchell and I have had a lot of fun doing races. First, we pick out a course. At one place, we started at a crack in the sidewalk, then ran and touched the light post, then ran and touched the fire hydrant, and then ran and touched the light on the bottom of the trailer. Then I would get my stopwatch ready, and tell Mitchell, “On your mark, get set, GO!” He would run the course, with me yelling reminders of where to run next, and I would time him. Then I would take a turn. At the rest stop we slept at last night, he ran another course repeatedly to see if he could improve his time each time. He really loves to run, and everywhere we stop, he asks if we can do more races.
Today we stopped for fuel and lunch, and there was a playground to play on. There was a gorilla
statue there too. We tried to tell Mitchell it was his brother, but he reminded us that he was a monkey, not a gorilla. He’s a pretty funny boy. The playground also had a slightly more sophisticated version of tin cans on a string. They have pipe that goes underground with a funnel shaped openings on each end about 4 feet high so that you can talk to each other from the opposite ends of the playground. Mitchell loved talking through those. Josh and Mitchell mooed at each other.
Mitchell just made a card for his dad that said, “Dear Dad I love you Love Mitchell”. It was really cute. It even had a picture of Mitchell and his dad. He is getting pretty good at writing. Even though we were driving down the road, his words were very legible.
We completely lose all track of the days of the week when we are on the truck. We had no idea that it was Sunday until Josh’s dad call us and said they were home from church. Whoops! We still have to drive on Sundays, but we usually go to church, and then don’t buy anything all day. We also listen to Sunday music in the truck all day. Since we missed church, we took turns telling scripture stories, and listened to our cd of Primary music.
When we were leaving Denver, we tried to call my Uncle Dea, but I just had to leave a message. He called me back about an hour later, and I found out that we had been within a few miles of his house. By then we were too far away to get together though, but if we go through there again we will try again.
The last couple of days, Mitchell and I have had a lot of fun doing races. First, we pick out a course. At one place, we started at a crack in the sidewalk, then ran and touched the light post, then ran and touched the fire hydrant, and then ran and touched the light on the bottom of the trailer. Then I would get my stopwatch ready, and tell Mitchell, “On your mark, get set, GO!” He would run the course, with me yelling reminders of where to run next, and I would time him. Then I would take a turn. At the rest stop we slept at last night, he ran another course repeatedly to see if he could improve his time each time. He really loves to run, and everywhere we stop, he asks if we can do more races.
Today we stopped for fuel and lunch, and there was a playground to play on. There was a gorilla
statue there too. We tried to tell Mitchell it was his brother, but he reminded us that he was a monkey, not a gorilla. He’s a pretty funny boy. The playground also had a slightly more sophisticated version of tin cans on a string. They have pipe that goes underground with a funnel shaped openings on each end about 4 feet high so that you can talk to each other from the opposite ends of the playground. Mitchell loved talking through those. Josh and Mitchell mooed at each other.Mitchell just made a card for his dad that said, “Dear Dad I love you Love Mitchell”. It was really cute. It even had a picture of Mitchell and his dad. He is getting pretty good at writing. Even though we were driving down the road, his words were very legible.
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