350 to go

You know it is going to be an interesting trip when:

(1) The building your shipper occupies is out in the middle of nowhere, Mississippi and isn't marked.

(2) The guy who loads your trailer hands you the paperwork and can't for the life of him figure out how much weight he just put on your truck.

(3) The closest scale is almost exactly 20 miles away.

The trucking gods were smiling, however, and the load turned out to be only about 38,000 pounds. As a little extra, the weather today was pleasant with clear skies and fairly light winds and I'm getting excellent fuel mileage. I was at 7.2 MPG when I fueled in West Memphis, Arkansas and from there to the north central part of Illinois where I wound up tonight it is up to 7.5 MPG.

The consignee for this load is apparently so obscure their address or even street doesn't show up on my GPS or Google Maps. As this is a brokered load, I get to call up the third party broker tomorrow and ask, pretty-please, if they will tell me where exactly it needs to get delivered to.

I was able to stop by one of my regular super Wal-Mart haunts in Mt. Vernon, Illinois this afternoon to fill up the pantry and fridge. I spent about $50 for roughly a week's worth of supplies; usually it would be 30-40 bucks but I had some chocolate cravings and just had to get some of the new mint M&Ms. I tried some a little while ago and they are weird... not much like regular M&Ms at all.

There are a couple design decisions that Volvo made on my truck that I wish they would revisit. One would be making the end of the oil dipstick out of something other than jet black plastic. It makes checking the level a difficult squint rather than looking at the typical metal kind. Also, the front curtains in my truck have been used precisely one time so far and already three or four of the hanger things have broken off (as in, they were broken when I got the truck). Something to add to the list next time I'm through Omaha with some time off.

I was planning on driving another hundred miles or so today but when I pulled into a rest area to spring a leak a case of the lazies took over and I was hopelessly outmatched. I will try to do better tomorrow, I swear.