Good day for Dairy Queen, bad day for electronics

Yesterday I was handed a load from Omaha, Nebraska to Atlanta, Georgia and I stopped last night just east of St. Louis, Missouri. I awoke about an hour before my 0600 alarm was due to go off by loud rain banging off of my truck. It's been a while since it has rained overnight where I've stopped.

I departed as soon as I could legally move and made a quick pit stop at Mt Vernon, Illinois at the Super Wal-Mart. There is an adjacent truck stop that is convenient. I didn't bring in a list and picked up three things on impulse I don't really need (read: junk food) and missed one thing that I went in for. Ah well.

Hour after hour I traveled southeast in moderate to heavy rain. Finally, just south of Nashville I stopped to fuel up ($1.97 a gallon for our company with a pump price of $2.39 -- a 42 cent difference!) and the rain petered out. I hurried so I could miss the worst of the Chattanooga rush hour and I was through there around 3 PM local time.

My plan was to stop at the closest truck stop to Atlanta coming down I-75 in Cartersville. Actually, there are two of them there, a T/A and a Pilot. Anyway, as I was passing through Calhoun, Georgia I saw a sign for a Hess travel center that I hadn't noticed before... and it had a Dairy Queen inside! I swear, they have grappling hooks or something tossed out on the freeway that catch my truck and force it to exit abruptly.

Now, I normally don't bring my cell phone with me when I go inside a truck stop for a quick bite to eat but I needed to use the facilities and figured I would get caught up on the latest internet stuff via my new iPhone 3g. There I am, letting bombs drop and just as I'm all done and the toilet flushed, I butterfinger my phone and it flips, dropping down into the bowl. A perfect swish, even.

Thankfully it was still within reach and I grabbed it. I had just turned it off so I dried it as best I could then took it out to the truck where I gave it a 409 rubdown. Hopefully it will work when I go to turn it on next.

Naturally, I will be using hands free mode for a while. Sigh.