I am a DQ Blizzard addict. I have been clean for five days.

Yesterday morning I contacted my dispatcher to find out what was up. My truck was out of the shop the previous afternoon and I let him know then that I would be ready to roll first thing in the morning. First thing in the morning rolls around and I'm not rolling. Not good.

I walked over to our dispatch building and pierced him with my steely gaze. "There just isn't much freight up here today," he protested.

Me and my gaze walked out and I took my truck over to a nearby PetSmart to stock up on a few things for Miss White.

Finally, just as I was getting ready to go in and shop at a WalMart, the satellite unit beeped. A trip from Omaha to Tennessee, set to deliver the following day. I had gone over the weather that morning and I knew that the entire Ohio river valley and east would be pounded with high winds and rain for much of the day. I apologized as I turned the load down.

After shopping another beep came with a load from the same shipper in Omaha, this time to Fort Worth, Texas. About the same number of miles, almost a straight shot due south and no nasty weather to worry about for the rest of the day. BAM! Took it.


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I was told to bobtail over to the shipper, where I was told to come back with an empty. Grrr. Ran back over to the yard, grabbed the only empty reefer I could find, fueled up then drove back to the shipper. Pushed the trailer into a door, got the bills, drove another mile or so from there to a drop yard, got the new trailer and headed across the river to scale in Council Bluffs.

The drive down to Fort Worth is right at 650 miles which is a long day, but doable. I knew that along the way at exit 203 on I-35 in Oklahoma is a truck stop called the Cimmaron Travel Plaza that has a nice, easy-to-access Dairy Queen but I've been free of their clutches since Friday and decided to see if I could pass it up. As I drove towards it, I realized I would need something to distract me so I pulled into one of the service plazas along the Kansas toll road and got an iced mocha coffee at the Mickey D's there.

Now, anyone who knows me knows that I don't frequent Mickey D's and pretty much anyone who has ever met me knows that I mostly drink water and juice, never tea or coffee. I really don't like the bitterness of coffee (or drinks that are hot, in general, thus the iced part) but I decided it was the closest they had to a Blizzard and the caffeine might not hurt.

Bletch! How do you people drink that swill!

It did, literally, leave a bad taste in my mouth and I did managed to pass up the DQ I was really hankering for so I suppose it did its job.

I arrived just before midnight in Fort Worth at the gates of the consignee. They run shifts 24 hours so even though the electronic gate was closed, I just waited until some workers arrived from outside the company and made my way inside to park for the night.