The rest of the day

I blogged my last post early yesterday morning, which was pretty much wasted by the planners at HQ. It was late morning before I got orders to head some 300 miles northwest to tiny Holcomb, Kansas for a load of meat going from a Tyson slaughterhouse to their processing plant in Emporia, Kansas. Yes, the same place (and the same cargo) I would have hauled the previous day had my hours not run out.

Three hundred miles over state highways is tiring, probably at least as much as 600 miles along the interstate. Many places with just one lane each way and little or no shoulder. Scattered rain showers didn't help much, and the wipers got a workout. Can you believe I'm still on my original set of wipers 11 months into my lease? They aren't in great shape but they do the job for now.

Arrived at the plant, got the trailer washed out then dropped it and bobtailed out front for the night. The load wouldn't be ready until 0430 this morning so I plugged away for a while on the computer, got caught up on the Daily Show and Colbert Report and suchlike.

Picked up the new, loaded trailer this morning and ran along US 50 most of the way to Emporia. Unfortunately, I found out that a 20-mile stretch between Newton and Hwy 77 was closed and I somehow managed to get through to the road itself from a different direction and ran it, right up to the point the state police officer and the barricades stopped my forward progress. He was puzzled how I got to be there (thanks GPS) and I was puzzled why he was there if he had reason to be puzzled how I got there. Puzzled yet?

It ended up that I had to turn around and eat 40 miles of out-of-route back to Kansas 15 then north to Hwy 56 then back east. I had some extra time on the delivery so I wasn't late, just perturbed by the money I just lost doing all that backtracking.

Oh, another first for me: I thought I heard a little hiss last night before I went to bed and this morning I found it. My driver's seat has developed an air leak so at first when I sat down this morning it was like I was in a low rider. Nothing against my Hispanic brothers, but it just looks retarded to me.

My dispatcher duly notified, it took only one load rejection after Emporia to get me something heading up to Omaha. I'm running a load from the Nebraska Furniture Mart in Kansas City and delivering it to the branch in Omaha tomorrow morning, after which it will be shop time for the truck.


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