Windy trip down to Phoenix

Wednesday and Thursday were spent chugging down the road, through Kansas, Oklahoma, Texas and New Mexico then on in to Arizona. I timed my 1900 arrival in Phoenix to avoid much of the evening rush and the 101 loop around the west edge of the city was busy but moving at full speed.

The PetSmart DC had a bit of a traffic jam with a line of five or six trucks trying to enter at once. Since I was shutting down for the night anyway I parked a block away and had dinner while the jam cleared up. Went in myself, dropped off the paperwork and trailer then back out to the street for a good night's rest.

The last 300 or so miles of the trip were increasingly windy and my truck was buffeted quite a bit descending to the Phoenix area. There was a nice rocking motion overnight that helped me get to sleep, though.

First thing this morning I flipped on my truck ignition to wake my QualComm from its sleep mode and entered a daily macro giving my mileage and hours. Within a minute it beeped at me and I had my next trip: take a load of (what I expect at least) flour from Phoenix to the Kansas City area for first thing Monday morning. Not a bad weekend trip, 1,200ish miles over three days but there was a snag: when I went back to the PetSmart lot to grab an empty van I was told they couldn't release any and in fact needed some more delivered!

I advised dispatch and waited for several hours while things percolated through the system and eventually was taken from the KC load and put on a PetSmart load. Better, it is one of the rare one-stop loads and only weighs 15,000 pounds! The hills north of Phoenix will quake before my tread!

Before anyone could change their minds I grabbed the (half) loaded trailer and punched in the codes to tell HQ I have the trailer and am underway. It was just after 0900 local time so the traffic was still heavy but the 101 was still moving well and in about 30 minutes Phoenix was fading away in my mirrors.

My truck easily powered up the hills of I-17 to Flagstaff then I turned right on to I-40 and took it to Winslow, Arizona for some shopping then Jamestown, New Mexico for fueling, then Grants, New Mexico for the night.

It was very windy all of today which was nice getting a push in the butt heading up towards Flagstaff but after turning east it was squarely on my right side and with such a light load I was blown around a bit. Still, given the choice, in summertime I'll stick with the light load.

I'm planning something special for tomorrow so stay tuned...