Am I ever glad to be home! It seems like a ton of little bitty but very annoying things went wrong all week. First off, my load cancelled out Monday at Pulaski but thankfully my dispatcher came up with Tuesday reload out of Mt. Juliet--I think somebody else that isn't a regular got bumped back to Wednesday. At M.J. you have to slide and lock your tandems to the rear while at the gate and the trailer that I had absolutely no problem with the previous day decided to be most uncooperative. Couldn't get the release for the tandems to turn loose at all, even went out and banged on the pins with my hammer--which is a VERY good stress reliever if you're not rushed. Didn't budge, rocked the trailer back and forth, wouldn't budge, this by the way was an empty trailer so shouldn't have had that much trouble and it wasn't like I was rough with it the day before before when sliding the darn thing. Finally the yard driver noticed my predicament and gave me a hand. When a trailer is cranky like that it's so much easier if you have two people but even with his help I still had to rock the trailer back and forth a couple of times. Normally it would bother me having to get help but I've been in there often enough that he knows I'm not one of these female drivers that bats their eyes in order to get somebody to do the dirty work.
Paperwork was delayed for 20 minutes but that wasn't a problem at all, it gave Nashville traffic a little extra time to clear up but then I hooked up to my new trailer and had trouble with the tandems again. This time the pins pulled easily but I couldn't get the trailer to move! Got out looked on the other side to make sure everything was where it was supposed to be and by this time the yard driver came back around when I was getting back in my truck to see if I needed a 2nd pair of hands again. Everything went ok then, he didn't even have to get out of his tractor. I told him that I had scared the trailer by cussing at it when I walked back the last time, lol.
Tuesday afternoon I stopped at NLR to grab an early supper with James then went on my merry way with dreams of making it to the Mt. Vernon area before 10 p.m. Yeah right! Had a truck pass me with shiny doors and I noticed that I only had one headlight. Shouldn't have been a problem, I carry extra bulbs with me. Well, I get to Prescott and pulled into a parking spot after fueling to change it out and the new bulb wouldn't work. Thought it had maybe gotten banged around or maybe had touched the glass part so drove on down to Hope to grab a new one at Wal-Mart. Changed it again, still not working. Checked the wiring to make sure I didn't have anything loose, cut, melting, etc. Nothing. So call Road rescue and get sent back to Prescott TA. James fortunately had told me to drop my trailer so that I would have a parking spot in case I got held up and I'm glad that he did. I was very frustrated and don't think I would have remembered to do it otherwise. What should have been a 15 minute job turned into 4+ hours because the guy that initially started working on it didn't have a clue as to what he was doing and was preoccupied with the fact that his shift ended in 30 minutes. I noticed he was having trouble with the electrical testing tool but when he took off I thought he was going to ask somebody for help not leave without letting anybody know what was going on.
At this point all the remaining technicians are busy with other trucks so it was almost 2 a.m. before one got free to work on my headlight again. Took him less than 2 minutes to find the problem and under 15 to fix it and shut the hood. He apologized for the other guy and gave me a voucher for $15 to use in the restaurant later in the morning. Next problem, computers were down for updating at the service desk so had to wait around for over 30 minutes to complete the paperwork while listening to a driver with an overactive imagination embellish a tale of 2 women in a Mustang on I-45 in Texas that were driving around nude and evading the highway patrol. He went on and on and on and the story kept getting wilder as he got wound up. When he finally left, the service desk guy told me that I might ought to park as far away from that driver as possible, LOL!
So now it's Wednesday, it's cold, it's raining and I'm sleep-deprived. No matter how late I get to bed I can't sleep past 7-7:30 am. I had a 3 mile run scheduled that just didn't get done (see the cold, rainy, and sleep-deprived part), so that made me even more cranky and traffic was a mess all the way down the I35 corridor. I'm thinking something else went wrong but can't remember what it is right now. Anyway, I ended up getting to the rest area just north of Laredo and went to bed instead of making my delivery early.
Thurs. up before dawn because I want to beat the morning traffic and get out to the mall to get my 5 mile tempo run done. Got dropped ok, although I had to wake the guard up at Penske, he was kicked back in his chair, mouth wide open. Had to knock on the window 3 times before I got his butt up. It's somebody I like so just gave him a hard time about if I couldn't sleep then neither could he.
Tempo run didn't go quite as well as I would've liked, supposed to have been 3 miles at 8:28 but didn't quite hit the mark.
Mile 1: 10:29 (warm-up)
Mile 2: 9:25
Mile 3: 8:56
Mile 4: 8:58
Mile 5: 10:07 (cool-down)
Again, it was cold, rainy, very windy and I was tired. It really shows in my mile splits. I think Laredo was around 38-41F that morning so I was the only crazy person out running around the mall that morning. On the upside, Elsie ran the entire distance with me which is unusual because if it's raining I have a hard time getting her outside. Actually when I stopped to stretch I took her off the leash and she was grabbing it and growling at me to go again. I had to tell her "no mas" I was DONE.
Picked up my trailer after lunch and found a low tire. Most of our trailers have the auto air system and I was hoping that it wasn't anything major and would air itself up. Well it did but when I pulled around the opposite side of the yard and did a 2nd walkaround I found a nail that started hissing air when I pulled at it. Grrr, had to pull around to the shop and get in line. I was the only one that needed trailer work so I actually didn't have to wait very long, my luck was starting to look up finally.
Got headed north, San Antonio was ok. Stopped at Buda to visit with James and let Austin ease up a tad. I was starting to drag again at this point, 2 short nights in a row was getting to me so just called it quits at Salado and was in bed by 8 pm last night. I slept GOOD, at least until 6:30 am when Elsie decided it was bathroom time. Walked her and went back to sleep for another hour when James called me. I think I must have twisted around funny when I was fumbling for the phone because I got this horrible muscle spasm in my left hamstring. It's been sore all day, I hope it'll be ok by Sunday.
Now that I'm writing everything down, it just hit me that Friday the 13th was the only day that almost everything went ok on. If it wasn't for the sore hammy and the cold wet weather everthing would have been good. Huh, that's odd.
Oh, I remember what else went awry! I broke my cell phone (again), the one I've had less than 3 months and I think I forgot to add insurance for. Because I'm so klutzy when it comes to phones I always carry a spare but I heard 2 text messages come through on my broken one that I can't read because the screen is black.
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