Accidental Blessed Dreams.
My old Olympus digital camera recently passed away suddenly and unexpectedly. I consider a camera a necessity out on the road, a tool I can’t live without. I see lots of fun stuff on the road that are picture worthy and also like to carry one in the unlikely even of a serious accident. On my recent Summer trip the Outer Banks, my friend Chris (who is a world famous artist) gave me some pointers on how to take better pictures and I was just getting the hang of it. He also told me it was time to upgrade my camera, so I wasn’t too bummed about it’s passing.
I got home late one Friday and knew I’d need to come up with a plan. My biggest hurdle was to figure out how to get a new one without letting my Wife know about my purchase. Whenever I mention spending a nickel or two her favorite one word answer is always “no.” After eighteen wonderful years with her I’ve learned that sometimes I need to come up with a plan to get what I want and deal with the aftermath later. I have extensive experience in such actions because growing up I had parents. Same concept, different relationship.
This one was actually easy. She complains about making me breakfast, and I don’t like to get sick so on that Saturday morning I casually said I was heading to one of my favorite diners for a delicious Western omelette. She had no problem with that, but she would have, had she known I was really heading directly to Staples to “accidentally” purchase a new Cannon digital camera! My plan worked out just like I thought it would and don’t worry about me folks, the bruising has mostly faded. I’ve even regained enough feeling in my fingers to type!
I actually did some shopping and reading of reviews before I bought the darn thing, another lesson I learned after years of being accused of making regretful, uninformed decisions on the spot. I’ll admit I had that flaw in my shopping habits but I’ll pass the blame for that to my Dad, who taught me the fine art of “accidental purchases.” Unfortunately my income as a truck driver never matched his income as a Captain with a major airline and therefore I get in more trouble with my Wife when accidentally spending money then he does, so I HAD to change my ways. At least sometimes. On occasion I may make an accidental purchase, but at least now I am informed about them!
On a recent beautiful Friday evening, I parked the truck and jumped in the car, anxious to get home after a long week on the road. As I passed Blue Marsh Lake I noticed the sun slipping behind the water and instantly knew I’d have to pull over and try out my new camera. Here’s how it turned out:
I posted the picture on Facebook so I could share that beautiful sunset with all my friends. One of my friends, Sue, who I have known since kindergarten made this comment: “You see it all! You are truely blessed!” After I got done wondering why she couldn’t spell ‘truly’ since she is a teacher, I gave more thought to why she thought I was blessed.
In my opinion, she is way more blessed then I am. She gets to go home every night and spend time with her Husband and beautiful Daughters. Me, I’m gone several nights a week and only feel blessed about being gone when I’m in REAL trouble with the Wife and that’s pretty rare, believe it or not. Maybe she meant I was blessed because I do see it all, like that sunset that made me stop and take a picture when all I really wanted to do was get home quickly. I can see one fall tree, all by itself, putting on a full-on-fire fall display and appreciate the beauty of it so maybe I am blessed, I do see it all. Bless You! (Whoops- sorry, someone, somewhere ,just sneezed.)
One thing I do know for sure is for the past few weeks on the road I have sure felt blessed. My trips have consisted almost exclusively to upstate New York and the Central Pennsylvania region. It’s been so many weeks since I have delivered in Connecticut that I couldn’t even point the darn state out on a map anymore. I’ve been enjoying the spectacular fall foliage on a daily basis, just taking in the beauty as I travel through small towns for the first time on roads I haven’t been on before either. I’ve been enjoying what I do for so many weeks in a row that it’s enough to make one feel blessed! But things change and as the saying goes, all good things come to an end.
The end came for me sometime during the night on this past Wednesday. I had stopped in Elmira, New York to get my trailer loaded with almost 40,000 pounds of empty beer bottles after another fun day of sprinkling New York with the World’s best furniture. I had just enough time to make it thirty miles to the East where I would spend the night at a little truck stop. I was tuckered out and anxious to hit the sack after a long day.
Did you ever have a dream that you remembered after the fact? So much after the fact that it was a few days later? Mine came to me Wednesday evening after many horrible events that I will get to in a minute. Here’s how the dream went:
I was floating around the offices of the Universe where high ranking Universe officials spend their working days. I was watching some guy sitting in his office looking over a file that was clearly marked JASON HARRY and as he read his brow crumpled up in angst. After a few moments of reading what clearly was my file, he jumped up, opened his door and walked out to some kind of cubicle area that hundreds of people were busily working around.
He began to speak, not like a rational type of Boss, more like one pissed off boss:
“Listen up people! What in the heck is going on with Jason Harry? Has anyone noticed at all that he has been living the easy life? Are you all just going to let him slip through the rest of his life with no lessons or challenges on our little invention that we call Earth? Come on People, we like this kid, do you think maybe we could throw a couple of loops his way to so at the very least we could aid in his development of character? Does this office contain any teachers at all?”
Man this guy was angry. So angry that when he was done speaking his face was completely red and the once buzzing office was completely now a room full of silence. Somewhere a few rows back, a red headed fellow slowly rose and began to speak with a stammer, obviously trying to gain some courage to engage his boss.
“Uuu-mmmm, there were a few times we made him run to the nearest restroom so fast he thought for sure he’d never make it...”
There was some nervous laughter before the boss mans face got even redder and as he began to yell again, the dream ended. Don’t have a clue as to what he said, only what has happened since I awoke Thursday morning. Whatever he said must have left an impression on those managers of the Universe.
Thursday morning I grabbed some coffee and breakfast, and glanced over the headlines of the newspaper before departing to Allentown. There I would rid the bottles and head back to Leesport, where I hoped to arrive by noon. I was in such a cycle that I was certain I would head right back, deep into upstate NY again. I was ready to roll by seven and after a quick pre-trip inspection turned the key to light the fire in the engine.
“Whir-whir-whir-whir-whir-whir.” She was turning over fine, but the fire wasn’t lighting. I tried again. And again. Waited fifteen minutes and tried again. Opened the hood and looked in there like I knew what I was looking for, but unfortunately I have the mechanical abilities of a four year old. Tried again. Nothing. I couldn’t really blame her though. My truck lives an easy life, pulling at the most an average weight of 12,000 pounds. Today she had to pull close to 40,000. Would you feel like waking up and going to work today? I had to call our road service company and hurry up and wait. I also called and left a message for my company about my predicament and my concerns that I’ll never make my 10-to-11 delivery window.
The truck has been running so good for so long I can only guess I was due for something like this to happen now. Actually, the first sign trouble might be brewing came on Monday morning when right off the bat, the radio wouldn’t power on. For the regular trucker, this might have been a major annoyance since most people like music or other audio entertainment. Me, on the other hand was not bothered a bit because I like redundancies and have a knack for “accidental” purchases. Back when I had my old truck I wasn’t real happy with the audio system and being the genius I like to think I am, I came up with a solution.
One night I swiped the debit card from my Wife’s purse and slipped into the darkness while she slept. I went to a 24 hour big box store and “accidentally” bought a two hundred dollar compact home theater surround system which I installed in my truck. It’s installed in my new truck now, and done so good that you would never know it’s there. The front and center speakers are mounted safe and secure in the netting above the drivers seat, the rear speakers are mounted in the rear of the sleeper and the sub woofer is in the side box. The small square footage of the truck with a high powered surround sound system makes for an unbelievable movie viewing experience that rivals the best theaters. If you ever see me out on the road and want to watch a movie, I charge 20 bucks a show, unless you’re a young pretty female, then it’s free. (That’s a joke, just in case my Wife reads this. She never gets my humor sometimes and I’d like to continue to have full use of my fingers and remain bruise free.) But that’s why I didn’t get too upset about the inoperable radio, I just piped my XM Radio through the home theater and planned to get it fixed on the weekend. I sure wasn’t feeling real blessed when my Wife found out about that particular “accidental purchase.” I rarely do when I make those mistakes!
I sat and waited for a few hours til the road service guy showed up in a pick up truck. He checked the fuses and battery cables then walked around looking at the engine like HE had the mechanical abilities of a four year old. He found this little primer lever about the same time a guy from our shop called and told me where it was and after a few pumps the engine finally came to life. Basically, I’m in a hundred thousand dollar truck that you have to prime like my hundred dollar weed eater to get it started. The guy from our shop told me to not shut it off and drive it home because it likely has bad injector cups (whatever those are) and it will need to get fixed. This bummed me out because it meant I would have to drive some spare dirty truck with no home theater system for a week or more!
The delivery window would be closed by the time I would make Allentown, so I was instructed to drop the trailer in Leesport and call in later for my next adventure. I did this about a half hour out from the yard and was disappointed to learn I had 10 stops for Friday. Fall River, MA to Woonsocket RI. The good times are over, I’ll finally be trading in sparsely populated roads for jam packed I-95 North.
The first stop up in Fall River opened at 8am so I would need to switch trailers and head out as quickly as possible. Even though I was instructed not to shut off the truck I did when I got back to Leesport. It started. I made the decision that if no one stopped me, I would take off like my truck wasn’t sick anymore. Coming through the office with paper work in hand I came face to face with our mechanic who must have been clued into my trucks health problem.
“Hey you gonna switch trucks” he asked like he thought I should.
“Why?” I asked as I looked at the floor and pretended I had no idea why he would suggest such a thing.
“Oh, you’re gonna not turn it off and switch tomorrow night right?”
“It’s off right now. I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
He repeated his second suggestion and let me go after I hesitantly agreed and I was off to West Greenwhich RI where my favorite truck stop is located. I sailed pretty good til I hit 95 North at the bottom of Connecticut. Nothing but bumper to bumper traffic. Soon I saw an overhead sign that said “Delay next 27 miles, exit 3 to 24.” Besides being overjoyed I wondered how I could be so blessed. My trip should have taken about 5 hours. It took 6 and ½..
When I got to the truck stop, completely tired out and ready to go in for a hot shower, I remembered two different mechanics instructing me not to shut the truck off. I think the truck has been running fine and mechanics can be like Doctors and sometimes have no idea what they’re talking about. Besides that, sometimes it’s fun to neglect instruction and take a gamble that they are in fact wrong. So I shut her down, and went into the back for my backpack all ready to take inside for my shower. That’s when I saw the water.
My truck has a workstation in the back. There’s a desk with a seating area on either side. One side gets filled up with my three thousand bags I bring along each week, and the other side is where I sit and work, read the paper, or hold high stakes poker games. Right on the corner of the seat bottom was clearly a water stain mark and when I touch it felt soaked. I look above it but can’t trace it’s origins. I’m becoming disgusted with my trucks maladies now and decide to check it out in the morning. I go inside and enjoy a piping hot shower and retire to my upstairs bed where I enjoy a great night of sleep with dreams I do not remember. Well, maybe I secretly do, but don’t wish to air them publicly where my Wife could read about them and bruise me up again. Tee-Hee.
Friday morning I wake up and notice my inverter light switch is blinking instead of it’s normally steady light. An inverter is basically a power supply hooked to the batteries so I can plug stuff into outlets, just like at home. I instantly check my cell phone which is plugged into it’s charger. It’s not charging. Oh no, this isn’t good. I depend on it to plug my laptop into since the battery on it will last about three seconds. Good thing I’m a man of redundancy and also have a Garmin GPS to find my way around. I rarely use it because the laptop shows a much better picture of what around me and I start to panic I may be lost forever today. (Versus lost in love like my last update.) I do some quick trouble shooting of the inverter and it still will not invert. Luckily because of my redundant ways I remember I have a portable inverter that I can plug into a cigarette lighter and that will power my laptop. The home theater system is out of the question now though, that might be over doing it for my little portable unit, today will have to be music free. Too bad you were not with me, you could have been blessed by hearing me sing songs ALL DAY LONG!
After sorting out my power issues I held my breath and turned the key to the ignition point. Whir-whir-whir-clack-clack-vroooom! Ha ha ha! The mechanics were wrong! Well, maybe they were right because it cranked for a few seconds longer then usual and that is a sign of bad injector saucers and cups.
I had my stops completed and was heading home from Woonsocket by 3pm, and that included a half hour food break at a Mickey D’s. I walked through my door at home by 10:30 at night completely exhausted from 2400 miles and thirty four stops. I’d have to go back to the yard in the morning though, and switch trucks since mine appeared to be falling apart at a high rate of speed.
This morning was Josh and Daddy day. Josh is one of my five kids and since I have 50 kids I figured I’d invent a day where I could spend a few hours with one of them alone, each weekend. That way we could spend some time together one on one with out the competition from the other 49. We had hoped to go flying today but apparently rain is all that is on the menu any more so we made plans to go check out Crystal Cave in Kutztown PA. That was perfect because I could stop by work on the way and talk to the mechanic about my gravely ill truck and also pick up my trip packet for Monday. As Josh and I went into the office I introduced him to one of the ladies who works there and saw a driver from another company at the reception window. He informed her his load might be loaded on one of our trailers and I informed him it would cost him fifty bucks for the privilege of pulling one of our trailers. He laughed and said he’d just give it to the guy he just saw back his truck up into another one passing behind him. What?
I inquired as to what happened and he said one of our drivers was backing out from a stall directly into the path of a truck passing behind him pulling a container. Wow, I thought, that’s some crazy stuff to be happening on a weekend, and I wondered who would even be working on the weekend. As Josh and I walked back to our car, we met the mechanic coming in from outside. He looked at me at says “Well, you’re definitely not getting your truck back now, I just crashed it into a truck passing behind me that I never saw.” I couldn’t believe this was really happening and asked my little guy to pinch me so I would know this wasn’t a horrible dream. All I could say to the mechanic was “why did you do that?” He reiterated that he never saw him and I could understand. I personally like the guy, and I’m sure he felt less then blessed for what happened. I went to look at it and it wasn’t so bad. The cross member that houses the rear taillights will have to be replaced as well as a rear suspension airbag. The darn truck is two years old with a 187,000 miles on it and it’s falling apart at the seams- it will need a visit to a Volvo dealer anyway. There also wasn’t any body damage to my truck, but I hear the other truck lost a chunk of it’s hood in the fight.
It’s been a great few weeks and a very interesting past week at my place of business. I have to thank my Dad for giving me the gift of being a pilot (and “accidental” purchases) which in turn helped me with the understanding of redundancy. That alone helped me get through a difficult couple days. I wouldn’t be a smart man without thanking my Wife for putting up with my shenanigans, including what I write- she doesn’t really beat me (even when she should) or make me sick with her cooking (not all the time anyway) Lastly, I have to thank Ashley Furniture Industries for providing me with such a great opportunity to go out and have all this fun and make a good chunk of money while doing it. I think my friend Sue had it right: I am truly blessed!
I got home late one Friday and knew I’d need to come up with a plan. My biggest hurdle was to figure out how to get a new one without letting my Wife know about my purchase. Whenever I mention spending a nickel or two her favorite one word answer is always “no.” After eighteen wonderful years with her I’ve learned that sometimes I need to come up with a plan to get what I want and deal with the aftermath later. I have extensive experience in such actions because growing up I had parents. Same concept, different relationship.
This one was actually easy. She complains about making me breakfast, and I don’t like to get sick so on that Saturday morning I casually said I was heading to one of my favorite diners for a delicious Western omelette. She had no problem with that, but she would have, had she known I was really heading directly to Staples to “accidentally” purchase a new Cannon digital camera! My plan worked out just like I thought it would and don’t worry about me folks, the bruising has mostly faded. I’ve even regained enough feeling in my fingers to type!
I actually did some shopping and reading of reviews before I bought the darn thing, another lesson I learned after years of being accused of making regretful, uninformed decisions on the spot. I’ll admit I had that flaw in my shopping habits but I’ll pass the blame for that to my Dad, who taught me the fine art of “accidental purchases.” Unfortunately my income as a truck driver never matched his income as a Captain with a major airline and therefore I get in more trouble with my Wife when accidentally spending money then he does, so I HAD to change my ways. At least sometimes. On occasion I may make an accidental purchase, but at least now I am informed about them!
On a recent beautiful Friday evening, I parked the truck and jumped in the car, anxious to get home after a long week on the road. As I passed Blue Marsh Lake I noticed the sun slipping behind the water and instantly knew I’d have to pull over and try out my new camera. Here’s how it turned out:
I posted the picture on Facebook so I could share that beautiful sunset with all my friends. One of my friends, Sue, who I have known since kindergarten made this comment: “You see it all! You are truely blessed!” After I got done wondering why she couldn’t spell ‘truly’ since she is a teacher, I gave more thought to why she thought I was blessed.
In my opinion, she is way more blessed then I am. She gets to go home every night and spend time with her Husband and beautiful Daughters. Me, I’m gone several nights a week and only feel blessed about being gone when I’m in REAL trouble with the Wife and that’s pretty rare, believe it or not. Maybe she meant I was blessed because I do see it all, like that sunset that made me stop and take a picture when all I really wanted to do was get home quickly. I can see one fall tree, all by itself, putting on a full-on-fire fall display and appreciate the beauty of it so maybe I am blessed, I do see it all. Bless You! (Whoops- sorry, someone, somewhere ,just sneezed.)
One thing I do know for sure is for the past few weeks on the road I have sure felt blessed. My trips have consisted almost exclusively to upstate New York and the Central Pennsylvania region. It’s been so many weeks since I have delivered in Connecticut that I couldn’t even point the darn state out on a map anymore. I’ve been enjoying the spectacular fall foliage on a daily basis, just taking in the beauty as I travel through small towns for the first time on roads I haven’t been on before either. I’ve been enjoying what I do for so many weeks in a row that it’s enough to make one feel blessed! But things change and as the saying goes, all good things come to an end.
The end came for me sometime during the night on this past Wednesday. I had stopped in Elmira, New York to get my trailer loaded with almost 40,000 pounds of empty beer bottles after another fun day of sprinkling New York with the World’s best furniture. I had just enough time to make it thirty miles to the East where I would spend the night at a little truck stop. I was tuckered out and anxious to hit the sack after a long day.
Did you ever have a dream that you remembered after the fact? So much after the fact that it was a few days later? Mine came to me Wednesday evening after many horrible events that I will get to in a minute. Here’s how the dream went:
I was floating around the offices of the Universe where high ranking Universe officials spend their working days. I was watching some guy sitting in his office looking over a file that was clearly marked JASON HARRY and as he read his brow crumpled up in angst. After a few moments of reading what clearly was my file, he jumped up, opened his door and walked out to some kind of cubicle area that hundreds of people were busily working around.
He began to speak, not like a rational type of Boss, more like one pissed off boss:
“Listen up people! What in the heck is going on with Jason Harry? Has anyone noticed at all that he has been living the easy life? Are you all just going to let him slip through the rest of his life with no lessons or challenges on our little invention that we call Earth? Come on People, we like this kid, do you think maybe we could throw a couple of loops his way to so at the very least we could aid in his development of character? Does this office contain any teachers at all?”
Man this guy was angry. So angry that when he was done speaking his face was completely red and the once buzzing office was completely now a room full of silence. Somewhere a few rows back, a red headed fellow slowly rose and began to speak with a stammer, obviously trying to gain some courage to engage his boss.
“Uuu-mmmm, there were a few times we made him run to the nearest restroom so fast he thought for sure he’d never make it...”
There was some nervous laughter before the boss mans face got even redder and as he began to yell again, the dream ended. Don’t have a clue as to what he said, only what has happened since I awoke Thursday morning. Whatever he said must have left an impression on those managers of the Universe.
Thursday morning I grabbed some coffee and breakfast, and glanced over the headlines of the newspaper before departing to Allentown. There I would rid the bottles and head back to Leesport, where I hoped to arrive by noon. I was in such a cycle that I was certain I would head right back, deep into upstate NY again. I was ready to roll by seven and after a quick pre-trip inspection turned the key to light the fire in the engine.
“Whir-whir-whir-whir-whir-whir.” She was turning over fine, but the fire wasn’t lighting. I tried again. And again. Waited fifteen minutes and tried again. Opened the hood and looked in there like I knew what I was looking for, but unfortunately I have the mechanical abilities of a four year old. Tried again. Nothing. I couldn’t really blame her though. My truck lives an easy life, pulling at the most an average weight of 12,000 pounds. Today she had to pull close to 40,000. Would you feel like waking up and going to work today? I had to call our road service company and hurry up and wait. I also called and left a message for my company about my predicament and my concerns that I’ll never make my 10-to-11 delivery window.
The truck has been running so good for so long I can only guess I was due for something like this to happen now. Actually, the first sign trouble might be brewing came on Monday morning when right off the bat, the radio wouldn’t power on. For the regular trucker, this might have been a major annoyance since most people like music or other audio entertainment. Me, on the other hand was not bothered a bit because I like redundancies and have a knack for “accidental” purchases. Back when I had my old truck I wasn’t real happy with the audio system and being the genius I like to think I am, I came up with a solution.
One night I swiped the debit card from my Wife’s purse and slipped into the darkness while she slept. I went to a 24 hour big box store and “accidentally” bought a two hundred dollar compact home theater surround system which I installed in my truck. It’s installed in my new truck now, and done so good that you would never know it’s there. The front and center speakers are mounted safe and secure in the netting above the drivers seat, the rear speakers are mounted in the rear of the sleeper and the sub woofer is in the side box. The small square footage of the truck with a high powered surround sound system makes for an unbelievable movie viewing experience that rivals the best theaters. If you ever see me out on the road and want to watch a movie, I charge 20 bucks a show, unless you’re a young pretty female, then it’s free. (That’s a joke, just in case my Wife reads this. She never gets my humor sometimes and I’d like to continue to have full use of my fingers and remain bruise free.) But that’s why I didn’t get too upset about the inoperable radio, I just piped my XM Radio through the home theater and planned to get it fixed on the weekend. I sure wasn’t feeling real blessed when my Wife found out about that particular “accidental purchase.” I rarely do when I make those mistakes!
I sat and waited for a few hours til the road service guy showed up in a pick up truck. He checked the fuses and battery cables then walked around looking at the engine like HE had the mechanical abilities of a four year old. He found this little primer lever about the same time a guy from our shop called and told me where it was and after a few pumps the engine finally came to life. Basically, I’m in a hundred thousand dollar truck that you have to prime like my hundred dollar weed eater to get it started. The guy from our shop told me to not shut it off and drive it home because it likely has bad injector cups (whatever those are) and it will need to get fixed. This bummed me out because it meant I would have to drive some spare dirty truck with no home theater system for a week or more!
The delivery window would be closed by the time I would make Allentown, so I was instructed to drop the trailer in Leesport and call in later for my next adventure. I did this about a half hour out from the yard and was disappointed to learn I had 10 stops for Friday. Fall River, MA to Woonsocket RI. The good times are over, I’ll finally be trading in sparsely populated roads for jam packed I-95 North.
The first stop up in Fall River opened at 8am so I would need to switch trailers and head out as quickly as possible. Even though I was instructed not to shut off the truck I did when I got back to Leesport. It started. I made the decision that if no one stopped me, I would take off like my truck wasn’t sick anymore. Coming through the office with paper work in hand I came face to face with our mechanic who must have been clued into my trucks health problem.
“Hey you gonna switch trucks” he asked like he thought I should.
“Why?” I asked as I looked at the floor and pretended I had no idea why he would suggest such a thing.
“Oh, you’re gonna not turn it off and switch tomorrow night right?”
“It’s off right now. I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
He repeated his second suggestion and let me go after I hesitantly agreed and I was off to West Greenwhich RI where my favorite truck stop is located. I sailed pretty good til I hit 95 North at the bottom of Connecticut. Nothing but bumper to bumper traffic. Soon I saw an overhead sign that said “Delay next 27 miles, exit 3 to 24.” Besides being overjoyed I wondered how I could be so blessed. My trip should have taken about 5 hours. It took 6 and ½..
When I got to the truck stop, completely tired out and ready to go in for a hot shower, I remembered two different mechanics instructing me not to shut the truck off. I think the truck has been running fine and mechanics can be like Doctors and sometimes have no idea what they’re talking about. Besides that, sometimes it’s fun to neglect instruction and take a gamble that they are in fact wrong. So I shut her down, and went into the back for my backpack all ready to take inside for my shower. That’s when I saw the water.
My truck has a workstation in the back. There’s a desk with a seating area on either side. One side gets filled up with my three thousand bags I bring along each week, and the other side is where I sit and work, read the paper, or hold high stakes poker games. Right on the corner of the seat bottom was clearly a water stain mark and when I touch it felt soaked. I look above it but can’t trace it’s origins. I’m becoming disgusted with my trucks maladies now and decide to check it out in the morning. I go inside and enjoy a piping hot shower and retire to my upstairs bed where I enjoy a great night of sleep with dreams I do not remember. Well, maybe I secretly do, but don’t wish to air them publicly where my Wife could read about them and bruise me up again. Tee-Hee.
Friday morning I wake up and notice my inverter light switch is blinking instead of it’s normally steady light. An inverter is basically a power supply hooked to the batteries so I can plug stuff into outlets, just like at home. I instantly check my cell phone which is plugged into it’s charger. It’s not charging. Oh no, this isn’t good. I depend on it to plug my laptop into since the battery on it will last about three seconds. Good thing I’m a man of redundancy and also have a Garmin GPS to find my way around. I rarely use it because the laptop shows a much better picture of what around me and I start to panic I may be lost forever today. (Versus lost in love like my last update.) I do some quick trouble shooting of the inverter and it still will not invert. Luckily because of my redundant ways I remember I have a portable inverter that I can plug into a cigarette lighter and that will power my laptop. The home theater system is out of the question now though, that might be over doing it for my little portable unit, today will have to be music free. Too bad you were not with me, you could have been blessed by hearing me sing songs ALL DAY LONG!
After sorting out my power issues I held my breath and turned the key to the ignition point. Whir-whir-whir-clack-clack-vroooom! Ha ha ha! The mechanics were wrong! Well, maybe they were right because it cranked for a few seconds longer then usual and that is a sign of bad injector saucers and cups.
I had my stops completed and was heading home from Woonsocket by 3pm, and that included a half hour food break at a Mickey D’s. I walked through my door at home by 10:30 at night completely exhausted from 2400 miles and thirty four stops. I’d have to go back to the yard in the morning though, and switch trucks since mine appeared to be falling apart at a high rate of speed.
This morning was Josh and Daddy day. Josh is one of my five kids and since I have 50 kids I figured I’d invent a day where I could spend a few hours with one of them alone, each weekend. That way we could spend some time together one on one with out the competition from the other 49. We had hoped to go flying today but apparently rain is all that is on the menu any more so we made plans to go check out Crystal Cave in Kutztown PA. That was perfect because I could stop by work on the way and talk to the mechanic about my gravely ill truck and also pick up my trip packet for Monday. As Josh and I went into the office I introduced him to one of the ladies who works there and saw a driver from another company at the reception window. He informed her his load might be loaded on one of our trailers and I informed him it would cost him fifty bucks for the privilege of pulling one of our trailers. He laughed and said he’d just give it to the guy he just saw back his truck up into another one passing behind him. What?
I inquired as to what happened and he said one of our drivers was backing out from a stall directly into the path of a truck passing behind him pulling a container. Wow, I thought, that’s some crazy stuff to be happening on a weekend, and I wondered who would even be working on the weekend. As Josh and I walked back to our car, we met the mechanic coming in from outside. He looked at me at says “Well, you’re definitely not getting your truck back now, I just crashed it into a truck passing behind me that I never saw.” I couldn’t believe this was really happening and asked my little guy to pinch me so I would know this wasn’t a horrible dream. All I could say to the mechanic was “why did you do that?” He reiterated that he never saw him and I could understand. I personally like the guy, and I’m sure he felt less then blessed for what happened. I went to look at it and it wasn’t so bad. The cross member that houses the rear taillights will have to be replaced as well as a rear suspension airbag. The darn truck is two years old with a 187,000 miles on it and it’s falling apart at the seams- it will need a visit to a Volvo dealer anyway. There also wasn’t any body damage to my truck, but I hear the other truck lost a chunk of it’s hood in the fight.
It’s been a great few weeks and a very interesting past week at my place of business. I have to thank my Dad for giving me the gift of being a pilot (and “accidental” purchases) which in turn helped me with the understanding of redundancy. That alone helped me get through a difficult couple days. I wouldn’t be a smart man without thanking my Wife for putting up with my shenanigans, including what I write- she doesn’t really beat me (even when she should) or make me sick with her cooking (not all the time anyway) Lastly, I have to thank Ashley Furniture Industries for providing me with such a great opportunity to go out and have all this fun and make a good chunk of money while doing it. I think my friend Sue had it right: I am truly blessed!
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