October 11, 2010

Written October 11, 2010

It is not a good thing when you don’t have internet access all the time. I promise when I get home again I will try to take care of that problem by getting an air card. I cannot do it until then because we will be renewing our plan and each of my family members will want to be there to pick their phone. I am pretty sure that Pops is going to go with an IPhone. Me, I don’t care as long as I can text, call and maybe take a picture.

You know imagination is a funny thing. It greatly multiplies whatever you are thinking about. It can make any problem a tragedy or any pleasant thought a grandiose plan. When I imagined this job it was always in a good light and always the wonderful places and sights. I have seen much of those in the last two weeks, that’s true, but I never imagined the unpleasantness. Sunday evening while I was driving heading towards New Hampshire, Pops should have been sleeping so he could drive when my 11 hours was done. He couldn’t sleep. It isn’t easy to sleep in a moving vehicle. Every time I swerved, hit a bump or slowed down he was sitting up wondering what was going on. We stopped for fuel and I needed coffee to keep going. I wondered if he would drink some since he was awake so I bought a large cup. When I got behind the driver’s seat he said that he didn’t want any. When I started to pull out the truck jerked and my whole cup of coffee spilled all over Chucky who was sleeping beside my seat. Boy, did he yip. I felt so bad that I started to cry. I just continued to feel bad the rest of the trip. Chucky was fine, just scared.

Then it was Pops’ turn to drive. He had only slept for about an hour. Now he needed to drive 11 hours to complete the trip. Well he was very tired and I felt bad about that too. I couldn’t stay awake to talk to him though because we didn’t know what kind of trip we would get and I needed to be rested to drive if we had to take off right away. Well, I didn’t sleep very well either. I kept hearing him hit the rumble strips and at one point I heard a car blow the horn at him. I did sit up and talk him for awhile then.

It was almost time to go into our delivery destination and I was driving. When I went into the guard house he asked me if I had a camera in the truck. When I told him that I did, I had to take it into the guard house until we came back out. We were hauling fiber optics that is used for communication under the ocean. The shipper was telling us all about it, it was interesting but not enough that I wanted to take pictures of their building.

So…good thing I did sleep most of the night because we got a run almost immediately. It picked up about ½ hour from where we were and is headed to Louisiana. When we got to the shippers I backed into the dock, (a feat that I still am not completely comfortable with.) We were hauling a long metal box on wheels. The guard told us that we didn’t want to know what it was. Ok, whatever. Well I looked on the shippers Bill of Lading and guess what? The guard was right. I didn’t want to know what was in the box. Sorry fans, I am not at liberty at this time to tell you what it is.

Once we got moving Pops went to the sleeper. I was sure hoping that he would sleep. So it was just me and Gypsy (the GPS) in the front seats. I came down through MA okay. But Connecticut was a nightmare. I got there about 3pm and the whole way through every time I came to a city, traffic was backed up so bad that I sat 3 different times for ½ hour or more each time. Once through there it was the Tappen Zee bridge in New York City. Of course I sat there for about an hour. Then it was smooth sailing for quite awhile.

Then I ran into heavy thunderstorms. Traffic doesn’t care. They still fly. After about ½ hour of storming traffic came to a screeching halt. There had been an accident. Sitting again. For more than an hour. Boy, was it a bad accident. A tractor trailer had lost control and took out at least half mile of guardrails and several trees. The trailer was smashed badly and I didn’t see the tractor. I think it might have been down over the bank. I was sick in my stomach. That shook me up a lot. How quickly your life could change or even end. While sitting there waiting I prayed that God would help whoever was affected by that accident.

Time’s up and Pops is now driving. I am tired. It’s been a long week already. More later. Love ya.