Come along for the Ride!

I am so glad you are here. Stay with us as we travel everywhere. I hope you will enjoy the ride.

Thursday, December 9, 2010

Lake Effect Snow

I don’t know why we can’t seem to be able to keep appointments. We went into the shop at the TA truckstop in Binghamton, NY to get our windshield washer squirter fixed. It wasn’t allowing any fluid to come out on the drivers side. We also wanted to have winter blades put on the wipers. They told us that they were a little busy and would call us when they were ready for us. So we came back to the truck and I sat and read my book while Pops tried to sleep. He didn’t get much though because his phone kept ringing. If I were him, I would shut it off when sleeping as long as I am awake.
Anyway about 1:00pm we got a dispatch that needed picked up in Allentown, PA and was coming back up to Buffalo, NY for midnight. Okay, we’ll take that. At just that time, the guy from the shop called and said we were to come down now. We told him that we just got a load and had to take off.
I drove us down to Allentown. It really didn’t take all that long. We got there around 4:30. We both went inside and got the truck loaded. It was an odd shaped shipment so we secured with straps and bars to keep the freight from moving. Once back to the truck we realized that this load was a truck to truck transfer going into Canada and we needed special paperwork. I went back into the shipper and they told me that I had all the paperwork that they had. But our company was looking for something else. We were there for over an hour trying to get it figured out and finally they told us to go.
We got moving around 6:15 and had our delivery time bumped to 2:34am. I drove while Pops tried to sleep some more. I got us back to Binghamton where we were this morning and then all at once a blizzard came from somewhere. It was snowing so hard I could barely see. Thank goodness traffic was light and I slowed down to about 45 mph. It was dark, the roads were unfamiliar and it was snowing to beat the band whatever that means. Hahaha Other big rigs kept passing me driving really fast. Was I being a sissy? Should I be going faster? I tried to go a little faster and it felt uncomfortable and unsafe so again I backed down to 45mph. Just outside of Syracuse at a rest area Pops woke up and said he would drive. Hallelujah!
My arms were so sore from being tense and mentally I was exhausted.
He began to drive and he was going about 55mph. He told me that he was more used to driving in the lake effect snow. He seemed to be doing okay at that speed. After only a little while our wipers got so clumped up with snow that it became almost impossible to see. He pulled over and beat the ice off the wipers. He had to do that about 50 miles or so. We saw so many accidents and every one of them was more than a fender bender. We saw at least 7 accidents, only 3 of those involved only one car. I would say that 2 of those were totaled. We saw 2 that involved 3 cars or more, and one of those accidents was a real bad one. I don’t even want to think about it.
We saw a road warning that the interstate that we needed was closed and that we needed to take a detour. Oh my, that detour was awful. It was rural and not recently plowed and over 2 feet of snow had fallen. It was a 12 mile detour. Oh my!
Well, we made it through the detour and back to our highway. The snow was letting up a little bit now so we started to be able to go a little faster to make up some time. We were told to call when we were about ½ hour away so I made that call, …finally.
The truck we were to meet up with was already there. We crossed the Niagara River and was less than 5 miles from the Canada Border. We saw the truck and backed into the dock to unload.
It didn’t get any better at that point either. The driver of the other truck was very upset about the incomplete paperwork. Pops explained to him that we were held up and then finally told to go.  He had all the paperwork that we had. He was blaming us for not doing it right. We gave him the names of the people that we spoke with that told us to go with what we had. He was so very mad. There was nothing more that we could do. He finally got things squared away enough that he calmed down a little bit. We got moving so we could go somewhere to sleep. It was now 4:39am.
There was a truckstop 34 miles away. We headed that direction and when we arrived we went ahead and fueled the truck in case we got an immediate load. I prayed that we would not. I was so mentally and physically tired and so was Pops. We were drained. I hoped that we could sleep at least 5 good hours and then get a shower and have a good, hot meal not cooked by me.
We found a place to park and I took the dogs out and was in the bunk within 10 minutes after parking. It was 5:30. I didn’t move until 10:37am. I had slept good.
We took the dogs out, drank some coffee and then went in to shower. It felt amazing. It was so warm, I just wanted to stand under it for at least a day. Lol
Even though it was now noon we decided on breakfast. Pops got a Farmer’s Omelet. It is an omelet with bacon, cheese, peppers, onions and mushrooms and tomatoes, with sausage gravy over top. I had ground steak and eggs with hash browns and wheat toast with blackberry jelly. Yummy. I’ll say it again, yummy. I ate almost all my hash browns, 3 bites of egg and 2 bites of toast and had to take the rest with me.
We now have an appointment to get service done, so I told Pops to expect a load before the shop calls us in. I hope we can get our work done first. Then please, send me to somewhere sunny and warm.

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