Salt Lake City

Well we arrived here in Salt Lake City on Wednesday morning and we weren't getting many load offers. We called to see if we could maybe be relocated to somewhere where maybe we could get moving faster. But we were told that February is a very slow month and that we probably should stay where we were.
We got a load offer that we were interested in and accepted it, but we ended up losing that load to another truck. It turned out that our load went to another truck owned by our owners. And the thing about it is, we were sitting in Salt Lake City and the other truck was almost in Las Vegas, NV. Why would a truck in Las Vegas get a load from Salt Lake when we were sitting right there? Needless to say, Pops and I were very upset. We were told that we needed to update some of our DOD information. Well, that took a whole 5 minutes to do so I don't understand our company's logic, but whatever.
The next day we were offered a short load, a less than 75 mile load. The rules are if you take a <75 mile load it makes you the number 1 truck for load offers so we thought it was good strategy for us.
It was a nice easy load and we were back to Salt Lake City a little after noon.
Later that day we got a really good load offer picking up at a nearby military base. We accepted the load, but didn't get it. Even though we were the "#1 truck" another truck got the load. So we called Fedex to find out now why we lost a load that should have been ours.
We were told this time that because our truck has a refrigerator unit on it (it doesn't work and Fedex knows that) the military would not load us. Many times explosives cannot go onto a reefer truck, but this was not an explovise load.
I'm sure you've heard the statement, You can't argue with City Hall, well you can't argue with Fedex either because you can't win. This profess sympathy but where does that get you?
Well, I was fuming by now and patience was almost gone. I told Pops that I wanted to move to another truckstop. I wanted to go to the TA truckstop 20 miles away. That is because we had enough driver points earned to give us a free steak dinner and it was weekend.
So we drove up to the other truckstop and the location was fabulous. We had the mountains right in front of our truck and the Great Salt Lake right behind us. Wow, it was great and that improved my mood a little.
We got settled in and tried to get our tv going. We have a satellite dish that we have to adjust and point each time we locate and it can be very tedious. Well, we tried and tried and could not get anything! Argh.
We called our owners and they told us to go the next morning to an RV place and get it fixed.
So the next morning we drove 11 miles to get our tv fixed. He cleaned up some corroded connectors and replaced one connector and still nothing, although he was right at the base of the mountains and he thought that perhaps they were blocking our signal. So we paid him and drove back to our truckstop.
We again tried the tv and voila, this time it worked. So now we could at least distract ourselves with mindless junk. hahaha and that is exactly what we did.
The next morning was Sunday and since there are only 3 Christian churches in the state of Utah and we opted not to attend the local morman congregation we listened to one of the CDs from our friend, Keenan's, home church. It was a sermon by PJ Sonnenberg and it was about being accountable to yourself, to others and most of all to God. It was a very good sermon.
After church we went to the restuarant for our free meal. I ordered the sirloin steak, baked potato, and vegetables. It also came with soup and salad bar. Pops ordered the country fried steak, baked potato, vegetables and soup and salad. It was so good. It usually takes us about a month to earn this kind of a meal. We earn points by getting fuel at the TA truckstop. We earn 1 point for each gallon of fuel that we buy. One point equals $1 and it can be used for anything in the restuarant or store. The Pilot truckstops do the same thing but most of them have Denny's restuarants that don't take our points, but the McDonald's, Subway, or Arbys or the Pizza place inside Pilot all do the same so we often get Subway or Pizza with our points from there.
After our meal we were stuffed and looking forward to relaxing and watching a good movie. We were all settled in when we received a load offer. It was picking up tonight and going to Berkeley, CA. So we accepted the load even though neither of us were rested or ready to go. We got the load.
It was picking up in Carlin, NV. It was a transfer load. The truck carrying this load broke down and couldn't meet the delivery deadline. So we met up with them and transferred the load. They were very nice and I felt sorry for them to lose this load, but they had already brought it clear from New Jersey, so it paid them well already.
Pops had slept for 3 hours while I drove to the transfer spot, so once we transferred he began to drive. I went to sleep. After about 3 hours I heard a voice I didn't recognize tell Pops that he needed to "chain up" for Donner Pass. Oh no, I knew what that meant. We were in for bad weather.
I got up immediately and Pops found a place in the chain up area for us to park. Neither he nor I have ever put chains on a vehicle although I had watched it done before. But like a good trooper he got out and dug the chains out of the side compartment. It began to snow.
He walked up to another truck and watched them put their chains on and they gave him some advice. He came back and worked on ours. After what seemed like a long time we had the chains on the truck and by then we had about 6 inches of snow.
Every vehicle driving over that pass was required to have tire chains including cars.
We proceeded up the mountain, and it was snowing so hard. I loved hearing the tinkling of the chains on the highway. The speed limit was now posted for 30mph. It took us almost 30 minutes to reach the peak. The elevation was over 7200 feet. Now we saw a sign telling us that the downgrade was for the next 40 miles!!!
40 miles of downgrade!?? Seriously, in this snow?
Well, Pops and our chains got the job done. I was so proud of him. I wasn't even nervous.
So after we got to the bottom he unchained us and we were on our way. Within 5 minutes after reaching the bottom, the roads were just wet and we didn't see anymore snow. So I felt confident enough to go back to sleep now.
In a little while I heard Pops call my name. We were within 10 miles of delivery and he wanted me to help guide him in. It went well and we got to see the San Fransisco Bay and the Golden Gate Bridge.
We made our delivery and decided to get away from the city for our layover.
So now we are sitting at a Flying J truckstop near Sacramento, CA. The tv is working, Pops is sleeping and al is well. I wonder how long til we get another load. I hope we soon get back across all the mountains seperating us from the east.