Brother, can you spare a dime?

More shop time...

Yep, I'm back at it. Back on the road after several days of R&R at home. I apologize to anyone I didn't see while home, I really needed some serious down time "drool time" I like to call it.


Being an over the road (OTR) driver requires me to keep a log book, and in this log I have to account for every minute of every day. On the surface, this may not seem like such a big deal, and if you keep up on the book, it really isn't all that hard, but try keeping track of your entire day for a week and you will begin to understand the pleasure of not having to do it all the time. Feel like making a quick trip to the store? Just hop in the car and go...wonderful!!!

I'm having more work done on the truck right now, so I am hanging out in a hotel room in Seville OH. My delivery needs to be made tomorrow morning, the shop says the truck should be ready this evening, and I am only about 300 miles from my destination. Will I make it? I sure hope so. I took most of last week off, and when the wheels aren't turnin' I ain't earnin'. The paycheck is going to be a big fat $0.00 until I get some deliveries made.

I'm still working on the video stuff. What I'm thinking about doing is recording little video clips during the week, then stitching them all together for a video compilation, and posting that at the end of the week.


A in theory, hopefully not an F- in execution...

Testing Testing...

Well, seems like a good time for a little video test. Just a little something I shot in the cab of the truck.




I'm working on the learning curve here, bear with me!

Home again

It's been nice to be home for a few days now, I will be here till Sunday morning when I will head back out again. I am taking my six days at home, and plan on enjoying every one of them! Gawd, 40 days in a truck is a long time from home, and I will not be doing that kind of run again!

The good thing is that trucking is a little slow this time of year, so nobody is complaining that I wanted an extra day at home (after 40 days, I've earned it, but you know how corporate America can be...)

I'm taking a little home time to do some updates on the BLOG. Nothing like a little paint and paper to pretty things up a bit. I also found an awesome deal on a little video camera made by Flip Video http://www.theflip.com/ I have wanted to get one of these for a while now, especially before the wedding, so now I can easily upload videos to the BLOG which will hopefully add to the multimedia of things. Very cool little camera, all the editing software is built into the camera. Plug it into a USB port and all the video and editing is available at once. Take it to someone else's computer, plug it in, and all the same things are available there too!

The only bummer about this time at home is that Linda has to work during the week, and I am at home with the dog during the day. The little guy can wear me out!

3lbs of terror...

I feel a nap coming on, time to let you people who work for a living get back to it!

Slow but steady

I've made it back to Carlisle, PA to pick up a load going home! Hannaford needs something and I'm just the guy to give it to 'em. I'm not going to get too complicated in how the D.O.T. rules work, but I can only work 70hrs every seven days, this is a rolling number, so on the 8th day, I get back the hours I worked seven days earlier.

I mention this because of my mad dash to Minnesota, which used up a whole bunch of hours. the problem now is I can't go anywhere until tomorrow, where I can only drive for 9 hours before I hit my max 70 hours in 7 days thing again, so, if all goes well I will be home by Sunday morning. The logistics of getting me home for time off is difficult to say the least, so I roll with the punches. After six weeks of driving, I'm not going to fight the issue.

On a good note, I took a three hour nap today, I think I could keep sleeping, but that would ruin a good nights sleep. When you think about it, working 70 hours a week (seven days) no matter what you do for a living, is a lot of time at work! Best to take the downtime before I do something dumb.

I started my day around 2am in Buffalo NY to get here. If you look on a map, there is no interstate that runs from Buffalo to Carlisle/Harrisburg PA. That leaves US 15 south.

A very pretty drive I'm sure during the day, with no snowstorm...

It is a steep mountainous pass that was covered with snow. Future I-99 written on signs I passed, well that will be WAY in the future I'm sure! For those of you that know anything about our interstate system, that would put I-99 in the Atlantic ocean somewhere! crazy...

I passed an overturned tanker on the north side of the road, which had that side of the road closed for miles. I made it without incident, but it was slow going. That's probably why the nap was in order as well.

Well, time to sit back and think about how I'm going to spend the money the President is going to give all of us... (subtle joke here)

Can't wait to get home.