Traffic Signs and Agnes Moorehead

I have noticed in the Boston area lots of signs everywhere that are relatively pointless, like the “Snow Plows Be Careful” sign that is posted every ½ mile. Don’t they know that they should be careful? After all I’m sure that’s a government job and being careful is in the handbook somewhere.

We saw a sign warning “Caution Snow Glare in A.M.” that I’m sure you can’t see in the morning because of said glare. My favorite was “Thickly Settled 30 MPH”. I’m not even sure what that means.  Amid these gems were all sorts of “Slow Down”,  “Caution” and other unspecified warnings of impending doom.

When we needed a sign, like “Slow Down, Even though the Speed Limit is 112,  in Ten Feet there is a 90 Degree Curve!” or “This is the Last Place to Turn in 400 Miles”, there are none to be found.

Another fun thing they like to do in the Northeast in general, is post a measurement on a bridge that is a foot lower than in reality. More than once we have been on a two lane road in the country, with no hope of turning around and come across a bridge that says 12'9" ( we are 13'6") and this on a designated truck route! The first time it happened we stopped on the shoulder, scratching our heads, but luckily another trucker came up beside us and said it was really 13'6". We let him go first just to make sure! These signs are even on I-95 in New York City and there is definitely no where to get around them there. One day I’m going to find out why they do this.

We picked up a load in Clinton, MA at Weetabix. They make breakfast cereals under the name Millville. Weetabix is a company in the UK and their cereal looks like Shredded Wheat in the shape of a McDonald’s hash-brown. Why am I telling you this?  Because you never know when this is going to come up on Jeopardy! or Trivial Pursuit. While I’m at it, Smuckers owns Folgers and Garanimals is in Louisiana.

The Wachusett Reservoir is in Clinton and it was a real pretty drive coming here from Boston. Here are some interesting facts from the Town of Clinton website. And when you win big on Jeopardy!, remember me.

*The oldest baseball diamond in the world is Fuller Field in Clinton, which has been proven to have hosted baseball from 1878 to the present day.

*Clinton's Colonial Press was the first publishing company to get the Warren Commission Report out into the hands of the public.

*Mark Twain once lectured here in 1869. Twain spoke to Clintonians about his travels to the Sandwich Islands. He stayed at the Clinton House, a well-known hotel on the corner of High and Church Streets. Thanks to a dusty bed and a barking dog, Twain was very glad to leave.

*Agnes Moorehead, famous for her role as Endora on TV's "Bewitched", was born in Clinton.

*Screen windows did not exist until The Clinton Wire Cloth Company began manufacturing woven metal in 1856.

*The Clinton Light Guard was the forerunner to today's National Guard unit, organized with 50 local men in 1853.

*The last stone was set in place in the Wachusett Dam on June 24, 1905 by John Mercer, who also laid the first stone in place in June of 1901.

*The Wachusett Dam is actually 240 feet in height. However, we only see about half of it, as 125 of those feet lie below ground.

The Rest of the Story....

Well if you read yesterday's post I won't keep you in suspense. If you didn't, I'll just wait while you catch up. Go ahead, I don't mind.... OK, now that we are all on the same page, you will be happy to know: We got a shower, dinner and no parking ticket. We didn't even see Boris and Natasha anywhere!

Today instead of complaining about Pennsylvania I am going to give them a compliment. They have chain of convenience stores called Wawa, they may be elsewhere in the northeast but there are at least 2 in PA that have truck parking and they have THE best coffee. One is just west of Allentown, they have about 20 parking spaces and the other is in Quakertown and they have 2 parking spaces. Oh, it's good coffee better than McDonald's or Dunkin Donuts, and those are 2 of my favorites for brewed coffee. It is smooth and rich. They have varying levels of darkness and a couple of flavored ones and they put out real milk, cream and flavored creams to doctor up how you like it. They also have a machine for iced coffee and those are good with a little of their flavored cream. We were there twice in one day last week and got all kinds of caffeinated!

The sky is not too bad either!

So now I don't feel so bad for beating up on Pennsylvania last night. Wawa has redeemed them, somewhat. By the way, I looked up the word Wawa it's .for the Ojibwa word for a Canada Goose in flight. You can go to wawa.com and see the history. Or better yet, get up to Pennsylvania and have a good cup!

The Mysteries of Hours of Service

Today's blog post is a mystery. Will will get a shower? Will we find decent food or will we have to eat sandwiches again? Will we be able to park legally? All these questions and more on this installment of:  Hours of Service vs. Quality of Life.

well we would bring it but there's nowhere to park!

We have to deliver to a Home Depot in Wyomissing, PA at 10 tonight.  There are no truck stops within a 5000 mile radius and by the time we get unloaded we will be out of hours and not legally able to go anywhere. I won't go into all the technical bits of hours of service but the overview is that we have a 14 hour window to drive, load, unload, fuel etc. We have 11 hours to drive and that can be broken up in any way we want, but once you begin your day you have 14 hours and then you have to have a 10 hour break or you are in violation.

So we started the day at 8:30am and we have until 10:30pm to do what needs to be done. Planning is very important as it gets trickier because you can only work 70 hours in 8 days and this all adds up and restricts how many hours you have on a given day. There's a lot of math involved. This is all boring you to death, I'm sure, it's boring me but suffice it to say that these rules don't always work in our favor.

Like tonight.

By the time we get unloaded we will be out of hours to go anywhere and in this case there's no where to go even if we cheated. So it will be up to the kind people of the Wyomissing, PA Home Depot let us sleep on the lot or we'll have to find some other big parking lot to sneak into.

Once in California (cursed be that unfriendly trucker state) we got permission from the place of business to park but were in violation of a City Ordinance and got a ticket. The cop then directed us to where it was legal to park, which was on the side of a busy street, instead of tucked in and quiet on the private property of the place where we were delivering the next morning. As you can see it's a crap shoot.

Sooo. Will our brave heroes get a shower? Will they be thrown in jail? Will they be towed away while they sleep? Will Himself and Herself come to blows over having to eat sandwiches for dinner again? Will Boris and Natasha steal the secret plans from Moose und Sqvirel? Stay tuned kids to find out!

Wet Sheets and Fireflies

We are zooming up I-81 in Pennsylvania, headed for Allentown. The sun has set and we can see fireflies on either side in the cornfields.

We begin to notice the fireflies at the beginning of June until about the middle of August. They are always a delight, an unexpected display of silent fireworks.

Last night in Tennessee I woke to wet sheets.

We were parked on a hill, the nose of the truck pointing down and I was tossing and turning and put my hand right in a cold, wet handful of sheet. It was not a nice way to wake up, but I guess it would have been more alarming if the wet sheets had been warm.

Himself and I have our own bunk, his is the lower and mine is the upper. Mine is way nicer, as it is fashioned after the “I Dream of Jeannie” genie bottle. It’s all vivid satin and velvet with lots of sparkle. "Diamonds" sparkle like fireflies on the walls and ceiling, gold, silver, pink, orange and turquoise fabric everywhere.

It is my sanctuary from the Highway.

In an effort to reduce our engine idle time, save fuel and  wear on the engine, Himself has installed his own version of the APU, (auxiliary power unit). These are very expensive generators that provide electricity, a/c and heat. There are several different brands on the market and they go for about $10,000.00 give or take and more than one brand of them sound like a sick and very loud lawnmower.

Being Manually Competent, Himself has concocted our own version of the APU.

We bought an RV gas generator,  cut a hole in the back wall of my bunk (an insult to the Jeannie Bottle but it had to be done) and installed a window a/c unit in the upper bunk. There are various gizmos, widgets and technicalities that I am not going to describe because frankly, I don’t know what they are, but it is a very tidy, well thought out and most importantly a functional system for a quarter of the price.

The only hitch in the whole works is that we have to be careful about parking on an incline. If there is too much downward angle on the a/c, the condensation builds and runs in right to the Jeannie Bottle. It’s a pretty fast drip. I tried to rig up towels and a plastic bag but to no avail. I woke Himself and he moved the truck around the parking lot and back to our space, this time in the opposite direction. It stopped immediately and we were soon asleep.

Another disaster averted.

New Orleans, The Green Lantern and Festus

We have been on the road for 3 years and this is the first time we have been able to see New Orleans. We got in early Sunday afternoon and couldn't deliver until Monday morning,so it was perfect timing for a little sight seeing. OK, scratch perfect, winter would have been a lot better, since walking around city streets in 189 degree heat is not perfect.

We left the trailer at the Big Easy Truck stop, just before the heart of downtown. So the plan was to bobtail into town, catch a movie (for the a/c) and then go find the French Quarter and do a little walking around after the sun went down. The gal at the fuel desk gave us directions to a movie theater; naturally they were all jacked up and we wasted a lot of time driving around but we did manage to find a theater. The a/c in the truck is having problems and it's not up to task in the middle of the day in the south, so we were really looking forward to a cold movie theater. We get to the box office and buy ticket for the movie that starts next,  a/c beggars can't be choosers. We notice it's not that cool, but there is a big sky light in the lobby and it is 189 degrees outside, so no big deal. We buy our popcorn and Coke, the cost of which is the equivalent to the Minorcan national debt and have to go stand in a line with 800 hundred people for reasons unknown. Something to do with them cleaning between shows. So there we are standing, sweating and eating our popcorn. Time drags on, moss grows under our feet and the time for the movie has come and gone. Then the power goes out. For the second time that day, we find out, which is why it's so hot in there and the movies in front of ours are behind, explaining the delay. We wait it out, we walk around, still no electricity. We give up and then haggle with the manager over refunding our money, they are only giving vouchers to come back to that theater. We have only been in this are twice in 3 years, so they decide to give us vouchers for free popcorn and drinks at any AMC theater in the country. They can do vouchers for food, not tickets so we agree and go on our way.

Next stop the French Quarter. We are too full of Minorcan popcorn and Coke to eat dinner so we decide to walk around now, even though it isn't dark yet and it's still 189 degrees. How bad could it be? It would be silly to stay inside and hide, we're tough. This is what we told each other.

Driving around without the trailer (bobtailing) is definitely easier, but the truck is still about 22 feet long and  13'6 tall so still a little tricky in an urban area. Low overpasses, trolley wires, one way streets and tight corners with lots of parked cars, it can be really fun. We follow signs for the French Quarter, circle around the periphery trying to find parking not too far from it. Thank goodness it was Sunday, we would have had to park in Mississippi on a weekday. We park and beat feet toward the Quarter several blocks away. It's only slightly hotter on the sun. We passed an area with lots of funny trucks and equipment, and ask a cop that's standing next to a barricade what's going on and find out they are filming parts of "The Green Lantern" there. He was real friendly and I'm pretty sure he was an alien because he was not sweating. Not even a little bit. All that cop equipment and polyester uniform and he was not even shiny.  Himself and I looked like we went swimming fully clothed and just got out of the pool. We walk by the set looking at some kind of lighting/crane thing and I take a picture, then one of the workers yells "no pictures please, no pictures". Geez, I'm not stalking Festus for Pete's sake, I mumble, putting the camera away, as I contemplate getting the alien to vaporize him.

After about 30 minutes we finally reach a crowded, touristy bunch of streets and realize we made it. Wow, nice let's go back to the truck, I say. But no, we've come this far, we stroll through some shops, buy some postcards and try to avoid bodily contact with the crowd. We find a restaurant that looks cool (temperature wise) have an appetizer and 2 beers for $40 but would have easily paid double that just to sit down in the a/c. Feeling refreshed we walk out into the night to watch a very lively street brass band, they were loud and good, totally into it, people dancing all around. They were fun to watch and the contact high from the Jamaican National Bobsled team was nice but the heat began it's torment again, so we winded our way back to the truck.

We drove back to the truck stop looking forward to cold showers and a/c. What we got was a shower room with no a/c that smelled like vomit. There was no vomit to be found, the room was fairly clean but it reeked. The smell went up your nose and attached itself to your nose hairs. There was nothing to do but take the quickest shower possible and get the hell out of there. Adding insult to injury, the water in the south is warm even at the coolest setting.

A good time was had by all for the most part. Now I know why Mardi Gras is in February.

The Green Lantern movie set; no Festus to be found.

The Big Easy

Competitive Basket Weaving...or Lemmings in Politics

Fenced In

OK, this is not trucking related but truckers do fall prey to it and it's my blog and I can talk about what I want, right?

This whole Shirley Sherrod business is so monumentally moronic and illustrates just how out of whack we, as a nation, have become. I won't bore you with all the details of the story that's been all over the news, but here's a summary: Moronic Right-winger posts a clip of Ms.Sherrod saying something inflammatory, there's a public outcry, Moronic Talking Heads spoon feed it to their audience, Moronic NAACP leader condemns her, Moronic Boss forces her to resign, Moronic White House condemns her. Oh wait, what? The farmer she wouldn't help says what?? There's more to it? Let me see the clip... Uh-Oh. Never mind.... A confederacy of dunces all around.

We have lived in a sound bite culture for a while now, but with such fast advances in technology, so much available at our fingertips, instead of growing and expanding our knowledge, we are getting more narrow minded and boxed in. I am not ranting against progress, I love the Internet, satellite radio, cable TV, mobile phones and all the information they have to offer. The problem is that because there's so much information out there, that there is also a specific website, channel or App for that so that you never have to read or hear an opinion that doesn't disagree with what you already believe. And if you only listen to people that agree with you and stand where you stand on various positions, you can't expand your mind and before you know it you're running off the cliff with all the other political lemmings. Right wing, Left wing it doesn't matter, if you fall into a Wing category you can fall victim to the same wing nuttiness.

There are definite differences philosophically between the left and right, but it has gotten to the point that you can't be a thoughtful person in the middle. If you say something positive about President Obama, you are a socialist, if you say something positive about President Bush you are a fascist. Life is rarely so black and white. Listening to opposing points of view may make you see an issue deeper, changing your position, it may even strengthen your position.

So where does Competitive Basket Weaving come in? Let's say your 40 and live in your parent's basement. You love Competitive Basket Weaving, you blog about it, go to chat rooms to discuss it, your iPhone gives you all the latest scores and stats, you watch the CBWc (Competitive Basket Weaving channel) 20 hours a day but you can not figure out why you're not a bigger hit with women. Your mother says you're smart and handsome, it's not your fault that women are so picky....See what I mean? So go ahead, flip that channel, read that column in the newspaper written by the guy you hate and for goodness sake get out of the basement!