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Dave's Journal Male, 33 years
Introduction I think it's time to start over!
I've Done It!!
What an interesting date today is. It's been exactly one month since I re-started my truck driving adventure. Back in 1991, I attended a trucking school in San Diego and achieved my California CDL. Over the years I let it lapse and never bothered with it as I moved around the country. Now I'm in Arizona and ready to start driving again.
Back to school I went. On February 3rd, I started at Schneider National, Inc's training center in Fontana, CA. Today I finished my final phase of training. I passed my Skills Qualification Test. Tomorrow I'll contact the local guy here in Phoenix and go down to take my AZ CDL skills test. If all goes well, I'll be on the road in my own truck sometime around the first of next week. I'm taking a couple of days off to remind my wife what I look like.
Wish me luck!
Wow...some home time "Arizona, noon, on the 7th of June as we high-balled over the pass. Bulldog Mack with a can on back and a Jaguar hau-"
Huh, wha'? Oh, you're all done loading the trailer? Wow that was fast. I must have dozed off. Ok...Bay Area Traffic, here I come!
I'm home at last for a couple of days. I've been home for a day a couple of times, but this time I actually get a real weekend, even if it is a Thursday-Friday weekend. I've been driving forever (or so it seems). Time since my last "day off"? 19 days. Miles driven? Don't ask.
I've now seen enough of the San Joaquin valley (in California) to last me more than a lifetime. I hate the drive into Oregon. (Only 5 mtn passes to cross) I find myself yearning for a week of nice 60+mph driving on flat land. My truck is limited to 63mph, but that doesn't do me much good when most of my time is spent in 55mph speed zones. "Honest officer, it just crept up on me. Yes sir, I'll pay better attention. (Stupid cruise control)"
I need to take a few minutes to go back over my trips since I first started and I'll post my thoughts and feelings and any relevant items of interest that I came across.
Lesson #1: Get a Digital Cell Phone. This way your spouse/significant other can e-mail you notes telling you what they are going to do to you when you get home. I was told to take lots of vitamins and that having a headache would be no excuse.
Between 3/12 and 4/20 I had been paid for just over 10,000 miles run. Most of that was training stuff and short hauls. It averaged about a work assignment a day...including a couple of three-day runs.
More tomorrow, after I've recovered from wheel-withdrawal. My hands are twitching and I'm still vibrating from driving. I think I need a glass of water, or something.
I love my job. Beautiful country out there, even at 55 miles per hour.
Honey, I'm home
This is not as easy as I expected it to be. The "keeping a journal" part, that is. Whenever I get close to the computer, my wife gives me "the look" and I quickly find something else that needs to be done while I'm at home.
So many things have happened since I started back in February. Most of the things that I want to relate in the journal are things I think about driving down the road. Unfortunately by the time I get to a stopping point where I can make notes, something else has intruded on my thoughts and I've lost the moment.
While driving down US95 in Nevada a couple of weeks ago, I came across a very bad accident. It was being reported, at the time, that a U-haul had crossed the line, sideswiped one truck, whacked a 4-wheeler and then hit another truck head-on. Truck #1 laid a river of diesel fuel from the impact point to where he finally was able to recover control and stop. This was roughly 500' (guestimate on my part). Truck #2 stopped pretty much dead in the road and rolled off the road onto it's side down an embankment. Permanently grafted to the fender was part of the red/white fender of the U-haul. I'm not sure where the 4-wheeler ended up, but the U-haul turned into a crumpled mass of metal and other things, and burned in the road. Only one person died in a wreck that should have seen more carnage, judging from the damage left.
I've come to fear the 4-wheeler, and the Rental Truck/RV crowd. They do not know how much they effect our ability to move safely down the road. With a unthinking move of the wheel, this U-haul driver lost her mother, and the truck driver that pulled her from the wreckage has to live with the belief that if he had been a bit faster climbing out of his rolled-over truck and getting to the U-haul, maybe all three of the people inside would have survived, instead of only two.
And yet, there are many truck drivers out there who profess a hatred for "the 4-wheeler" and express the desire to run them off the road every chance they get. These drivers will not last long as the stress they create within themselves will overcome them and they will either die or leave the industry, bitter at the world.
I treat the 4-wheeled drivers the same way I treat everything else. Something to be watched and planned against. I could not live with myself if I caused the death of another in an accident that I did not do everything I could to prevent.
What a very morose line of thought tonight. I'm sitting here watching my kids play and thinking about mortality. Oh well.
Tomorrow I head out for another two weeks of fun and miles.
California Dreamin'
It's official. I am now bored with driving in California. I have been up and down I-5 between LA and Sacramento so many times that I know all of the truck stops, rest areas and likely hiding spots for Highway Patrol.
I have talked to most of the CHP officers out here on the CB and find that they either don't seem to care much for stopping trucks doing 62 in a 55, or my speedometer is way off. They just sail right on by, chasing the ever violating 4-wheeler.
Route 58, east of Bakersfield. The infamous Tehachapi highway. Golly jeepers, that big orange truck works fine as a roadblock. As the first eastbound driver to stop for an accident that blocks all westbound lanes, I angle my truck/trailer across the left turn lane and start moving traffic into the right lane. I spend 45 minutes in this position, playing traffic control, until CA DOT gets a truck out there to block traffic so I can be released and continue on my way.
Wow, they treated me as a professional who was helping, as opposed to Joe Bystander who was getting in the way. What a ego boost.
Since I've started doing this, I have seen some of the neatest things out here. The deer that ricocheted off my fender and ran off to graze some more. The sun rising over the Sierra Nevada range in CA. The Nevada desert after a rain shower. Sunshine on the snowpack in a mountain pass.
It's hard to be gone from home so long. It was hard to stay out for two weeks this time around. I've got another two weeks on the road and then I'll be out for four weeks, so we can have some extra time together in August.
It's especially hard to deal with in the summer. I want to be at home in the pool, and yet I have to drive through the punishing heat. Oh well. Suck it up.
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