I almost forgot that I had this blog!!!  It has been almost 6 months since I wrote anything and one thing that I noticed while reading thru my old posts is that I did alot of complaining about different services and people out here on the road.  I am going to change that about my posts and try to offer more compelling insight into what life is really like out here on the road.  Yes, that will include some complaints but I hope to offer more  variety by including alot of what actually occurs on a Daily Basis in my life out here.

Today started out bright and early in Winchester, VA picking up a Kraft Foods load.  The load was just a short trip down to North Carolina but it kept me moving.  My pickup appointment was at 0130 so I arrived at 0030 and checked in and they told me to park at the end of the lot and they would come and get me when they had a dock available to load me.  I backed into the dock at 0240 and finally got out of there at 0630.  I had planned on making it thru Richmond before the morning rush hour but that kinda went out the window as I watched 0430 go by.  Anyway, I had been waiting for the company to let me know when my delivery appointment was and it got to the point where I was only an hour from my final destination and the company hadn't called yet so I called the receiver and found out the appointment wasn't for 6 days!  NOT GOOD!  I called the company and let them know and they tried to get the appointment changed but had no luck doing that either.  They had me come to the town where the load is supposed to deliver and they are in the process of finding a place for me to leave the trailer and then they will assign me a different load.  That probably won't happen until tomorrow since it is pretty late in the day here.

It was extremely hot in both VA and NC today and at one point the temp reading on my dash said 106.  My little A/C unit was really struggling to keep up and for a little while it was getting uncomfortable in the truck.

My phone keeps letting me know that the weather channel tweets are saying there are tornadoes and severe storms in and around Springfield, MA.  I have a nephew that lives near there and my sister has been trying to reach him on the phone but has not had any luck with that yet so I pray he is ok up there.

For the last several days I have had to drive at night and sleep during the day because of the load I was on but I am finally able to switch back to driving during the day.  With the heat being so hot lately it has made it very uncomfortable to try and sleep during the day.  I had a very close call with a deer the other night while driving....I was driving in some light fog and saw a car on the other side of the highway that was creeping to a stop on the shoulder of the road and it appeared that the front of the car was damaged.  I remember thinking to myself that it looked like they had hit a deer when out of the corner of my left eye, I see a deer start to take off from the median coming across in front of my truck.  I practically stood up on the brake pedal and kept watching my truck still gaining on the 'trying to accelerate' deer.  It made it across the front of my truck until I could no longer see it as it passed in front of my right headlight.  I didn't hear or feel any kind of a hit but I thought for sure there would be fur on the bumper of my truck when I stopped but I must have barely missed him cuz there wasn't any fur or any other sign of him on the front of my truck when I stopped.  That was a close call that almost scared the crap out of me!!

Thats all for now.  I'll keep this up to date hopefully on a daily basis with what happens out here each day.

Happy Trails
Mike