What a day!
What a day Memorial Day was for this Hag! Oh sure there’s all the someday dying and such, but I can typically block all that out and yesterday was no exception. Seems like everything was going in my favor. First we blew in to the receiver about 01:00 local time with our Philly to Fontana load and got to drop it right away. Then we found a new hideout which is always nice.
New no name Hidey-hole
We have hidey-holes all over the LA area. TWMNBN does have a terminal in the area, but they are such jerks to you once you go into a terminal that we literally never go to a company terminal unless we are running low on log books or trip packs or something. So when we deliver loads in LA we make careful note of places we could hang out at in the future. There’s “Hooker Alley” in the southwest, “Speak Easy” which is more centrally located, “Parade of Flatbeds” in the east and now “New Hidey-Hole Without a Name” which is in Fontana to name a few of them. They really come in handy if you have to wait a few hours or over night before you can deliver your load.
Anyway, this new one was really pretty and fairly quiet. We were able to shut down and get a great night’s sleep without being hassled by the man or having tons of trucks roaring by all night. It was even fairly nice weather. Still too hot to turn the truck off to sleep, but at least the A/C could keep up with the heat and in LA that isn’t always the case.
Sigh.
Then Monday morning we got out of the truck for a while and goofed around there on the street. It was a dead end with almost no traffic so Maggie got to run around a lot. Naturally it wasn’t five minutes before Maggie’s nose led her right to one of the main reasons that nobody wants truckers around anymore. You know, I really don’t understand in what universe it’s ok to pee in a bottle and then fling that bottle out the window.
I mean I understand that you may have to go in the bottle, but why can’t you put the bottle in a trash bag and dispose of it at the next truck stop you come to? Or something. I mean good god and I think I’m lazy… how lazy or just plain nasty do you have to be to run around flinging bottles of your pee out your truck windows?
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Healthy as the day is long
Avoiding that particular spot, we walked around for a while then it was time for lunch. Not just any lunch, either. This was one of the new Hags’ Healthy Habits lunches — which I photographed so I could prove to friends and relatives that it wasn’t just some weird fantasy or something.
Stace and I have probably eaten more salads in the past two weeks than we have eaten in the previous ten years added together. The strange thing is that we have each caught the other one making “Mmmm” sounds over these salads a couple of times. Stace is even eating cucumber slices for the first time in her adult life. And, good god, I’m drinking water… plain water… several times a day. Once I even got a Diet Coke out of the cooler, took a drink and put it back in the cooler and got out a water! Hell is probably frozen solid right about now. Seriously.
Anyway, after a lovely salad lunch, it was time to go pick up our load headed to Mesa, AZ. Our directions were good and we drove right to the shipper. Then the shipper got us in right away and it was a pre-loaded trailer so we headed out right away. It wasn’t even a heavy load and all the trailer lights worked. Sweet!
When we actually headed east on CA-60, I realized it was the tail-end of the holiday weekend and thought traffic was likely to be quite bad. And it was once we got on I-10… for the west-bound side. They had what was probably the biggest back-up I have ever seen in my life. I clocked it at 47 miles but I didn’t get to see the beginning because it was west of where we came onto I-10. For all I know, it was a 100 mile back-up all the way to LA in the west-bound lanes.
But my east-bound lanes were brand-spanking fancy-pants wide open! Wooo Hooo!! What a day!
Poor SOBs heading west to LA
HaHa… gotta love L.A.! I had the same thing with DC this… other side wasn’t so lucky!
Think I’ve finally got the hubby talked into putting the frig back on the truck… he’s counting what we spend in truck stops… I’m counting calories! Then… we’ve GOT to quit smoking…. NOt looking forward to that… but jeesh are they gettting expensive and most states have the fire hazard prevention crap in them now and they’re not even enjoyable anymore! Friggin’ government!
I hate seeing pee bottles too… and trashy truck stops. Asses ruin it for those of us who Don’t mess with _____.
Hey Texas,
Welcome! I hear you on the frig in the truck. We don’t have a frig, but we do have two of those 12v coolers. The big one is back on my bunk with food in it (mostly salads though) and we have one of those little ones up by the driver’s chair so you can grab cold diet coke and (gulp) water while driving. Don’t know what we would do without them. When we buy our truck I think we will get a real frig and install it properly so we don’t have to worry about how high the ambient temp gets.
I also hear you on the quitting smoking. I actually think I am about ready. You’re right they have gotten so expensive and most of that is taxes, of course. When I sat down and added it up, I realized if we had all the cash we have spent on cigarettes in the last five years we could just go write a check for the type of truck we’re looking at getting. Kinda sobering.
Perhaps we should put together a guide book of “Places To Park A Rig When No One Is Looking” – I have some secret spots too as we always get screwed on parking when in Long Beach….and we found a place where you don’t have to pay in Sacramento – if you don’t want to go to the 49er. It’s just a thought…LOL
Hello girls,
I have developed a crush on cherry tomatoes and now crave them while stuck in the cubicle at work …guess I’d better take a snack bag of them… Hint of the Week: baby carrots and Diet Coke – “bite – crunch – swig” delicious and it keeps me away from the vending machine!
Hey Salena,
I thought about that actually. I thought about adding it as a resource on it’s own page and inviting all the drivers around here to include directions to their best spots. Then I got to thinking about showing up at one some night and it’s all full already. That would suck.
L,
I like cherry tomatos, too. Not too terribly fond of carrots although I will eat them. I have found though that not having the bad stuff in the truck does limit your bad-for-you options considerably.