HAPPY NEW YEAR!!

Happy New Year, Everyone!!!!! Any good New Year Resolutions, anyone? I dont like to let myself down, so I never make any.

Texas-size Tumbleweed

We are in Amarillo, TX, again. Drove past the Cadillac Ranch. The temperature is 28 degrees with heavy snow, and we were past the ranch about 7:00 am, so we didnt bother stopping. We are getting loaded with animal parts "not for human consumption". This tumbleweed was in the parking lot. It has since blown away.

I drove in my first snow storm last night. Leaving Albuquerque, NM, I40 goes up a mountain and, of course, that's where the snow was. Luckily we were empty so I didnt have trouble getting up the mountain. The storm lasted about an hour. It is snowing like mad here now, but it is John's turn to drive. We will be spending our New Year's Eve driving. Sounds like a party.

Ho! Ho! Ho!

MERRY CHRISTMAS, EVERYONE!!!!!

FBI Sightings

This story begins before I started driving with John. In the US, the FBI is the Federal Bureau of Investigations. So, if you see the FBI something bad probably just happened. John called me on day and said he was at a truck stop and the FBI was there. I said "Really!?!?" He said, "a F...ing Big Indian." So, now we like to point out our FBI sightings. We have seen, really big, guitars, Abe Lincoln, a teapot, a bowling pin, lots of animals, crosses, angels and many more. So, here are two of our FBI sightings. The fork is in Springfield, MO and the Indian is at a truck stop in Big Cabin, Oklahoma.

Cuidad Juarez de Mexico

Last week, we were in El Paso, TX. It borders the city of Juarez, Mexico. We were right at the border. Interstate 10 runs (in part) along the Rio Grande River which is the border of the US and Mexico. It was quite astonishing to see the difference between the two cities. Juarez is a huge city, but the little part we could see was dirt roads in the housing areas. The houses looked as if there are no zoning, or safety laws. They looked like they were built out of plywood. There was a HUGE Mexican flag flying high in the sky. It was really strange for me to see a flag that was not the American flag. It really hit home that just one/two blocks from where we were was a totally different country.

A little side note of no importance, my favorite food is "TexMex" and I ate a hamburger and fries at Wendy's in El Paso, TX!!!!!!!! Didn't get a single bite of anything Mexican.

Small Towns

We have a new Wal-Mart in Bowling Green. The little one in Louisiana is now closed. The first picture is of the parking shed for - believe it or not - horse and buggies!!!!!! We have a lot of Amish in the area, so Wal-Mart is very accommodating. They want

equal opportunity spending. The second pic is of a boat that is from St. Paul MN. All the way in that little thing to Missouri. John didn't see the owner, so we don't know if he is coming or going.

You Might Be A Redneck...

We went to Washington State last week. My first time. I can mark two more states off my list of places I have never been. (We drove through Oregon).

You might be a redneck if you spend the weekend at
The Yakima County Jail or
The Yakima Speedway (which is across the street from the jail) or
Gear Jammer Truck Stop, Yakima, WA (which is a couple blocks from the other two)

No offense to rednecks. I have my own redneck ways.

Our first delivery was to the jail. They had no dock or forklift. John had to hand-carry each box to the tail of the trailer, where there were about 10 inmates stacking the boxes onto pallets. The inmates were not allowed on the trailer. The boss of the kitchen did climb up and help, so there wasn't room for me (darn the bad luck). One of the inmates said "I used to do this for a living." I thought to myself, we still are doing this for a living.

Anyway, Seattle was interesting. Raining the whole time we were there. It started about 50 miles out of town, and didn't stop until we were about 50 miles out the next day. Major coffee lovers. There were little coffee drive-up shacks everywhere. One was called "Brew-lesque" where the coffee was served by pretty young girls in sexy underwear. Lots of "gentlemen" in line at that one.

I was really scared my first driving experience of snow driving was going to be through the mountains of Oregon, but we were VERY lucky and didn't see any snow. I would be quite happy to not go anywhere Idaho, Oregon, or Washington until at least May of next year!

Stinky Yuck

Tomorrow we are going to a pork processing plant in Illinois. At the entrance, there will be trucks coming in with live pigs. We will be there to pick them up when they are no longer alive. Of course, it smells. And we sometimes have blood running out the back of the truck. That's how "fresh" the meat is. We will be taking it to the Chicago area to a sausage processing plant. I would rather not know about all this. I would rather just go to the store and buy sausage and not see what eating sausage really means. Poor little things!

Dark Room(s)

While visiting Jes, we got to go to the Art Dept and she showed me the dark rooms. I felt smarter just being there. It looked like a real work place, not frills, well used.

California Coastline

More pics of CA (since we spend so much time there). This is between LA and Santa Barbara. We are going to Washington State tomorrow. Yakima, WA. I guess you pronounce it the way it is spelled, at least our dispatcher did. Our first delivery is to the Yakima County Jail. Should be interesting. I hope they let us both in and don't make one of us wait outside! Guess which one of us that would be. Hint: not John.

James Dean

Coming home from Salinas, CA, we have to travel east on CA46 and CA41. This is a 2 lane highway between the 101 freeway and Interstate 5. We pass through an intersection called "James Dean Memorial Junction". I looked it up on Wikipedia, and this is where he died on Sept 30, 1955. He was driving a Porsche 550 Spyder nicknamed "Little Bastard", on his way to a race in Salinas. He was hit head-on by a 23 year old Cal Poly student at this intersection. There are rumors that the car is cursed. Alec Guiness warned James that he would be found dead in that car within a week. That was 7 days before James' death. Read the article on Wikipedia. It is fascinating.

Seedy Los Angeles

We have been to Los Angeles and surrounding area two weeks in a row. We were in downtown LA today. The orange building is a homeless mission. At noon, people started showing up and leaving with one cardboard box each. We assume it was groceries. The "no sitting" signs were posted all over. But we did get to see the skyline, and some very interesting sights. Last week, we went up the coast, partly on the "PCH", Pacific Coast Highway. We looked to the right and saw orange groves, and looked to the left and saw the ocean.

Windows

John was busy this week. He replaced 2 windows. One in Jes' room and the other in the bathroom. He did good! Notice our neighbor's house with the new paint job. Pretty?

Wax Museum

I spent the last week with Jes in Springfield. We went to the Hollywood Wax Museum in Branson. We also went through the Mirror Maze. It got very annoying, and we were happy when we finally made it out! We had a good time all week, got lots of errands accomplished, and had lots of laughs. But, it is time to go back to work. We are headed to LA this week. First drop, Costa Mesa, final drop Riverside. I'm tired of being chilly so 80 degree weather will be heavenly.

It's not salt

Yep, it's not salt this time. We were in Wyoming on I80 between Rawlins and Cheyenne on Saturday. They closed a portion of the highway about midnight and opened it about noon Saturday. They do a really, really good job of cleaning the roads. By the time we got to go through, the road was clean. The news on the CB was there were so many wrecks and about 12 inches of snow, they closed the road.

We are off this week. I'm going to see Jes tomorrow, and John is staying home and putting in one or two new windows, fishing, and whatever else he wants to do.

Do you know what porcine serum is? Pig Blood. We delivered 6 pallets of it last week. Frozen in 1 gallon jugs.

Holding his breath

This week, we are back in the Sacramento, CA/Sparks, NV area. We saw 33 wild horses today, in about three separate herds. They weren't as close to the road as last time, but they were in the same area. Two of them were young ones, and one had to have been pregnant.

We wanted to show everybody the road construction I talked about earlier, going over Donner Pass on I80 in California. The first one is John holding his breath and the steering wheel at the same time. The second one is what we see thru the windshield, third is the wall whizzing by, and the fourth one shows how much room we have on the side. This is not a fun run!!!!! We have to drive it going to Sparks from Sacramento, back to Sonoma/Napa Valley to pick up cheap wine, and then back over it to go home. The construction should be completed sometime in 2010 (after winter I'm sure).

Okay, I just uploaded/downloaded (whatever) pics and they came up last to first. I cant figure out how to move these things around.

Salty Utah

This is the Bonneville Salt Flats in northwestern Utah. It is about 150 square miles and the salt is six feet deep in some places. (That is not snow, its salt!) This is where land speed records are made. Cars (or some version of them) have gone over 600 MPH there. Also, part of Pirates of the Caribbean was filmed there. We got a picture of one of the salt mines, but we didn't see the pepper mine to go with it.

Razor Wire

We were in Oakland, California one day last week. We needed to park somewhere for about an hour to wait for our unload. The streets are impossible small for big trucks, but we were lucky and found a street that had parking (for cars) that was suitable for us. This is after exiting the freeway and having to make a left turn that was nearly impossible. I was driving and I was too close to both sides of the concrete wall, and had to reverse and start over, while holding up traffic. John was really afraid we were going to have to reverse all the way back up the ramp and onto the freeway. Luckily, with John out in the street helping, we made it around the corner and parked on this street. It would have been a beautiful place to park, except for the razor and barbed wire separating us from the water. This is on an inlet of the San Francisco Bay. There were some people having a sailing lesson, lots of walkers, bike riders, fishermen. Really good people watching, really hard driving.

Our shiny, clean truck

We had to take a picture of our shiny, clean truck, while it was still shiny and clean. It didn't stay that way very long.

On Friday we passed through Springfield and got to see Jes. We met her at Waffle House (nudge, nudge, Jack and Ruth) because they have truck parking. The waffles are really, really good, too.

Jes looked fabulous and it was really good to see her even if it was for only an hour. She was between class and work, so we were lucky on the timing. That was the fourth time we have passed through Springfield and the first time it worked out. She is taking a photography class this semester. We got to see some of her photos. She actually goes in the dark room and develops them. So far, they have only done black and white. She prefers digital, but that is not what this class is about.

Amarillo By Morning

Last week we went to Bartlesville, OK, Amarillo, TX, and Albuquerque (the hardest word to spell!), NM. The whole week we were singing George Strait's Amarillo by Morning, one of the best country songs of all time. It also reminded John of the English comedian Peter Kay's Amarillo. Amarillo is home to the Big Texan. It is a restaurant that has been featured on lots of TV shows. They have a steak challenge. If you can eat a 72 ounce (4 1/2 pound) of sirloin steak, a baked potato, salad, dinner roll, and shrimp cocktail in 1 hour, you get the dinner free. Their website http://www.bigtexan.com/ is entertaining. Amarillo is also home to the Cadillac Ranch. We didnt see it, but I just researched it and it is located on Interstate 40 between exits 60 and 62. I must imprint that on my brain so I dont miss it next time.

Wild Horses

Last week we were in Sparks, NV on our way to deliver our load. We were on a four-lane divided road, and an oncoming truck motioned for us to slow down. Thinking it was a cop, we made sure we slowed down and had on our seat belts (which we always wear, by the way). We round a bend and there are two horses hanging out on the side of the street munching away on grass, not paying a bit of attention to the traffic around them. No fence, not two feet from the curb. Our delivery was on the next block, so I asked the guys in the guard shack if they were aware of the horses hanging out, thinking maybe the could call the owners. They said there is no one to call, the horses are WILD!!!!

The second picture was taken on the way up the mountain to Donner Summit. We cant figure out what happened to this section of land, wild fires, logging, or disease, but it looks scarred and painful.

Anyway, we made it to Donner Summit. It is about 40 miles of climbing, but it is so gorgeous, (despite the bit of scarred land). There is a rest area at the summit that has a 1/2 mile walking trail. We haven't had the time to take the walk, YET. We were heading east and there is road construction on the way down. Imagine that, 40 miles of down-hill with 30,000 pounds of wine (from the famous Napa Valley, California), and you also get to drive through road construction. If they would only throw in a couple of wild horses, we could have a grand old job. Some days are easier than others. Cant wait until winter, when we also get to deal with snow and ice, on top of wild horses, road construction, and all the other things truckers get to deal with.

The picture of the train track/water trellis is also interesting. It really looks like the wild, wild west. I LOVE NEVADA!!!!!!

Sept. 16, 2009

Hi Everyone,



I decided to start blogging about our travels, mostly, and anything else I feel the need to share.

My sister-in-law came over from England to visit and she wrote a blog of her trip. It was really entertaining and a good way to keep a diary (of sorts) forever.



I will also be sharing interesting stuff about Jes. For those that don't know already, she is a Sophomore at Missouri State University, in Springfield, MO. She hasn't decided on a major yet, but is leaning towards Media Studies, with "lots of minors". She is doing a fabulous job of staying out of debt, so far. She has 3 good scholarships, one of which pays all of her tuition for up to 5 years. The other 2 are on a one year basis. As you can tell, I think she is FABULOUS!



John and I are over the road team drivers for Witte Bros, Troy, MO. The company goes to all the continental states. We drive a 2009 Peterbilt with 150,000 miles. I have been driving for 7 months, and John has been a truck driver for almost 8 years. Some days are REALLY long, some are easy and rest full.



Today we are in Lodi, CA. It is a perfect day today. Not a cloud in the sky and temp around 75. The truck stop is across the street from a field of grapevines. Beautiful. We have a delivery in the morning in Sacramento, CA and then head to Sparks, NV for a delivery tomorrow night. We will probably head to Sonoma, CA from there to pick up a load of wine and take it back to Troy. I was really excited the first time I got to go to Napa Valley, but all we got to see was what I call the working man's view. We get to see a lot of the country, but it is usually the warehouse districts. No sightseeing, or visiting good restraunts, museums, tourist spots.

We will see how this blogging thing turns out.