Let me start off by just saying that trucker time is weird. The individual days seem to fly by, but then you look at the calendar and realize, what felt like a week was really just two days. It's a strange, ironic type of feeling. You know what else is weird about trucking? The fact that I can just hop out of the truck after a day of riding and be in a completely new State with a totally different climate then I was in the last time I dismounted-and it just keeps changing as the days and miles fly by.
The last few days flew by like a whirlwind. We came up from
South TX and went on our way over to Louisiana. We were in Delhi, Louisiana all
day Thursday and Friday we were cruising through the Ozarks in Arkansas, up
towards Missouri.
I snapped this on the way into Louisiana, right as the Thursday morning sun was rising.
We began driving Thursday morning at 4:30am-needless to say, Dad and I
both fueled up on caffeine. By the time we went to bed Thursday night we
had been awake for 17 straight hours and I "offended" him by falling asleep right in the midst of one of his western movies... ;)
*side story: There was another 18 wheeler who had actually
been delivering goods to the warehouse. It was a lady driver and she was
returning to her truck just as dad and I were leaving. She struck up a conversation and informed us
that they had let her go back and see the “Call room”. She even sent us the
picture she had snapped of it!
After the slight detour we pretty quickly reached our
destination: an Aluminum Manufacturer. One of the most intense places I’ve ever
been. Basically just a huge building bustling with 18 wheelers, fork-lifts, stacks of aluminum, and intense
people with full body coverage in 95+ degree weather. The words "safety first" were stuck on everything...and I soon learned that they meant it!
While we were there I mostly stayed in the truck and read "20,000 leagues under the sea" (an old classic which I am currently fan-girling over...but that's a story for another time). However, at one point I had to go to the restroom, I figured this would be a pretty simple task...that was my first mistake. My second one was that, although I remembered to wear my long pants, long-sleeve shirt, close toed shoes and hard hat, I forgot my safety glasses. No sooner had I stepped into the intimidating building when I had another fully protected person wildly gesture to her eyes indicating that I needed some safety glasses like hers. I immediately turned around to get mine, and just in the short distance back to the door had another person wildly gesture to me and then her glasses. I hurried to the truck, added safety glasses to my menagerie of clothing, and began the trek back into the huge building. This time I was greeted at the entrance by a safety-glasses-hard hat-and-dress-shirt-wearing man who politely informed me "Ma'am, I am going to escort you to the women's restroom because you are not wearing steel-toed boots and we don't want a forklift to hit you" In my mind I'm like "Who is this guy and how did he know I even needed to go to the bathroom?" but to him I just said, "Uh, thanks" True to his word, he strutted rather stoically right beside me all the way to the door of the women's restroom. Then, just as I suspected, was right there waiting for me when I stepped out. Turned out it was the manager of the whole plant who had escorted/body guarded me all the way to the women's restroom and back!
A few pictures from at the plant...I don't look like I need a body guard, do I?
Actually, don't answer that.
Sidenote: I forgave the plant for being so up-tight about safety as soon as I discovered that they had Popsicles for us after we worked hard hooking up and covering our trailer!
while in Louisiana, I also got to enjoy two more of Dad's favorite restaurant haunts-a low budget cafe called "Boomers" for lunch, then a Mexican place called "La Fonda's" for dinner! Not to mention the "true Trucker experience" I got by staying the night in the parking lot of a sketchy, Louisiana truck stop.
After all of our Louisiana adventures, Dad and I headed on up to Missouri with a Mark Twain CD entertaining us all the way through Arkansas.
I will say though, as one who drove all the way across it, AR definitely has it's moments of beauty.
BUT, also it's moments of delightfully-dorky-red-neckness. They find no shame in flaunting cities with unique(?) names, such as: "Pickle's Gap" and "Toad Suck"...to name just a few of the ones I went through!
On Friday we blew through AR, then straight into Missouri in no time flat. I say "we" but really all the credit for that goes to Dad...I just took shifts talking and reading. :) I did make myself a little bit useful though, by fixing us some black bean soup in Dad's little crock pot!
Missouri and I have always hit it off before, and this time didn't prove any different...but those adventures are a story for my next post, so for now just know, my love for the state of Missouri has only grown. ;)
Here's to many more days of Truck Riding blog posts!
~Ab
No comments:
Post a Comment