sweet god when will this end

I'm tiring of the trucking biz. I want to build my oven. I want to live in one place and feel the seasons. But still I carry on, minus a lot of self control and clean living.
From Maryland, when I delivered that load of steel bits to the Power Plant I sat in Hagerstown for a while, too long, and then was told to deadhead up to Pittsburgh. Which I did, where I sat for a while, and then was given a load to pick up the next day at Wheatland Tube in, you guessed it, Wheatland, Pennsylvania, right near the Ohio border. I took a walk in the area. It was one of the most economically depressed and depressing places I have ever seen, I felt like I could be in eastern europe, 20 years ago. i walked up the hill from another huge steel mill into what looked like the "downtown" area. There were no white folks. Two big women smoked a joint in an alley. Three young guys found my presence so absurd that they could not contain their laughter. i was scared. I am a racist asshole. I got back to my truck happy that the doors locked.

I took the tube to an electrical supply company in Conyers, Georgia. Then I picked up some big rolls of fabric of the type that you might lay down on the earth, once you have torn up the grass, to prevent erosion. That went to a construction supply company in Cicero, New York, on the north side of Syracuse. Then I got pissed. I requested to be home on friday, it was monday, and I was told that since it was not 7 days in advance my request could not be granted. !
Then I sat most of the day before being given a load to pick up in Oswego, New York, on the shores of lake ontario. It was rolls of aluminum. very fragile, they make beer cans out of it. I took that to La Crosse, Wisconsin.
I love the northwest. whether we are talking about Washington and Oregon, or "The old northwest" Illinois, Wisconsin and Minnesota. They are profoundly comfortable places.
From there i was sent up to Eau Claire to pick up boards of foam insulation, super light (9,000 lbs) and took that all the way down to Katy in sweaty old Texas.

and from there a load from Houston. 4 BIG pipes (42" in diameter, 40 feet long) Those went up to Midwest Pipe Coaters in Schererville, Indiana in the Gary metro. and then it was over to Joliet to pick up roofing insulation boards and those went to a roofing contractor in a DC suburb, a place on the beltway poetically named "Beltsville"

And then I drove home.

so good to be home.
The air is cool, the doors are open and the beer is plentiful.


pictures to follow