Epilogue: The Drive Home

So off I drove eastward in this gas and oil guzzling beast of a machine. The day was hot and pale yellow as so many texas days are. I-20 led me into Louisiana where green began to hang but the sunlight was no less harsh. I hadn't decided how to get home yet but I figured east was a good start.

I crossed the Mississippi at Vicksburg, a great swampy swath before the river and then hills up from the banks. Before I hit Jackson I found the exit for the Natchez Trace Parkway. I had taken this parkway a few years ago a some friend and her sister who were moving from Asheville to St. Paul and wanted to tour the south before resigning herself to the north. We had visited New Orleans and were headed up river and took the Parkway from its southern terminus at Natchez to this point near Jackson. Along the way I recall an episode in which my friend was feeling unwell so we stopped by the side of the road to allow her out of the car. She hurried to the edge of the woods and after a while her sister suggested i take her some water and a towel. As I stepped out of the car I thought to myself, my this ground is soft (I was not wearing shoes since it was so hot) and within a few seconds, my feet burning with over stimulation, I realized I had stepped into a fire ant nest. So here I am jumping around manically brushing ants off my feet and legs while my friend, crouched by the side of the words, wonders what could be more important than her well being.


So I had seen the southern part of this well groomed road with its wide verges and dark woods draped, like set pieces, in spanish moss. And now I figured, if I was going to take a drive, I would take a drive on roads that prohibited semis, and i would see the northern part of road.

The road itself runs along the route of an ancient path through the southern woods. The path was blazed by Native Americans from foraging paths trod down by large game and was later used by the military and the postal service, serving as an important link between the well connected "north" (Nashville and the areas north and east) and ports on the Mississippi river (such as Natchez).

The way the road looks now, with wide cleared, neatly mowed verges belies its origins as a narrow path through a dark and forbidding wood. But it makes current travel by car a pleasant journey with no commercial development and few at grade crossings. As you travel north the woods get less dark, less heavily junglish and occasionally the forest opens up to wide meadows with ancient wooden barns. I headed to Tupelo the first night as darkness fell and checked into a motel 6. It was 10pm and the air had cooled all the way down to 88.

I woke up not to early the next day and stopped by the Wal-Mart to pick up a case of oil for this thirsty (read: leaky) truck. I headed north again on the trace, swiping a corner of Alabama and entering Tennessee. I got off the parkway to fuel up (and oil up). I had wanted to continue further up the trace to Grinder's Stand, the site where, on a fall day in 1809 at the age of 35 the perennially depressive Meriwether Lewis either shot himself or was murdered. An interesting end to the life of a man who traveled to the Pacific when Europeans of the east weren't even sure where it was exactly.
Anyway, I took a wrong turn out of Collinwood and ended up in Lawrenceburg and kept heading east toward Chattanooga.

I made a slight detour north to Lynchburg to see something I had always wanted to see, the distillery where Jack Daniel's Tennessee Whiskey is made. As you enter this very cutesy town you can see the barrel houses holding millions of gallons of whiskey dotting the hills above the hollers. The day was getting pretty steamy and the cool visitors center where I waited for the tour to begin was pleasant. I highly recommend the distillery tour. It is a full tour of all aspects of the distillery, up close and personal, not from a distance and not a tour of some mock up. It's the real thing. You can stick your head in the fermenting vats or the charcoal filtering towers and that combined with a walk through the highly aromatic barrel house will likely leave you a bit lightheaded. Besides it's free. The only catch is that, hilariously, The distillery is in a dry county and as such you can not buy or consume whiskey on the tour or anywhere else in the county however you can buy "Commemorative Bottles" that are sold to be collected but they are only marginally more expensive than a bottle at your local liquor store and the whiskey inside is, I assure you, completely drinkable.

Out of Chattanooga I followed the Ocoee (site of the 1996 Olympic Kayaking events) up torturous curves and spitting rain into the Smokey mountains, a place it always seems to be raining, and a place I don't mind the rain. It seems to add to the atmosphere. (It is after all, like the Northwest coast, a temperate rainforest receiving over 6 feet of precipitation per year)

Night fell in western North Carolina and eventually I got to Asheville where I shared some of my commemorative whiskey with friends and then headed to a bar to dispose of the rest of the evening.

In the morning I waited for my friends to wake and then took them out to brunch in Asheville before headed out towards Greenville (NC) in the eastern part of the state to visit another friend who also disposed of some of my commemorative whiskey.

In the morning I headed north and a bit east towards Chesapeake, Virginia, part of the Hampton Roads/Norfolk glut of shipping and military complexes at the southern end of the Chesapeake Bay. Here I did my last bit of trucking, stopping by Kerneos, a cement importer, to pick up some calcium aluminate cement to be shipped to me to build the bread oven. The truck sagged a bit but made the trip across the 17 mile Chesapeake Bay Bridge Tunnel. and up the long DelMarVa peninsula and up the driveway back home. The clouds from earlier in the day had cleared and it was a cool blue day.


This will be the last entry in this blog. Thanks for reading.
I'll now direct you to my blog documenting the building of my brick oven
and the beginnings of a bread business.

Closeout

So I woke up in the morning and untarped my load and helped some other drivers untarp their loads and when I was empty I sent a message saying I was so and another saying that, even though i was in Dallas, I intended to work for another week until the quit date I had specified a week earlier (giving the customary, though in the trucking world somewhat unheard of, two weeks notice.)
A few minutes later the Quallcomm beeped and the message said:
"Mark, unfortunately we have to accept your resignation now since we don't have a lot of freight booked into texas right now and probably couldn't get you back by next week. Besides we need your truck in Sunnyvale [at the terminal for new hires finishing orientation.] Go back to the terminal and check in with Daniel. OK?"

This was a bad note to end on. I had planned two weeks because it would take me right up to the time that I am to head to Minnesota to cater a wedding and the money would tide me over. Now I would have a gap and not enough money to buy all the brick for the oven. What a pain in the ass.

I headed back to sunnyvale, packed up the truck, got thoroughly sweat, handed my keys in and left.

Back to the eastern shore, back home, back to real life, I hope.

Slow Week

So from Winston Salem, in keeping with the deja vu theme, I headed over to Elizabethton, Tennessee to pick up more metal building parts destined for the northeast, Robbinsville, New Jersey namely, a suburb of Trenton, if Trenton has suburbs, per se.
The building parts weren't due until Monday and it being Friday and Winston-Salem being less than 600 miles from Trenton I would take these through the house. I am glad that the route could justifiably take me through the house otherwise the shortness of this weekend load would have really frustrated me.
So after another pleasant weekend at home I tootled up to Robbinsville and delivered the building parts to the inside of a big empty warehouse in an industrial park. Apparently the building would eventually be built a few miles from here but the crew who were supposed to be preparing the site had fallen behind but they were forced to take delivery of the building anyway. What an added expense for when the site is ready they will have to truck it all out again.
It was the crew that unloaded me that made the "grizzly adams" and "chuck norris" comments made famous in the previous post.
From there I waited (waited!? no way!) the rest of the day before getting a load to pick up in New Jersey and deliver to Laredo but as soon as the assigned it to me they took it away like dangling $100 bills in front of your face and then snatching them away (or more like $780, in this case). Not long after I got another load, a pick up in Sunbury, Pennsylvania (central PA) with a delivery in Aurora, Illinois. This one as well giving me about a day's worth of extra time (even though it wasn't the weekend.) I would get to see my friends in Chicago but, while I love seeing friends and family I was also, as it turns out, trying to make some money in the mean time. I spent the time in Chicago biking around eating good cheese and sweating a lot and then delivered the load in Aurora, it was fibreboard insulation from a company called Celotex. To explain I will quote a poster in their shipping office"

Want Structural: Use OSB
Want R-value: Use foam
Want both: CELOTEX

(that, i am sure, is perfectly clear to all my building contractor readers.)

Then it as more waiting (yes!) before getting a load to pick up the next day (waste of time) in Joliet at a company called Johns Manville who makes a similar product to the one I had just hauled from Celotex, though it seems less structural. The delivery was to Dallas. To Dallas a week before I had requested to be there.
I stopped for fuel at the Love's in Rolla (atcha boyz) Missouri and found that my fuel card had been "turned off." Evening dispatch turned it back on for me but something was getting fishy.
It was the weekend again and I got to Dallas on Saturday afternoon and tinkered about with the truck I had purchased. I replaced the window motor and changed the oil and cleaned up the battery whose corrosion was becoming an issue. The next day I drove the pickup to a big confusing mall whose directory listed two stores I wanted to check out, a camera store and a book store. Both had closed and were boarded with festive anticipatory plywood.
I needed a drink and some cheese so I stopped in at El Chico, a chain trying to wrest the "mediocre mexican in a drab atmosphere" crown from ChiChi's. I ordered a beer and found myself in an odd corner of the blue laws of the United States.
Before bringing me the beer julio brought me a small piece of paper about 6"x3". Three quarters of the sheet was a carbonless copy form and the remaining quarter was a detachable buisness card sized card. Julio handed this to me and asked me to fill it out without an explanation. When he returned and i asked him what the deal was he explained that we were in a dry county and since we were in a dry county any establishment that wished to serve alcohol had to be a "private club." In order to order a beer at this restaurant I had to "become a member" of their "private club" I had to fill out this card which would be good for thirty days at this restaurant only. If i went somewhere else i would have to fill out another card and on and on. For anyone who was worried i can assure you that prohibition is not over, it has just gotten stranger. This New York Times article explains the whole thing nicely.
Then I went to the movies. I'm not sure how I got there given the absurd complications (at least to this outsider) of the Texas frontage road system (explained in a previous post). I watched Wall-E, a beautiful little movie and then thought that, given that I paid $9.25 to see this movie (and it was before 6pm) I was owed another movie. I haven't snuck into a movie since I was 13 and snuck into Indecent Proposal with some friends who were equally excited by the promise of lasciviousness. (We were disappointed), I was less disappointed with The Dark Knight which, though at times was very loud and somewhat disjointed in its quest for special effects gold, was thoroughly entertaining. It was surprisingly easy to sneak into this movie and I think I could have continued to sneak into movies all night but i was tired and drove back to the terminal where I hopped in the truck and drove over to Spec Roofing Wholesale where I would deliver in the morning.

Beardo

I haven't trimmed the beard in almost 2 months. A guy at this place where I unloaded today called me "Grizzly Adams" and then likened me to Chuck Norris. Me thinks it's time to trim this beard

Deja vu

The drive up into the Poconos was a challenge, a fun challenge, the perfect extended obstacle course to scare the pants off a CDL candidate. It made me realize how far I have come from those first lurching days in Green Bay.
I had spent the previous night in Scranton. Although it was almost 2 hours from my final destination in the hinterlands of Northeastern PA, it was the closest truckstop. I awoke early and headed out into the beautifully hazy morning mountains. The Poconos are technically not mountains but rather a deeply eroded plateau geologically not part of the Appalachian mountain chain. They are related to the adjacent Catskills, essentially two names for the same geological feature. Regardless of the nomenclature the back roads are hilly as hell.
After turning off US-6 the road narrowed, lifted and plummeted, careening through bucolic valleys and to the edges of glacial lakes. The last turn was onto a wide dirt road. Branches brushed the tops of the cab and then a sign “Camp Nesher →” I turned in tightly revving the engine up a steep narrow dirt road thinking of the sleeping campers and this undoubtedly unusual morning. Another driver was there already we had both arrived before the construction crew.
The camp looked classic summer camp run down buildings and a lake with all sorts of brightly colored things floating in it.
The crew soon arrived and quickly unloaded him and then me and informed us there was a way to get out by continuing strait which was a relief since turning around would require some doing. Once I was unloaded I headed out the track rounding a corner and heading down a hill where I saw a bus stuck on the curve from the road into the drive. The driver motioned frantically at me to stop as if I were a freight train. I was still a good 100 yards off and moving at 10 miles an hour.
From the road the lane took a turn up hill (the hill I was headed down) and the tow hooks on the rear of the bus had snagged on the asphalt of the road. She was fully blocking the southbound lane but traffic could squeeze by in the other lane. I tried to do what I could to help her but she was already on the phone to her company explaining the situation. “There goes my safety bonus” she grumbled as she sat on hold.
I realized there was nothing I could do and decided I needed to back back up the driveway and turn around in the construction site. This was tricky but not impossible and as I beeped into the site the crew looked at me. I explained that there was a bus stuck in the drive and they immediately jumped into the forklift and a pickup.
“You got the chains?”
“Let’s go!”
And they were off like that. I turned around to head back to Scranton. About half way there I got a message to head up to Oswego and pick up some coils to take to Winston-Salem. Déjà vu all over again.
I turned north onto more hilly Pennsylvania mountain roads headed toward I-81. Winding out of town a long line of cars snaked slowly up a ridge. I couldn’t see the head of the line but I figured it was a slow moving truck. At the ridge crest the cars turned into a cemetery. Men in military dress stood at attention. The cars crawled to top of the hill under a grey Pennsylvania sky to put another dead boy in the ground.

I made it to Oswego to find a long line in the driveway of the Aluminum mill. Who knew what the back up was but it took forever to load the same load it had taken me less than an hour to load the previous week.
Again to Syracuse where I biked to the mall to try and find some 220 film for the medium format camera my sister had lent me. No dice, they barely had any 35mm film, how quickly things change.
The next day a long one down I-81 which must have a higher percentage of hills than any other interstate. South through the river valleys of central New York then crawling diagonally over the successive crests of Pennsylvania’s comb like Appalachian ridges. Flat for a while from Harrisburg to Winchester as the mountains retreat to the west. They return and you climb up and into the Great Valley of Virginia, snug for a while with the Blue Ridge (an outlying eastern ridge) to your left and the Valley and Ridge (the main body of the Appalachians) to your right. Around Roanoke you head up into the mountains proper and things are really hilly. Leaving I-81 and heading south on I-77 toward Mt. Airy, NC presents a fantastic vista of the Piedmont (literally “foot hills” as you tumble out of the mountains and realize just how high up you were.
Now I’m here in Winston Salem, sweating and waiting again.

Through the House

More goddamn waiting.
I sat behind the Shell in Boucherville all day and then Angie sent me a message telling me to get out of Canada. Drive down toward Champlain, New York and let her know when I got there.
I did, I headed down to the border. It's easy to cross when you have an empty flatbed, essentially the same as in your car. I kept going down I-87 to Plattsburgh where I found a small truckstop in the woods.
I had noticed a mall with a bookstore a bit up the road and I figured I’d bike up there. After my Montréal expedition I was thoroughly exhausted and my legs were resistant to this 5 mile jaunt.
I wandered about the book store and then the mall, unfortunately disinterested. I got back on the bike and stopped at a little c-store on the way back to the truck (there were a number of them, New York’s northwoods loves the middle of nowhere corner market.)
I bought a Saranac Lake sampler pack. Someone there is thinking of people like me. Back to the truck where I proceeded to drink and enjoy the cool of these northern latitudes. I did not enjoy the large mosquitoes.
I waited most of the next day with nothing before I sent an exasperated message. I had requested to be home for the weekend. The July 4th weekend. It was July 3rd, a Thursday. If I didn’t get something today I would sit here all weekend, a three day weekend.
Finally they sent me a load that picked up in Oswego, a four hour drive across the Adirondacks. The pick up wasn’t supposed to be until Sunday. Sunday! I was seriously bummed. I decided to head over to see even though I had been to this shipper before and remembered not being able to load early.
The drive was spectacular. Through the heart of the really incredible parts of the Adirondacks, a mountain chain geographically unrelated to the Appalachians. Black brooks foaming white over ripples of rocks in the shade of heavy northern pines. Towns bustling with summer weekend activity, people in their brightly colored synthetic and highly performance oriented clothing.
I got to Oswego and checked in. I could load early. This was the best news ever.
Onto my truck were quickly put two enormous Aluminum Coils. Thin aluminum headed to Winston Salem to be made into beverage cans by Rexam. Not so quickly I chained and tarped them. These things are a bitch because the aluminum is so soft and can not get the least bit wet or it will stain and not even the slightest damage is tolerated since people put these things so close to their face.
I finished tarping, chilly with sweat in the Lake Ontario evening and drove to Syracuse where I fueled up and spent the night.
The next day I drove to Maryland dropping my trailer before making it home in time to see fireworks through the hazy rainy weather. Before I got back on the road I decided that this would be the last trip. 3 and a half weeks then to Dallas to pack up the new (pick-up) truck and head home to get this bread business started for real (right after I get back from catering a wedding in August)
On Sunday afternoon I drove down to North Carolina. The july fourth return traffic was horrendous. Essentially from DC to Richmond was one big jam. (that’s like 100 miles). I was exhausted and crashed for the night short of my goal. In the morning I headed to Winston Salem and delivered the coils waiting not too long for my next load. Over to Star Buildings in Elizabethton, Tennessee, a place I had been twice before. A lopey drive through the Appalachians, an easy pick up, Some metal building parts destined for a Jewish summer camp in the depths of the Poconos.

Oh, Canada!

The load in Norman was at York, who make big air industrial conditioners and the pick up wasn’t until midnight but even so They didn’t start loading until 1:30 and then, once they had loaded the trailer, from front to back, they realized they couldn’t fit the last one on and so they had to take something off. The something they had to take off was the thing in front and so they unloaded the whole thing and reloaded it finishing at 4:00am. I pulled out and went to sleep, I would strap it all down in the morning.
I did that and when I went out to get the bills there was some problem, and it was Saturday so the problem was taking even longer to figure out. Eventually it was figured out but it certainly took a while.
I took the load through Tulsa and stopped by the office to make sure all my paper work was in order to head into Canada. When you take a load into Canada one of the easiest ways to do it is a system called PARS. Pre authorized release system or something like that. Essentially you affix a bar code sticker to the bills and fax them to an independent broker at the border where you are going to cross. They work out the paper work, figure out who owes what in customs and inputs the info into the computer. When the trucker gets to the border they only need to scan the barcode, check out your id and, if everything checks out, on you go. It worked out that way this time and crossing the border was a piece of cake.
I crossed at Detroit-Windsor. Detroit is bad enough already but they have decided to rip up pretty much every mile of interstate downtown at the same time and this really makes the whole place feel like a post-apocalyptic mess. I crossed the Ambassador Bridge over the Detroit River (Detroit is French for “straits” and technically the river is a strait connecting Lake Huron to Lake Erie (via a not so great lake called Lake St. Clair.) and as I entered Windsor, Ontario an air of civility fell over then land. Don’t get me wrong I love America but Canada feels different and that difference feels like civility.
You must traverse some surface streets in Windsor before finding the 401, southern Ontario’s main highway that connects Windsor to Toronto and Montreal. It would be a long slog up this road to Quebec but it felt shorter because of the kilometers. When you are used to miles, kilometers fly by.
I stopped at a Pilot to get some food intrigued by how foreign candy wrappers that you are unused to appear. I got some potato chips that I remembered from the last time I was in Canada. They were just Ruffles but the flavour was “All Dressed” (or in French “Assaisonait” or “seasoned”) I don’t know what is on these but they are very tasty.
In Ontario all the signs are in English and then, just down the road is the same sign but in French. This seems like it would cost a lot (Quebec solves the problem by dropping the English altogether.) Some of these signs are humourous to me. Par Example: there are many signs that warn of the penalties for various traffic violations. They list the violation and the resultant fine and points on your license. In Canadian English they call these “Demerit Points” which is funny enough but the French is “Points d’inaptitude” which really cracks me up.
The highway through most of Ontario is pretty unremarkable, very flat at first (its just a lake away from Ohio, really not that exotic) then there’s Toronto, a big city, but not overwhelming, like Chicago. North of Toronto it gets pleasantly woodsy looking more like upstate New York which is, of course, right across the St. Lawrence. The Thousand Island area is evocative. You can never really see the river or the islands but the land hints at its beauty, and its mayonnaise, ketchup and relish mixture.
Crossing into Quebec changes little (but everything gets more French) I stopped at the centre de bienvenue (not actual what it is called) and was greeted with the traditional Quebecoise tourist welcome “Bonjour, Hi.” A charming French boy tried to help me find a carte bicyclette de Montreal but to no avail.
Turns out I didn’t need one. Montreal’s bike paths are ubiquitous and while not particularly well signed, they are extensive and not hard to figure out.
I had parked in Boucherville across the river from city proper behind a Shell station that seemed the only place to park around here. I hopped on my bike and headed toward Montreal. This would have been far enough to bike into the city but as it turns out the bike path from along the east bank of the river into Vieux Montreal is quite indirect. It heads south along the river for about 10 miles from the point where I joined the trail. At one point I got off the main path and headed toward a marina which was the head of one bike path who’s sign implied that the path continued all the way to Quebec City, 440 km northeast.
I found the proper path again and continued south (to the point that I knew I was south of the downtown). Finally the path crosses the river on the Pont Victoria onto a little island (Montreal itself is an island but this was a much more bitty island) and on this island is a park and at the north end of the park is an amusement park. The bike path goes north on this island for a couple miles before crossing onto the île de Montréal. At this point however you are on the far side of the port and so must go south a couple miles to get around the bottom of the port and then its back north again to get into the heart of Montréal. All told this ended up being over 15 miles (25 kilometers) and I was beginning to lose hope since I knew I had to get back somehow and trucking does not keep you in the shape I was a few years ago when biking 70 miles in a day was totally do-able.
But it was totally worth it. Old Montréal is incredible. Not Europe not America but a little of both and something altogether different. Big buildings built of a stone that looks like really nice concrete create windy canyons of streets lined with restaurants and galleries and in the dying light, as the yellow glow from the windows began to become apparent the whole scene was really something. Oh yeah, and it was Canada Day so the whole place was mobbed.
I wandered about in wide eyed amazement, pleased that this was the 2nd time in a week that I had been in awe of a place. Three countries in a week isn’t so bad, especially when your continent only has three countries.
The darkness closed in on the festivities and fireworks began to pop in the distance and I consulted the phone to try and find a way to get across the river without the 15 mile return trip. I headed up over the ridge out of old Montréal surprised to find a sprawling modern city just over the crest. I found the subway and headed down only to be shoed out by bilingual cops who informed me no bikes were allowed in the Metro on Canada Day.
What in the world was I going to do. I was exhausted. I was right beneath the Pont Jaques-Cartiers near the aromatically malty Molson Brewery. I looked up at the towering bridge. If I could cross this bridge I wouldn’t have to make the zigzags to cross the river cutting the trip in half. I had to head pretty far west to find the point at which the bridge began its rise above the streets but when I got there I found that there was in fact a bike lane, Quelle Chance! I had not encountered this bike lane earlier since the bridge makes an equally gradual descent on the east bank and I passed under it right on the river where it still towered high above me.
I tore across the bridge with inexplicable energy and then bombed down the other side stopping at a convenience store called “Couche Tard” of which I passed no fewer than 20 on my return through the suburban streets of Longuieul.
I got to the truck and ate my chicken salad sandwich and gulped water. Chicken Salad here seems to be a chicken and mayonnaise paste between slices of bread. It’s pretty tasty.
I slept like a baby and woke in the morning where I delivered the air conditioners to more brilliantly bilingual Quebecers. The receptionist greeted me with “Un livraison?” I knew what she was saying but even in my brief hesitation she switched to English. The air conditioners were unloaded quickly and I returned to the Shell station to see what would happen next.

Dallas Breakdown

I cruised into the truckstops on the south side of Dallas about midnight. I knew that these places, like those on the south of Atlanta or east of LA and truckstops near cities everywhere had a tendency to crawl with illicit activity, primarily prostitution and drug dealing. It was also late and my chances of finding a place to park were slim. As I maneuvered through the Flying J people scurried around the lot like rats, one dude jumped up on my running board clinging to my open passenger side window.
“hey man you looking fo a girl?”
“no, man I’m looking for a parking space.”
I started to drive off requiring him to dismount.
I found a spot. Not a real spot, but a spot where people could get around me, at the TA on the other side of the highway.
The next day I woke and showered and came back to the truck. Still no load. I moved the truck into a real spot. I waited.
I did a crossword, or maybe six.
I tried to read. It is miserably hard to read when you are waiting for something. When trucking you are almost always waiting (or driving) and so, while it may seem like a great job for reading time, it isn’t. I get most of my good reading done at night before bed, like everyone else.
I waited some more.
I was getting exasperated.
I had spent a night in Laredo waiting, I had spent the better part of the next day in Laredo waiting. I had driven to Dallas and spent the night and the waited some more. It was 2pm. I was loosing hope. It was also Friday and the likelihood of getting a load on a Saturday (at least with this company) is nonexistent.
I cracked.
I wanted to quit. I was so done. How could I go home? Melton has a terminal in Dallas, I’d leave the truck there. How could I get rid of my stuff? I could sell some over the CB, but there would still be too much to walk or bike with, or even take a plane, especially with these baggage fees. I could buy a car!
I looked at the Dallas Craig’s List. There was a beater ’84 F-150 for sale for $900, I could do that.
I drove to the Dallas terminal. Not sure why. I got a cab to go check out the truck.
The guy selling the truck was a little unhinged I think. He worked on the oil rigs near Amarillo. He worked for 14 days at a time and then had 14 days off. He was selling the truck because he had another kid on the way. He said it needed a new starter solenoid, which he repeatedly pronounced “sodenawd.”
We drove to AutoZone to get it rather than wait for his mom to get home (he didn’t have any money for this $10 part) He installed it in the parking lot. When he drove the truck he scared me, though it did prove that the engine and brakes were working well enough.
Then we had to go to the DMV to get a title since he didn’t have one. Apparently he had bought the truck only a month before and the dealer had not yet got the title to him.
That process was surprisingly smooth and in 25 minutes I had the title in hand. I asked him how much he wanted for the truck.
$900
what about $750?
$800 and it’s a deal.
Deal (I didn’t really expect to pay $750, I suppose this is at the core of the bargaining art)

He cleaned his junk out of the truck and handed me the keys. My phone rang.
“Hey its Angie” [my dispatcher] “I got a Canada load for you.”
(sweet, what do I do with this pick-up?)
“It picks up in Norman [Oklahoma] tonight and delivers on Monday”
“sweet, where in Canada?”
“oh don’t make me say it, Butcher-vull.”
“Oh yeah Boucherville, Quebec. Sweet put it on me. I’ll be back at the truck in 45 minutes.”
The seller looked at me, “goin to Canada huh?”
Yup.

I drove the truck back to the terminal. I could leave it here until I did quit, whenever in the next month or two that would be. Then I could have them route me here and I could put my stuff in it and drive it back to Maryland. And now I would have seriously useful vehicle for these building projects.

I parked the truck and took some pictures and then headed up the road to Norman.

Laredo y Nuevo Laredo

The load of steel was headed to Laredo. 1100 miles almost due south of Norfolk, NE and so I spent the next 2 days watching the northern plains become the southern plains. The land of the Sioux become the land of the Comanche. People don’t think of Texas as the plains (which is to say I didn’t used to) I think because it is relatively more populated than the plains to the north. After crossing the Red River on I-35 from Oklahoma one quickly encounters Denton then Dallas-Fort Worth, Waco, Temple/Killeen, Austin, San Marcos, and San Antonio in (relatively) rapid succession, east-coast style.
After San Antonio everything comes to an abrupt end for a 150 mile cruise across the baking chaparral to Laredo.
I got into Laredo in the early afternoon. Good I thought, since I would be able to deliver my load a day early and then have n advantageous spot on the board and get out of the hellish oven that is south Texas. In all fairness the weather this time around (while above 100) was not so bad since there was a firm and constant breeze and the humidity was quite low.
As it turns out there was a hang up with my paperwork, the shipper had neglected to include on the bills the name of the forwarder (the facility in Laredo at which I would leave the trailer for a Mexican carrier to pick up.) I would not be able to deliver until the morning.
It was comfortable enough outside that as the sun began to get low in the sky I figured I’d head out for a bike ride. Initially I headed south unsure what I wanted to see. Maybe just to the mall or into downtown Laredo to see what it looks like where they don’t allow trucks, but peering down a long strait avenue I could see an enormous Mexican flag billowing in the soft blue breeze and I new where I was headed.
Downtown Laredo is certainly a different world than the Rubik’s cube of trucks and warehouses that make up the north end. Mostly commercial boulevards, not unlike those in San Antonio or Phoenix or LA terminate near the river having become quiet streets of medium height Spanish buildings, stucco and heavy shady trees, open squares and pleasant spaces.
There are two border crossings in downtown Laredo, one for trucks and cars and the other primarily for pedestrians. I found the latter and paid the fifty cents toll, walked my bike up and over the bridge, over the Rio Grande, a great green ditch in this semi desert and into another country.
I’m not sure I was prepared for how different it would be. First of all, although I was allowed freely to enter Mexico without so much as a check of my documents, there were heavily armed guards everywhere. AK-47s cradled in arms shock me, an unreal object, as intense as if the soldiers held corpses.
Once past this however, the scene becomes classic Mexican. The world is more colorful. Horses pull rickety but brightly painted carts. City buses are old school buses painted solid and scrawled with soap in the windshield “#4 Walmart.” Open squares with great shade trees, farmacias selling prescription drugs at 80% discount. Everywhere fruit and juices and ice to stave off the heat that persists from March to November. And people. People everywhere, walking.
After about an hour of wandering around in wide eyed amazement I headed back toward the border. Urchins tried to sell me cheap leather or beaded jewelry. Their technique, in lieu of a facility with English (apart from “meester, you like”) was to follow me for a few blocks.
Crossing the border back was not bad, though certainly not like coming into Mexico. I never seem to be able to communicate on the level with customs and immigration. I’m never sure what they are saying or implying, and they always seem to think that I, bicycle in hand just walking out of Mexico, am up to something.
I biked back to the terminal stopping for some Gatorade and then some carne guisada which was tasty.
The next day I finally delivered my load (the shipper had returned the faxed bills with the words “EXIT LAREDO” on them, if that’s all it takes…) Then I waited some more.
I waited most of the afternoon before Laredo gave up. Not a lot of freight headed out of Mexico, not enough, at least, to keep up with the freight coming in and so I, and a lot of other waiting drivers, were deadheaded to Dallas, 400+ miles north.
I drove it all that night, getting in by midnight. It felt like nothing.
The air was cooler but much more humid and much less pleasant.