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.