One Day

All of this happened today, I swear:

1.) I woke up in Danville, Kentucky where I was supposed to deliver a load of engines yesterday but I got held up in Dallas as my truck needed some work on its own engine. (I got there last night but they were closed which made me nervous since I had already been assigned another load to pick up in the morning and the pick up was "critical" what they call "line shut down" as in, you don't show up on time you fuck up the works.)

2.) I got unloaded fairly fast with just enough time to get where I needed to go.

3.) I booked it down US-150 part of which is not a legal truck route, but had I took a legal truck route I would not have made it on time (which I did).

4.) The pick up was at a tobacco warehouse in London, Kentucky and the whole "line shut down" thing was because they basically have trucks coming in off farms unloading tobacco all day and that tobacco is then graded and weighed and put in new trucks and sent to North Carolina to made into cigarettes (this kind of tobacco, Burley, is grown almost entirely in Kentucky (70% of national production) and is prized for its mildness and ability to grow in really shitty soil. Almost all cigarettes in the US are made from this varietal.

5.) Last night in the hills and hollers of Eastern Kentucky a sloppy wet snow had fallen and as a result the tobacco was coming in slowly since the farmers were either waiting for it to clear up or were just plain stuck. Consequently trucks were being loaded slowly and there was absolutely no rush since I would not be loaded til later.

6.) When I returned to my truck I realized I had somehow managed to lock myself out. I have never done this before.

7.) I tried to see if i could get in through the wing windows since the hinge on the driver's side one is broken and therefore the whole thing is a bit loose. In my over exuberance I broke the window and in braking the window I managed to cut my wrist. (not too badly, But I was so startled by the way auto glass just sort of 'pops' that I didn't realize I was bleeding until five minutes into cleaning up the glass when I felt some wetness running down my arm.)

8.) I sat around waiting to get into a door at the tobacco warehouse until after noon.

9.) After I got into a door it took til 1:00 til someone came by to inspect the trailer.

10.) The manager found a hole in my trailer that I failed to notice and told me I needed a new trailer or to have that one repaired.

11.) Luckily there was a Walmart DC nearby that Schneider runs a dedicated account out of and so I went over there and the bored mechanics were thrilled to have something to do.

12.) They fixed my broken wing window at the same time.

13.) I went back to the tobacco warehouse.

14.) As I went into the office I heard the manager say "Yeah trailer TA739376,[my trailer] we're gonna have to cancel that load." There wasn't enough tobacco coming in that day.

15.) I drove down to the Pilot in Corbin were I wait still for a load. It's friday night, freight is often bad on the weekends and we are in one of the "softest" freight markets in some time. (i.e. There's a chance I'll be sitting for a while.)

16.) I went to use the bathroom at the Pilot and as I was standing at the urinal a man and his 10-12 year old son come in. The son says, "dad I got to poop again" and goes into a stall. The man takes the urinal next to me. We both stare intently at the wall. From the stall the son says "Dad?" and the Dad says "yeah" and the son says "I love you" and the dad says "I love you too."