Home Run

Lori's on her way home - but not with a load of Kansas beef. Instead, she's filled with various cooking oils headed for Ontario, California, which is just up the freeway from home. That load was dropped off at the Denver yard Tuesday morning, thus saving Lori (and Prime) a 350 mile deadhead to Dodge City.

The original routing called for her to come over the Rockies and down I-15 through Utah. But she asked if she could be re-routed toward the south through Phoenix so she could stop and visit with her son and daughter-in-law. Headquarters said sure since it wouldn't add too many miles to the trip, as long as she made the scheduled delivery on Thursday morning at 10 a.m. That shouldn't be a problem since Lori's already in Phoenix this afternoon and can make it into Ontario with plenty of time if she leaves this evening.

She has offered to do any local So Cal runs that might be necessary on Thursday since she wasn't supposed to be home until Friday. She would, however, like to be able to attend grandson Tyler's kindergarten graduation on Friday!

The plan is for Lori to be home for the weekend through Monday so we can attend daughter Liz's wedding shower Sunday evening. That will also allow both of us to attend the Sunday afternoon memorial service for the wife of the assistant pastor at our church in Anaheim.

Lori's next return home will be the first week in July for Liz's wedding. After that, Lori isn't planning on coming home until it's time to come get Mike for the trip to Springfield after he gets his commercial driver's license. The plan is for Mike to attend four weeks of truck driving school near home for 4 weeks beginning in late August, getting his license, going to headquarters to take his road test for Prime, and then getting on a truck as a trainee with Lori full-time.

That will work just like Lori's training with Tamara; 80,000 miles as a trainee before becoming a full-fledged "A" seat driver for Prime.