I passed!

Whew, I'm glad that's over.

I passed all three portions of my commercial driver license testing today; backing, pre-trip inspection, and on-street driving. I didn't get "perfect" scores on any of the tests, though I did miss only 2 of the 105 pre-trip inspection items (one of which Lori didn't even know was on the test!).

We're still in Springfield until tomorrow afternoon as the testing took MUCH longer than we had anticipated.That meant I didn't have a chance to go to the Missouri DMV to get my new license or go through all of the Prime employee paperwork process. The main reason for the delay was the fact that more people than usual wanted to take the test today since entirely new testing procedures and standards go into effect tomorrow.

We also had appointments at 4:00 and 4:30 to go through the enrollment process for our Transportation Worker Identification Certification (TWIC). This card is being required by Homeland Security for persons wanting access to ports. Once we pass the background search, we'll each get a card that has "biometric information" (our fingerprint) encoded electronically on the card. Very high tech...

Though it's nice to be off the road, we're both chomping at the bit to get moving again. Now that I'm fully licensed, we'll be able to keep the truck moving 24 hours a day, if necessary to make the delivery appointments. That might take a little get to used to, at least for me since Lori already has some experience with that from her training time with Tamara.

It'll probably be longer than usual until we get home again (we shooting for the weekend before Thanksgiving) because we want to accumulate enough vacation days to spend a good 7-8 days at home over Christmas.

We'll try to post once we get going again. I hope the new driving schedule leaves enough time for regular posting.

Ballet of the titans

I've been spending the past few days on the practice pad getting ready for my backing test. And I haven't been alone. It's a little like a ballet (with elephants ala Disney's Fantasia) when there are four or five trucks on the pad doing different manuevers. Here's a photo I took while waiting my turn for the "blind side" parallel parking manuever.

Home away from home

While being at the terminal isn't really home, it's always nice to have a familiar place to stop, relax, and unwind. Prime does a good job of making you feel welcome back at the terminal, and it starts right at the entrace as these photos show.

SALT LAKE CITY

SPRINGFIELD (Don't ask me how the sign knows when we're driving in!)

They also have a nice parting comment for us on the way out!

Cramming

We’re back at the “mother ship” in Springfield so I can take my commercial driver license test Monday morning. That gives me all weekend to “cram” for 3 different tests; a pre-trip inspection of the truck, backing (straight back, parallel parking to the left and right side, and dock parking) and driving. We also need to get more work done on the truck (preventative maintenance), watch some training videos, and apply for a TWIC card (a Homeland Security document that will allow us access to ports and other shippers).

P.S. - Another sign that autumn is in the air; there are fewer bugs on our windshield.

Back at it

What a great time at home! We spent five days at home relaxing and spending time with family, including a somewhat belated birthday party for Lori and her twin sister. Everybody was over to the house on Saturday for smoked ribs, chicken, hot links, corn bread, cole slaw, "armadillo eggs," peanut butter pie, and peach cobbler. Of course, we made enough to have left overs on the truck.

We got back to it Monday morning with a pickup of Rival home appliances in Fontana. But that wasn't until after headquarters managed to track down the driver who had left his locks on the empty trailer we were trying to pick up at the drop yard in Ontario. We had already called the local truck service facility to send somebody over to cut off the locks but got to call him off in the nick of time. Needless to say, we were not pleased about the delay. There was really NO reason for this driver to lock up an EMPTY trailer (other than he wanted to make sure it was still there when HE was ready to get back on the road; just plain rude.)

From Fontana it was straight through to Grantsville, UT (just outside of Salt Lake) for the delivery at a Wal-mart distribution center. Actually, we just dropped the loaded trailer and picked up another empty one. After a LONG day, we headed over to the Prime yard in Salt Lake to spend the night. We're waiting in line at the inspection bay to get one of our trailer tires looked at; it appears to have a leak.

We do have a load assignment for pickup later this evening. It's headed for Tennessee but our plan is to take it to headquarters in Springfield so I can take my license test.

When it absolutely, positively has to be there overnight

Not to sound conspiratorial or cynical, but we think one of the reasons the packages of a particular delivery company are always on time is that they have some kind of pact with the Department of Transportation and law enforcement agencies across the country.

In our travels along the highways, we’ve send plenty of the trailers from this company. However, we have never seen them go through a scale house or pulled over to the side of the road by a state trooper. And they are always flying past us. Coincidence…?

Tucumcari Tonite!

In honor of those iconic billboards along I-40/Route 66, we’re spending tonight in Tucumcari, NM. (Actually, it’s just a coincidence but I’ve always liked those billboards ever since I first saw them as a kid during family vacations to Missouri.)

We left Dodge City, KS early this afternoon with a load headed to the L.A. area. Tomorrow will be a FULL day of driving so we can get as close to L.A. as possible tomorrow night to give us plenty of time to make our 6 p.m. delivery appointment on Tuesday.

There was a bit of excitement in the truck stop parking lot as we were arriving. As I was trying to back into our parking space for the night (with directional assistance from Lori) she witnessed another truck backing right into the front end of another truck. Unfortunately, the driver of the parked truck was standing up inside his cab and was thrown into the cabinet, which hurt his neck severely enough that they had to call an ambulance to take him.

This same driver almost backed right into us as well while we were coming into the parking lot. Luckily, I got passed him before he got the parked truck. It is very true that most truck accidents occur in truck stops.

Change of plans

We're still going to Kansas, but not with the load we picked up in Idaho.

Cheryl, our dispatcher, told us she has another load for us that will get us home to California late Tuesday so we brought our trailer full of frozen McDonalds french fries to the yard in Denver for someone else to pick up and take the rest of the way.

We have picked up a new empty trailer and will be heading to southwestern Kansas later this morning to pick up a load headed back to Southern California.

We had the chance to have dinner with Lori's brother, Curtis, and his wife, Candy in Sinclair, Wyoming yesterday. They have a load going from the docks in New Jersey to Vancouver, British Columbia. Since we were passing each other on I-80, we figured out about where our paths would cross and then picked a spot to catch a meal and spend some time together.

It's obvious that summer is coming to a close. It got down to 39 degrees in Idaho where we spent the night, we had to put on jackets at the rest area in Wyoming yesterday, and the Rockies outside of Denver are covered with snow this morning after a storm yesterday. We're hoping to avoid most of the bad weather from Hurricane Ike as it moves further north across Texas and into Oklahoma, Arkansas, and Missouri but we may catch the edge of it.

Western headquarters

We’re sitting at Prime’s Salt Lake City terminal after arriving last night about 10 p.m. local time. We made our delivery of frozen pizzas (Tony’s and Red Baron) to a cold storage facility in Clearfield, Utah and then headed down the freeway to spend the night at the terminal.

The trip out from Kentucky (just across the state border from Cincinnati, OH) was fairly uneventful, though we did get within shouting distance of my hometown of Smithville, MO (it was too early to stop by for a visit) and did have my first opportunity to drive across Wyoming, parts of which we have now dubbed “Moon Base Alpha” because of the starkness of the landscape.

There were some attractive parts of Wyoming, too, as you can see. However, the clouds in the photos eventually developed into rain storms so we got a little wet.

I needed some more work on my backing skills, so we spent a couple of hours driving in reverse. We then swung by the maintenance shop to pick up some spare bulbs, windshield wipers, and air vent filters, put those on, and then settled in for a lunch break before heading out on our next trip which starts up the road a bit in Idaho. It will take us back across much of where we just were; Interstate 80 across Wyoming and Nebraska, and then down Interstate 29 to a city just outside of Kansas City.

We’re scheduled to be home starting next Thursday, staying through the weekend. Hope to see many of you then.

Weekend in Nashville

We made it into Nashville to take our 34-hour break, and not a minute too soon.

The truck stop is located near downtown right across the street from LP Field where Tennessee State and the Tennessee Titans football teams play. They both had home games this weekend, Tennessee State on Saturday night and the Titans on Sunday afternoon, which meant traffic is a nightmare before and after each game and parking is at a premium since the truck stop sells parking spaces for each game.

We managed to find a spot to park for the weekend and then hit the showers. Lower Broadway, THE place for nightlife in Nashville, was just a short walk away so off we went to check it out. Among the highlights were visits to the Charlie Daniels store and museum (he recorded the song "The Devil Went Down to Georgia"), Robert's Western World to hear a great band, Ernest Tubb's Record Store (an iconic location in country music history), and Rippy's Restaurant for some barbecue and more music. Here are some photos of the area.

Nashville has an attractive skyline, located on the bank of the Cumberland River and highlighted by the AT&T building with its two spires. It has a “Gotham City” sort of look, especially at night.

LP Field is just across the river from downtown. On our walk to Lower Broadway Saturday night, we noticed you could see right into the stadium from the Woodland bridge so we decided after church at the truck stop we’d take a walk over on Sunday during the Titans game. The parking lot started filling with tailgaters at about 8 a.m. for the noon kickoff time. We were impressed at the amount of effort some of these folks put into tailgating, especially this customized delivery truck.

As we got closer to the stadium, we had to run the gauntlet of folks trying to buy and sell tickets. We were approached by two young couples asking if we were looking for tickets and we said no, we were just taking in the atmosphere. Then they said, “Well, we’ve got two extra tickets that we really don’t need and if you want them, they’re yours – for free.” We said sure, what the heck and in we went.Martina McBride sang the National Anthem, a field-sized flag was unfurled, and four “Warthog” attack planes did a fly over before the game. We never actually made it to our seats but wandered around the stadium, taking in the action from several shaded standing areas (it was too hot and sticky to stay in the sun), watched the Marine Silent Drill Team platoon at half-time, and then headed back to the truck ahead of the crowd. (NOTE: The Titans won the game, defeating the Jacksonville Jaguars 17-10).

We’ll spend one more night here before heading off to our next load assignment; a long-haul from Kentucky to Utah.

Number 3 on the way

Great news from Hawaii; grandbaby number three is on the way!

Elizabeth and Kim just learned that they're pregnant. Liz took her first trip to the doctor this week and everything is on track. Her due date is April 27, 2009.

You can follow the adventures of Baby Hamilton at his/her blog: http://babyhamilton09.blogspot.com

Mmm, mmm good

There's nothing like a bowl of hot soup during a rain storm. However, we didn't think even a truck load of Campbell's Chicken Noodle, Chunky New England Clam Chowder, and Spaghetti O's would be enough to ward off the effects of Hurricane Hannah so we bugged out from Maxton, North Carolina to Scottsville, Tennessee just ahead of the storm. We could tell it was coming as the sky was starting to fill with dark clouds and the humidity went sky high.

Our route took us over the Appalachians and the Great Smoky Mountains in Kentucky. For such small mountains (the high point of the trip, the Eastern Continental Divide, was just over 2,100 feet of elevation) it was slow going with steep grades and winding roads.

We're sitting now at the Dollar General warehouse waiting for a dock to unload the soup. Since we're just about at our 70-hour driving limit, we'll be taking the rest of today and tomorrow off. We're thinking about heading into Nashville for the evening. We'll see...

Home fries

Well, we didn’t go to Louisiana. Instead, we picked up a trailer full of “home fries” fixin’s; potatoes and onions headed for North Carolina. The load was on a tight schedule so we had to drive pretty hard all night.

As we were driving through tobacco country around Winston-Salem this morning, we were struck by the schizophrenic nature of that industry. Here is an entire area whose economy is largely based on an activity that much of society is trying to abolish, though we didn’t see any outward signs of a weakening economy.

My turn

Yesterday it was MY turn to drive through New York City. We went back down the Connecticut shore, back across the George Washington Bridge, and then down the Jersey turnpike to Bayonne, NJ to pick up a load of Tropicanna orange juice. (OJ from Jersey? Go figure...) We could see the top half of the Statue of Liberty from the warehouse.

Man, oh man! The traffic was out in full force. We started at 4:00 a.m. to make the delivery in Norwich, CT and by 6:00 p.m. last night we had only made it to the Jersey/Pennsylvania border. That was exhausting.

We managed to do some laundry and hit the showers before zoning out for the night. Then it was up and at 'em for the trip to Syracuse (our current location). We think we're taking a load down to Louisianna but won't know for sure until a little later.

Labor Day in the City

You certainly can see a lot when driving in and around New York City.

Our day started at a rest area in the Pocono Mountains (see photo), a “mountain” resort area in eastern Pennsylvania, though it certainly doesn’t qualify as mountains for those of us who are used to the Sierra Nevadas and the Rockies.

From there we drove through New Jersey into New York City over the George Washington Bridge, which took us across upper Manhattan and the Bronx. We could see the New York skyline from the bridge but it wasn’t worth a photo.

Driving through L.A. isn’t so bad after trying to get through New York; narrow lanes, lots of curves, and lots of cars (despite it being a holiday). Sorry, we just don’t see the attraction of living here. We saw it at its best and couldn’t get over the dinginess. We can only imagine what it looks like covered with dirty, melting snow.

Then it was along the Connecticut shoreline. Saw the General Dynamics submarine yard in New London and Mystic Seaport with its tall ships and quaint harbor. A quick jaunt through Rhode Island (it doesn’t take long to get anywhere in Rhode Island) and we were into Massachusetts and our first stop. Our early arrival and empty parking lot gave me a chance to practice my backing. The big moves are coming easy. It’s the small adjustments at the end that need some more work.

We’re now sitting in Norwich, CT unloading the rest of our load of beef from Fort Morgan, CO. Not sure where we’re headed next but we’ll let you know.