9th Gear Bliss – 0344hrs

I’ll start out by saying I woke up on my own (instead of the usual being woken up that it’s shift change)… about an hour and half before turn-over which was soooo very nice!  Then, just to make my day mo’ betterer… I got to drive my favorite stretch of I40 through Tennesse… the one that is only like 45 / 50 (which is 9th gear) and is wicked windy and through steep valleys and mountains… and even though it was foggy as hell and pouring rain…I STILL thoroughly enjoyed the route!  How sick is THAT!?!?!  ROFL

Of course that may have been so enjoyable tonight as I got a really good cup of coffee at the Pilot in Dandbridge, TN where we fueled!

Got kinda screwed up coming into Charlotte, NC.

The directions were to take I26 to 485 South to SC74 to SC601.  Pretty straight forward right?  Nope…fucked ’em up.

Followed I26 off of I40 without a problem…. found 485 (Charlotte by-pass) without a problem… then things started to go awry…

No sooner had I gotten on 485 then the exit for 74 was next (less than a mile)… huh!  Okay!  Kewl… get off the freeway.. and dumped into this six lane wide 55MPH DOWNTOWN!!  OMFG!

Okay.. follow 74 until I hit 601 right?  Supposed to only a few miles… 30 minutes later I’m finding a spot on the side of the road to pull over for a few minutes to check the map… Route 29, Route 51….hmmm. CAN’T FIND THEM ON THE MAP ANYWHERE NEAR WHERE I’M SUPPOSED TO BE!  WTF!?!?!?!?

About that time Knuckle Head wakes up and comes up front… thinking we’re at the truck stop, he need to hit the bathroom… tell him what’s up and he starts looking at the map.  He can’t figure it out either…   We THINK we’re still in NC… but can’t find any of the towns in North OR South Carolina that are shown on the direction sign in front of us…  then he figures it out… I’m in “downtown” Charlotte (suburb actually) and have to keep going on 74 for a number of miles to get to the point where 485 and 74 meet … the second time on the 485 loop… where I was SUPPOSED to get OFF the freeway!

Basically 485 circles around Charlotte so you don’t have to go through the downtown… well 74 DOES go through the downtown and I was supposed to go half-way around the circle of 485 until I met 74 the second time… THEN get off and find 601.

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The good part… there was lots of other truck traffic so I wasn’t on some road I shouldn’t have been… the bad news I wasted about 45 getting here.  So in the end… it WAS an eventful shift but I made it to the truck stop that’s about 5 miles from the 90… Knuckle Head is back in the bunk sleeping for a couple more hours so he can get up and deliver later this morning… and all’s well that ends well!  ROFL

Oh… I got notified yesterday on our QualComm:
“Congratulations Joseph you just earned your next PTC award. Pick up your 2 patches at the company store”

PTC stands for “Prime Time Certified” It means that I have had no delivery (service) failures and have delivered my loads 100% on time for the past X days / weeks / months (not sure the time-frame). Apparently I’ve earned TWO of them! w00t!!!