Midway, where the family tree doesn’t fork – 0517hrs
Rolled along from OK City to Midway, MO without any incident. Got into the Midway Truck Plaza & Tatoo Parlor earlier this morning. To say this place is Po-dunk would give places like Boondocks, IL a bad name! Knucklehead and I wandered in to hit the bathroom, and he decided to grab a bite to eat. I opted for some coffee and we were both pleasantly surprised to find about the only place on the face of the earth that still allows smoking in the restaurant… not just in the “smoking” section… but the WHOLE place… anywhere, everywhere, where-ever!
We could hear a live band upstairs… some kind of rock / honky-tonk / funk band playing. The place was about half-way full of presumably locals (they were too “dressed up” to be truckers. Then the band wrapped it up at 0100… that’s when the entire town came downstairs for breakfast. Talk about carnival freak show! There was more chrome belt-buckles than a 55 Chevy Bel-Aire and a Peterbilt combined! Knucklehead and I could feel our IQ’s dropping and we determined that everyone in there was related in one way or other. We most definitely had a higher-tooth-per-head count than anyone else in there, and the women had enough make-up on to keep Maybeline in business for years to come! And the really scary thing… about everyone in there was aged 50 and up.
So, we finished up and scooted out to the “safety” of the truck as quick as we could (while we could still think for ourselves!)… and thus knucklehead is sleeping so he can get up to deliver at 0750 this morning to the Moberly, MO Walmart DC the last stop of this load.
This trailer we have is an older one, with lots of damage, so we’ll probably end up draggin it south to the yard for repairs before it gets turned in (end of lease) in California. The only problem with that is that there’s no freight at the yard… we got wind from multiple sources (including the night/weekend monkeys in dispatch) that there’s a waiting list of 65 team or solo drivers waiting in the yard for a load! 🙁
We’ll have to see what comes our way after we unload… maybe we’ll luck out? It’s looking like I definitely won’t make my miles before taking Christmas week off… but from what I’ve told in the last 24 hours, that’s probably a GOOD thing. Apparently when you come in to upgrade to solo, your TAH (Time At Home) “clock” resets (Prime likes to have you run a week for one day off). So that would mean I’d have to run at least three MORE weeks to get even three days off! Plus I was also told that they don’t do upgrade training between Christmas and New Years, but I can’t validate that one yet.
So… I’ll still be a team driver when I come home for the week of Christmas, I think it’ll work out in the long run! Hopefully, I’ll still have an IQ by then!