This job can give you a lifetime of stories to tell

You see so many things when living like a modern day gypsy constantly on the move from one state to the next, that you can easily build up a lifetime of tales to tell.  I rolled out of Colorado City this morning carrying this load of "slinky coils" that I picked up late yesterday at the Rocky Mountain Steel Warehouse in Pueblo, Colorado.

After weighing my loaded truck I found that my gross weight was 79,960 pounds.  That is just 40 pounds under the maximum legal weight for an eighteen wheeler.  My fuel tanks were full when I weighed, so I was good to go without having to calculate my fuel burn-off before getting to the first weigh station.

After winding my way up through the Raton Pass and crossing the line into New Mexico I was going to head east on US 87, so I took the exit for Raton New Mexico and stopped at the traffic light to wait for it to turn green.  As I looked to the right to get a look at what might be coming from that direction a young Whitetail buck deer, with about six or eight inches of fresh new velvet covered antler growth protruding from his head, trotted up beside me on the shoulder and stopped abruptly.  He then appeared to be looking at the traffic light as though he were waiting for it to turn green.  The moment it changed he gently trotted out into the intersection while looking both ways and then promptly disappeared down into a small brush filled ravine on the other side of the road.  I wish I could have photographed him, but it all happened so quickly that I didn't even have the presence of mind to grab my phone and snap the photo.

This is what I mean about seeing so many things out on the road.  It seems that I see interesting things every day, and after a while you just get accustomed to experiencing so many varied things that it seems like normal to you.  Having a deer cross an intersection with you is definitely not normal though, and it will go into my mental file of strange yet true stories of life on the road.  Some day when I'm old and grey I'll hear someone say something about a whitetail deer and it will open up that mental file that I have stored away in my mind and I will tell them the story about the time I crossed an intersection in Raton, New Mexico with a Whitetail deer right along the side of my big rig.

I'm headed to San Antonio Texas with this load, and will have plenty of time to get in a 34 hour reset before I deliver it Monday morning.