Caliente!

Okay here's an update of sorts.  I just don't seem to find the time to work on this blog on a regular basis, so all three of you who wait with bated breath on my next enthralling post will just have to excuse my tardiness!  Truck drivers put in long hours and they need their rest during their break times.  There are other things that demand my time when I get a little break, so this little blog kind of takes the back seat at times.  It has been hot.  Of course it is supposed to be hot right now, it is summer time.  I ran that load to Tempe, AZ and it was in excess of 110 degrees up there.  Arizona is a unique place.  Tempe is right there near Phoenix, basically a city in the middle of a dessert.  Almost nothing grows there. I mean they landscape their yards up there by spreading rocks around just to keep the occasional rain shower from washing away the dirt in their yards!  The desert has a rugged beauty that is unique to itself, I always enjoy driving through that area - the temperature change as the evening descends can sometimes be incredibly satisfying.

I was hauling some material used for the stadium seating at the remodeling project of the Arizona State University football stadium.  I had an appointment set for 10 p.m. Friday night.  The paper work indicated that I had to meet a crane to unload me at the stadium and the crane would be there at ten o'clock Friday night.  They are working this construction project at night because of the brutal heat.

Now, no savvy truck driver ever wants to get unloaded that late on a Friday.  "Why is that?"  Well, that means that he is going to be stuck for the weekend with nothing to do.  Your dispatcher will be off, and even though there is always someone on duty that we call "weekend dispatch," there is usually nothing they can do for me.  In fact the way my dedicated account is set up, the weekend dispatcher is not even able to access our information or secure loads for us.  Remember how I talked about freedoms and responsibilities in my last post?  Well here's what I do with those things... I got right on the phone until I could get hold of the superintendent of the construction site.  After discussing the situation with him and explaining that it would be much easier and faster to unload this material with a JLG construction boom that had forks, he agreed with me that there was no reason to use the crane truck.  He also agreed that if I could get there on Thursday at three p.m. they would get right on it and unload me.  After thirty years in the sign business and operating cranes of all sorts, I knew that any construction site would have these JLG Booms sitting around.  That is how you do this stuff and stay successful.  You don't wait around for things to happen, you push for earlier appointments so your time does not get wasted.  My dispatcher was so impressed - in fact he told me in an e-mail "Dale, you get our customers to do stuff for you that nobody else can ever do, no matter how nicely they try to go about it.  I don't understand it.  Our customer service reps already tried to get your appointment changed to an earlier time before we ever dispatched this load to you, they were flatly refused."

Here's some shots of my truck where I had to do an almost three hundred yard serpentine backing maneuver through all sorts of equipment and construction debris and under this passage way into the very football field area itself to get unloaded.

By getting this done early like I did it set me up for a back haul load that came out of the mountains in Arizona.  I wish I could have gotten some shots of the approximately 2 hour trip from Tempe up in to the White Mountain area - it was beautiful, but I was pressed for time and it is just not safe nor easy to stop and park a seventy something foot long vehicle on the side of a twisting mountain road to take photos.  I will say this, it reminded me of the time I had to go through the Salt River Canyon area of Arizona, and I have some photos of that area - so here is what it sort of looked like.

This is an area where much of the land is Indian Reservation land.  But to me they had the most politically incorrect names for the area, not that I am into political incorrectness, because I certainly am not, but the names just struck me as odd.  I'm in Indian reservation territory and I'm going up "White" mountain.  Furthermore the place I'm going to pick up a load of lumber is called "FATCO."  I don't know why but the names just struck me as odd.  FATCO is an acronym for Fort Apache Timber Company.  Another oddity about Arizona is that I was in the desert there at Tempe, but by just driving about an hour up into the neighboring mountains I was in lush Forest growth.  You could barely find a tree or a blade of grass down there in Tempe, but once you get a little higher in elevation everything begins to grow.  The Indians loaded me up with all the lumber I could legally haul, and I set out for my destination in Clifton, TX near Waco.

Clifton turned out to be a sleepy little town that is making an effort to revive itself by revitalizing it's old Main Street area.  I got there Saturday night and slept at the Clifton Trim Company where I would deliver Monday morning.  By getting my appointment moved up in Arizona, it enabled me to keep working over the weekend.  That is how I stay at the top of the drivers in my group.  It's hot in Texas too!

There was a team roping competition going on just down the street from where I was parked, so I went over and watched the cowboys and cowgirls compete for the best times and the pot of prize money.

That picture is of a husband/wife team which got one rope around the calf's neck and another around it's back legs in 5.2 seconds!  That's "gittin er done!"

I enjoyed killing a little time in Clifton.  I walked their main street area...

Found a local Luthier's shop...

Enjoyed looking at the old buildings... This one had a corner stone with a date of 1879 on it.

Check out this plaster work on this porch ceiling that I spotted at one building - you just don't find this type of architectural work anymore...

I also enjoyed a really great breakfast at a local Czech bakery - it was really good!

Since then I've been over to Miami. Florida where I caught this rainbow after a thunderstorm...

And enjoyed the landscaping at my delivery point.  I don't know what this plant is, but it's beautifully colored waxy leaves were very attractive juxtaposed with the lighter colored taller shrubbery behind it.

I also have been up in Connecticut where they blamed me for bringing the heat up there with me from Louisiana.  Yes, it was even hot in Connecticut!

I went from Connecticut down to Cressona, Pennsylvania and enjoyed the Elvis music and the food at the Manheim Diner while waiting on my ten hour break there before heading down to Tampa, Florida with a load of extrusions bound for two different distributors there.

Down in Tampa I spotted these two Sandhill cranes scrounging around for something to eat at the little truck stop I was at.

It was so hot in Tampa, and I needed to take a 34 hour break to reset my clock, so I checked into a hotel for the night.  It was a nice change of pace and the air conditioning worked way better than my truck's!  The pillows were all standing at attention when I entered the room, and the housekeeping personnel left me a nicely folded towel flower!

Okay, now you know what I've been up to.  Today I'm back in Delhi waiting on a load that I will pull out with tonight when it is ready.  My first stop is in Kansas City, and then on to several places in Missouri, and a final stop in Round Lake, IL.  I'm looking forward to my next time at home in July.  I've got a follow up doctor's appointment.  My recent surgery has healed very nicely, and I'm trying to do what I can to protect my skin from further sun damage.

Did I mention how hot it is everywhere?  Mucho Caliente!