We finally got a load out of Tacoma! We'll be heading east across northern Idaho (no potatoes up there) & watch horses in Montana. Then we'll say hi to the Norskies in Nort Dahkooota & Minasoooota (whatever you do, don't eat the Lutefisk! The Wisconsin Employees' right to know law regarding toxic substances specifically exempts Lutefisk (Wisc. Stat. 101.58(2)(j)(2)(f)) Save your appetite for the Wisconsin Cheese! We will do our best to stay awake as we putter through IL & OH (aka Slohio), both 55MPH states. Eventually we'll end up in Winchester, VA.

It will take 4 1/2 shifts to get there.

2636 paid miles...Sweet!

Thought this was fun:

The Personality Defect Test

Your Score: Hand-Raiser
You are 85% Rational, 57% Extroverted, 0% Brutal, and 14% Arrogant.

You are the Hand-Raiser, that annoying kid in class who always had an answer for everything. No doubt, as a child you probably sat in the front of the class, anxiously waving your hand back and forth in the air while your teacher desperately tried to avoid calling on you because you were the ONLY freaking kid that answered her questions. Clearly, the key traits of your personality are your rationality and your extroversion. You are like a little talkative calculator, in other words. You also tend to be rather gentle and less arrogant than most people. Your presence is a bane to everyone's existence, because you are too nice for your own good and you absolutely will not shut up. So what is your defect, then? Well, you're boring, and when you're not boring, you are just plain annoying with your ultra-logical responses and constant need to talk to others. So keep waving that hand in the air, son. I'm still not calling on you. You are too logical, you talk too much, and your humility and gentleness only makes me hate you more, because they make me feel like I almost SHOULDN'T hate you. But I do. Big time. And by the way, the more you wave your hand in class--your extended hand becoming nothing more than a blur as you insanely wave it, thinking we can't see it--the more smug satisfaction the teacher takes in watching the look of excrutiating pain cross your face as you agonize over not being called on, and the longer we'll wait to call on you, just because we absolutely love torturing you so.

To put it less negatively:

1. You are more RATIONAL than intuitive.
2. You are more EXTROVERTED than introverted.
3. You are more GENTLE than brutal.
4. You are more HUMBLE than arrogant.

My test tracked 4 variables How you compared to other people your age and gender:

You scored higher than 70% on Rationality
You scored higher than 58% on Extroversion
You scored higher than 0% on Brutality
You scored higher than 7% on Arrogance

Compatibility:

Your exact opposite is the Brute.

Other personalities you would probably get along with are the Braggart, the Haughty Intellectual, and the Robot.

Stuck in the Tacoma F'ing J truck stop. Waiting for a load along with 3 other CRST trucks. SeaTac (Seattle/Tacoma area) is one of those areas that does not even come close to having enough truck stop capacity to meet the demand.

Another item for the 'I should never eat this!' list: Flying J sells a skewer of 5 meatballs, each with a piece of bacon in-between, all covered in thick gooey BBQ sauce. On the subject of food, we finally hit a Wal Mart yesterday. They had the new 'Strawberry Cheese Danish' Pop Tarts. Looked good on the shelf. Is it possible to put too much sugar in a Pop Tart? Ugg! They are so sweet you can barely taste the artificial strawberry flavoring.

On the subject of being able to taste your food... I stopped for fuel in Wyoming the other day. On my way to the bathroom my eyes started stinging when I walked past the door to the restaurant. The smell was so bad I couldn't tell if I was in a truckstop or a bar. How is it that they have No Smoking signs in the bathroom but they allow smoking where food is being served!

That custom adaptor cable I MacGyver'ed the other day is showing some more benefits. Now that I have a laptop that can handle the load, I've set up APRSPoint software to automatically update my position via the internet connection every 60 seconds. This will work any time I have a useable cellular data connection. I'm setting my Kenwood TM-D700A ham radio to transmit my position every 5 minutes now. Between the two, I should be in range of something most of the time.

I'm going to wipe out the hard drive on my (slightly) old laptop and reinstall Windows. Maybe that will take care of the instability in the camera software. As you can probably tell, it still sometimes just 'forgets' that it is supposed to keep uploading images until it's told to stop.

For all you Ham Radio Operators out there, I found a source for Anderson Powerpoles that offers them in all colors & flavors at the lowest prices I've found. Check out Connex Electronics.

The 'Find me' button on the camera page hasn't worked since I got in this loaner truck. It works now. MacGyver would be proud of me! All it takes is getting laid over a little while near a Fry's Electronics, my little spare MFJ antenna, a soldering iron, some solder, a headphone extension cable, a 2.5mm to 3.5mm adaptor, a serial cable, wire strippers, a multimeter, some heat shrink tubing & a little butane torch to shrink it. Ummm... should I admit that of all that stuff the only thing I had to buy today was the cables?

Note to anyone considering Windows Vista: You must have at least 2 Gigabytes memory. My new hot rod Duo-Core Toshiba Satellite A205-S4577 laptop was getting really flaky. I upgraded from 1 GB to 2 GB today and it's acting like it should (FAST!!) now.

Somewhere in Ohio. This is part of the display in front of a company that makes headstones. Yes, it really is life size!

Just spent $90.00 in tolls to run a hot load from the Minneapolis area down to near Pittsburgh.

My niece Rebekah is 10 months old with 4 teeth now. Apparently she's as stubborn as the rest of the family, too.
Cute, huh?

When truck drivers talk about their loads, especially in mountainous parts of the country, they are usually talking about how many thousands of pounds of cargo they have on board. It goes something like this:

Jethro: Whatcha' got?
Gomer: 5
Jethro: Sweet!
or
Gomer: 20
Jethro: Not bad
or
Gomer: 46 and a half
Jethro: Sucks to be you!

With full fuel, two drivers and an empty trailer this truck weighs 33,060 Lbs. That means I can carry up to 46,940 Lbs legally, if it is perfectly loaded so as not to exceed allowable axle weights. A single axle can weigh up to 20,000 Lbs, a set of tandems (two axles spaced less than 48" center-to-center apart) can weigh up to 34,000 Lbs.

The wife of one of my best friends was diagnosed with breast cancer last year. It's been a rough road for them, but they're doing ok. Jim is going to do the Breast Cancer 3 day walk. If you are so inclined, this is Jim's Donation Page

I ran into a little snow in Wyoming the other day.

Part of long-haul trucking is living in a truck. Some drivers try to deny this fact by living out of a duffle bag or two, pretending that they are only going to be out for a few days, not several weeks. Others, like me, accept the fact that we spend much more time living in the truck than we do at home. We try to make the truck a nice place to live, installing stuff like good lighting, ham radios , TVs, DVD players, microwave ovens, inverters & bringing along books, videos & other gadgets. I couldn't really transfer everything over to this loaner truck for just a few weeks, so I'm living like the guys in denial, just the basics. What a boring life! No wonder there is such a shortage of OTR (Over The Road) drivers!

I want my truck back!

Just passed an accident on OK I-40W MM 78. I keep my digital camera handy to take pictures of interesting things I see on the road. When I saw the outline under the white sheet next to the car I put the camera back down. Some things you just don't take pictures of. Say a prayer for the family that will be getting that knock on the door tonight.

You've probably noticed that the webcam software has been giving me fits the last few days. It just forgets to upload the images. I downloaded the latest version and I'll install it when I have some time.

For whatever reason Freightliner didn't put air vents in the back of the cab of my loaner truck (5716). I figured it out when my ears would pop when a window or door was opened while the A/C was on high. I just measured the difference with the altimeter on my watch.(every well-dressed techno-geek has one) Window up: 480' Window open: 560'

Kind of like jumping to the roof of an 8 story building in 100 milliseconds!