 Poster: A snowHead
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Chapter One ∼ Baby steps
Cold and Wet!
That was first, followed by the sharp scratch of dirt and blood on my teeth, then pain.
The bus spat air from its brakes and loudly grumbled itself out into traffic leaving me laying in the storm culvert staring into the astonished eyes of two heavily laden little girls who's open mouthed stares caught the curse in my throat and turned it into a laugh.
I didn't know what the hell I had to laugh about but it seemed to be the only thing stopping the tears, mine and theirs. A couple of seconds later a minivan crunched to a halt with its passenger door's whispered opening drowned by a mother's urgent shout for the girls to "get in NOW!". Their wordless response unshoulderd backpacks into the van and two pairs of 'Hello Kitty' sneakers slipped past a fast closing electric door and I was hit in the face with more dirt and gravel as 'Mom' got her precious charges away from the bum in the ditch.
It had taken quite an effort to get here, easily starting with the decision to quit truck driving before the Winter began when my button was pushed by 4 days of virtually unpaid driving while clearing up someone else's mess. I'd had a bit of a health scare over the last 18 months which really focused my mind on the future, that and my appalling lack of fitness that was going to come back to haunt me much later especially as one of the treatments had reversed all my weight loss achievements and granted me a magnificent pair in dire need of support.
Back to November, one of the features of my last company was their treatment of drivers as simply facilitators to moving freight, just monkeys behind the wheel. The regular redirection and swapping of loads and destinations had grown from an irritation to a festering annoyance, so when just a few miles North of an early delivery in Atlanta, the incoming message 'beep' from the communications satellite head dropped my heart into my stomach as I read, 'divert load to Atlanta yard, relay instructions next page'. This little homily, so dispiritingly familiar, was always the harbinger of a complete screw-up,and yet again it didn't fail to fall to my expectations.
The first issue is the mandatory inspection all trucks and trailers undergo when entering one of the depot yards. It doesn't matter that you may have already been inspected once or twice already that day if you're working on deliveries between yards, you still have spend anything between 30 minutes to two hours sitting in a queue to get your tyres kicked by a bored mechanic. Intrinsically it's a good idea, extrinsically it contributes very little to safety or productivity by driver or workshop. Given that we drive through an ID sensor for both truck and trailer at every depot I can only see that the company is data deluged and process poor. The Atlanta yard is a big and busy one so that was at least three hours chopped off my remaining time . . . and it was.
When I finally roll out with an empty trailer onto the Atlanta ring road, a crumbling, multi-lane 65 mile per hour rolling accident, nicknamed by some truckers as the "Watermelon 500", dispatch sends me directions South to a truckstop on I 75 and the load information for a Walmart Distribution Centre on I10 in Florida. There's a red flag already. You either make an 'on time' delivery to these facilities or the proverbial and the propeller decorate your scenery. The delivery window is tomorrow early am, I estimate a six hour drive time plus the 30 minutes drop and swap leaves me a couple of hours spare including my mandatory 10 hour break, This is manageable and I'll have a fresh start the next morning. . . You can already hear God beginning to chuckle.
Wonders of wonders, the loaded trailer is right where it should be but with no-one to swap with, a call to dispatch informs me that the other driver had run out of hours to drive and should be there, I wasn't going to worry about it, just get on and do the job. Fortunately he'd left the paperwork in the exterior document box. Red flag number two, the load weight is 46,000lbs, right on our limit and the other driver hadn't weighed the trailer or at least hadn't left a copy of the scale ticket and I have to spend at least 20 minutes getting that done . . . tick, tock, tick, tock.
The maximum gross weight of a standard articulated combination here is 80,000lbs easily split between the front, middle and tail wheels as 12/34/34,000lbs. I looked at the printout, 10,500/21,000/48,000, Oh crap! there's no way this can be driven through Georgia and I not end up in gaol. A flurry of messages to HQ has me waiting for instructions . . . tick, tock, tick, tock.
North! North to the fortunately nearby original shipper who's warehouse manager greets me with "So you're the asshole telling us we don't know how to load a trailer!". saying nothing I handed him the scale ticket.
"Put it on dock 3."
"Can you give me an eta for completion?"
"We're busy, but I'll put someone onto it when they come off break in 15."
"Thanks, I've got about 40 minutes before this run is in service failure."
"Not my problem driver, It'll get done when it gets done."
Oh Great! this is not going to work, so it's back to the message board with full details of time and drive estimates and a formal request for a rescheduled delivery appointment. It was four hours later when I'm released from the dock, look at the load and seal the doors. Reaching underneath to unlock the the axle slider to put the wheels within their legal range . . . and the release lever comes away in my hand, it had been resting in its slot. It's getting late in the afternoon now and phoning was the only way I'd get any action on a repair and a chance to chase the revised schedule. Half an hour later I wrestle this ill handling rig into the Atlanta bypass evening rush hour.
All US cities seem to develop their own unique driving style from the focused aggression of New York, the explosive weaving lane dance of Dallas, the speeding discipline in LA. They are all different, but Atlanta is a particular joy. Its economic diversity well reflected in its automotive choices, the variety beginning with the rotting, rolling corpses of 70's and 80's full size sedans to the latest offerings from Stuttgart and Maranello, add to that mix are the all Big Rigs running North/South and East/West through Georgia as we're all forced to use the ring road . . . It's the M25 . . . but it so much isn't too. Its concrete surface veneered with the effluvia of millions and tyre polished to a perfect eggshell sheen, all waiting for the first drops of a Summer shower to overture and open with the clash of percussive metal. Which, of course keeps me from getting back to the yard in time to get the trailer repaired today. At least it puts me first in the queue for inspection in the morning.
Morning, has me trying to explain to the halfwit with the clipboard that I'd had an inspection yesterday, the trailer was here for repair and I was under a timed delivery . . . even though I was yet to get that time, sometimes you do have to 'stretch' a little . . . An hour later I roll up to the workshop door with a shopping list of failures, the worst of which I discover is the 'out of stock' ABS valve. Initiating yet another round of messages to dispatch and the Walmart customer service rep, who has been strangely silent about a new delivery appointment.
22:00 has me fixed and rolling toward Florida with a 06:00 delivery. I quite like driving at night, quiet roads, fewer fools and I can listen to Radio 4Extra with more than half an ear, stop for a shower without waiting and usually find the State scale/inspection stations closed.
Rolling up to the Walmart DC gate at 05:45, bright and cheerful, still with plenty of work time in hand, to have the gatekeeper scan the code to declare "You were supposed to be here yesterday. There's a truckstop East on 10, go there and get your company to reschedule"
"It has a revised delivery."
"Not on my system it hasn't. Turn it round at the yard and go fix it with your dispatch"
This is when it becomes a problem. I won't get any help or action till at least 08:00 central time when people get to work at HQ and that's three hours from my eastern 06:00, add the 20 minutes to the truckstop and most likely the two hours it will take for any real action from Customer Service and I'm going to be out of drive time and stuck with yet another undeliverable load. I've had enough. At the truckstop I type out the entire story of this journey into the message centre to dispatch and add the codicil that I was driving the load 60 miles to the Jacksonville yard and they can find another driver for both the load and the truck.
A $160 taxi ride home with a pile of plastic containers full of the detritus of truck living. It's like being a boat, the longer it's in the water the more its bottom accretes crap. It's the same with a driver's backside in the chair. To an apartment I hadn't seen for nine months, first order of the day, a cuppa. A short walk up Kings St. to grab milk, bread, eggs and cheese . . . oh and beer. The groceries weren't even in the fridge before the first bottle was open. I spent the late afternoon with the rest of the six-pack sitting on the back porch watching the sun paint the back walls of old St. Augustine in pastels.
What next? I'd always promised my self a winter season and try and find out if my skills are transferable to a more formal level with the PSIA. Where to go? I didn't really want to spend my time on the white concrete of the North East so frequently described on the ski forums. Canada was a bit too far for convenience. That left the Rockies and Colorado or Utah. Years ago I'd mapped all the US ski resorts into Google Earth and there on my screen was this fat cluster just 60 miles West of Denver. I even found an on-line acquaintance teaching in the area who kindly gave me a couple of contacts for the ski school at Copper mountain. A little more time found me a Rocky Mountain Super Pass for $500 for the season . . . result, 5 resorts at any time. Well, that was easy, bang off an email and find myself some wheels . . . God's chuckle deepens.
With an eye to my waistline I borrowed my landlords's bicycle and sweated around St. Augustine just to see what was sitting in the used car lots, I knew I wanted a van or mini-van (people carrier). The first thing I discovered was that neither my crotch nor my legs were prepared for the grueling mountains of Florida nor a cheap rubber saddle, the second was that car salesmen really are universally repellent. So with my various rashes and cramps suitably salved and medicated I sat down in front of Craig's List, turned on my BS filter and waded into the fray. It was astonishingly easy to find an equally astonishing number of crappy motors, many with mileages in low earth orbit or 'minor damage' amounting to significant missing sections of bodywork. Anything that looked even remotely promising needed to be contacted within hours of it appearing . It took three weeks to find my own personal 'gilded turd', a 2001 Ford Econoline 150 day van, converted with a fold down rear bench seat and two captain's chairs in the middle. That it had been lurking on Craig's for a month should have been a warning but it was relatively close in Datona Beach so I hired a car for a couple of days and went for a look.
Love at first sight? Not really. Although rust free apart from one spot and generally clean it did have an interior hint of incontinent child and had obviously been sitting for an extended period with cracked tyres, barely functioning brakes and dry cracked suspension bushes. On top of that was a lumpy engine note. It wasn't worth the $5K asking price so I negotiated, didn't get far till I made a list of what needed doing and said I'd get a price for that and call back. Bargained him down to $2K and the risk of the engine work on me thinking it just needed a tune-up . . . just a tune-up.
Trusting my landlord's word that he knew a good private mechanic shop, off it went for three bloody weeks, he'd neglected to tell me that the two guys owning the business were going through a divorce. Three weeks to do 16 hours work at $100/hr, but at least I'd been there often enough to see what was actually being done, listen to these two bitch about each other and to get the bad news about number eight cylinder . . . 35psi . . . valve or bore? Air leak test suggested it was a bad valve and might just be coked up, a bit of fuel additive and a long run may sort it out. Next stop, a little back yard body shop where a wizened alcoholic with the smelliest dog I have ever encountered took a week to touch up the roof gutter cancer. By this time it was into January, Christmas and New year had passed quietly and all my worldly goods and chattels were packed and stacked by the door, the apartment cleaned and everything I'd worn out replaced. Temporary tags and registration on and in the van and with all my stuff loaded I still had just enough room to slip into a sleeping bag on the rear bench. So, in the early afternoon of 9 January I said my goodbyes and rolled North and West, first stop Kansas City to file my taxes, an easy 1,200 mile warm up.
[img]https://www.dropbox.com/sc/s9zcgxxg74nvm91/AAAR6SOFu3HnqhRqttQsJZUza[/img]
I wasn't intent on breaking any records nor the van so I stopped in a Georgia Walmart for my first night and tested the bunk . . . just big enough, nice and firm, great. 5 AM is welcomed by the urethral urgency experienced by most old men but thankfully no longer the three times a night that had become so common nine months ago and you have to credit Walmart for probably its only altruistic act of having 24hr toilets. North on I75 then West on I24 at Chattanooga, through Nashville where I filled for the second time, calculated my first mpg measure and had a wee WTF moment as 12.9 sniggered at me from my phone, perhaps it'll improve as I drive? Onward through Kentucky crossing the Ohio River into Illinois at the home of Superman. I24 West ends at I57 North to Mt. Vernon IL, where sits a Pilot truckstop for the night and where I64 looks west to St. Louis and I70's straight run through Kansas City to Denver. It's three in the afternoon, I could keep driving but that would set me trying to cross the Mississippi into St Louis at just about peak traffic time, there's no sense in that so I'll stay here and set off early in the morning.
Trying to look down past the tub of lard around my middle reminded me that this wasn't going to be an asset in the mountains. Dug out my running shoes, tights and a lightweight jacket, checked Google Maps to see where the small road next to the Pilot led to and set out to wobble, wheeze and chafe along its crumbling verge.
Hearing the grumble of a large diesel I glanced back, a school bus was a couple of hundred feet behind and well into the middle of the road, I kept going. As its nose past me its lights came on, the brakes squealed and this jaundiced bus swung right to the grass banked kerb with me still alongside. SHlT! With an abject lack of grace and agility I leapt up onto the bank, undershot by six inches, tried to grab a road sign pole, missed and tumbled over into the oily murk of a storm ditch, smacking the right side of my face into a small tree stump on the way down cutting my cheek on my teeth and biting my tongue. Kneeling, hands in the muck, I could already see past the stars to blood dripping from my mouth. Released from its brakes the bus rumbled away as I looked over my shoulder to it, two small speechless girls stared back.
I was sitting on the banked verge still spitting blood and mud just a few minutes later when the local Sheriff arrives, lights on and in a hurry. You don't make any sudden movements in these situations. Glancing back he stepped out of a brand new Dodge Charger and hand on weapon walked over to me.
"Hello officer."
"You want to tell me what happened here?"
"Tha school bus forced me off the road and I tripped into the ditch."
"That's all?"
"Yes, why?"
"We've had a call that a man attacked two children. You want to give me some ID and tell me what you are doing here?"
I've been here before, you don't risk being out in public without some sort of ID, so as I'm fishing my driving license from my sock I tell my story and I can see him begin to relax at the sound of my accent. He takes my license, adds "I don't think I need to restrain you so just sit there, do you want me to call an EMS?" and returns to his cruiser. I'm still sitting there 10 minutes later, face really beginning throb, but I've stopped bleeding when he returns.
"You're ok, that mother is being over protective and has revised her call and there's nothing else to hold you for . . . you ok?"
"Not too sure, can I get a ride back to my van" I'm beginning to feel a bit sick and trembly. He takes me the short ride back to the truckstop and on the way I start bleeding again. He's not happy about leaving me but I thank him and grab a towel, Ibuprofen, some clean clothes and go buy a shower.
I'm woken at three AM by some serious throbbing pain and the right side of my face a pink balloon. More Ibuprofen and the rest of the night with a bag of ice pressed to it, it helps but by daylight I'm getting worried. Then of all things a police car draws into the bay next to me and the deputy knocks on my window, "You the English guy going to Colorado?" . . . "yes" . . . "Sheriff sent me to check you were OK."
"Not really, can you tell me where the nearest ER is"
"Yeah, you look like hell, grab your gear and I'll take you."
I grabbed my wallet, locked the van and arrived at the ER with a police escort all courtesy of Sheriff Clark.
Like many people I've had a long and ongoing battle with my teeth and have suffered with a small pool of bacteria having the slow and occasional nibble at the bone supporting my teeth. I've been very good and managed to keep most of them but that little reservoir of nasty was still playing hide and seek with my immune system. Guess what that smack in the face released? In 24 hours I'd had three teeth pushed out by a rabid infection and an arm stuck with IV antibiotics. I was a little sick for two days and very grateful that I'd signed into a decent insurance policy in December . . . only missing one little detail, I was waiting to talk with my dentist in Kansas City before choosing the best dental plan for my aging molars. This I was to rue as cleaning up the infection site in my skull was covered by my insurance, putting the teeth back in was not. $1200 per tooth to get my own teeth back! It was the morning after that whilst I was getting used to the temporary brace that I had a visitor, Sheriff Clark was back.
"how ya feeling?"
"A lot better, I'll be released today, thank you for asking."
"Sorry, I'm here on business, your truck was stolen."
There are few feelings worse than the one that begins, 'what the hell do I do now', and there's just a huge NOTHING where a thought should be.
"It's not as bad as it seems, they didn't get far, it looks like something happened to the engine and they stopped on the main road through town. We can't tell if anythings missing but we've impounded it for forensics and as soon as you get out come down the station and we can file the reports. We're pretty sure we know who it is so when we know what we're looking for we may be lucky and get some of it back."
I got away from the hospital in a flurry of forms the next morning, taxi to the police station and a sad looking van. They'd tried to go through my storage boxes and dragged out my skis, tearing the crap out of my ski bag, my phone and laptop, sunglasses and some clothing were gone, but that seemed about it till I tried to start the motor . . . metal on metal . . . they'd ragged it down the road from the truckstop and blown it to shrapnel. I spent the rest of the day filling out more paperwork and having the van released from impound, there were clear prints on the outside but nothing identifiable on the interior so no arrest or hope of recovery for any of my property. Anyone can touch a car, it's getting inside that leads to proof of a crime. They hadn't even achieved much more than scratching the door jam getting in.
AT&T were quick to cancel and replace the old phone, I booked into a Day's Inn and set about rearranging my life, fortunately my accountant is a real petrol head and two days later my van's on his trailer and heading for BuiltRight Engines in Parkville MO. and I'm heading for three weeks in his basement. My rent, as it turns out is my rebuilding a bathroom and kitchen in a house he'd just bought with his son. Funny how life turns in circles, or in my case seems to orbit a mobius band. It was fun to get my fingernails choked with cement, plasterboard dust and tile adhesive. Even more interesting to find how building regulations are as labyrinthine as Europe yet almost unregulated . . . as schizophrenic as the rest of this country.
To be cont. . . . . . .
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Obviously A snowHead isn't a real person
Obviously A snowHead isn't a real person
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Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see?
Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see?
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Alastair Pink, +1
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You need to Login to know who's really who.
You need to Login to know who's really who.
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Ah starts to explain the hiatus in your season plans. At any point did you consider the " normal" plan of a straightforward car and renting an apartment in Colorado? 
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Anyway, snowHeads is much more fun if you do.
Anyway, snowHeads is much more fun if you do.
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Dave of the Marmottes, you have read my sig ? 
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You'll need to Register first of course.
You'll need to Register first of course.
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Masque, I've always enjoyed your posts and having met you (too briefly) in Les Arcs 2005 I know something of your colourful life - but hey as you get older the colour intensity just goes up a few levels.... great story of a technicolour winter.
PS stick to tiling bathrooms and avoid drains.
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