The Update You've Been Waiting For

I know. You couldn't sleep last night for all your concern over whether or not I beat the weather. Or whether the weather beat me. Or whether weather is...Naw. I can't keep it going.

The answer is no. I did not beat the weather. But not for a lack of trying. Good news is that I did get everything off the truck last night and got parked safe. The bad news is that I'll not be stopping at the Petro Truck Stop in Remington, IN at exit 201 again. That is unless I need to use the rest room. And even then, I may decide to...never mind. Let's just say, it was not a good experience.

The background: Last Friday I got to work to load trucks, fired up the three that needed loaded (mine being one of them) and coiled up all the electric cords. (We plug them in at night due to the cold.)I was gonna load mine first and so I climbed up inside and the first thing that greets me is the irritating alarm for the Low Air Warning. I glance at the gauge, the air should be up high enough by now to quiet the alarm, and I see that it is. 120psi. Right where it's supposed to be. What's the alarm for then. Wait. There it is. The computer on the dash says "1 Active Fault". The nice thing about these types of trucks is that it'll usually tell you right off what's wrong with it. So after pushing 5 buttons 37 times and scrolling through the diagnostic menu, not to be confused with the diabetic menu, I discovered that cylinder #5 had a bad injector. Sooo, my truck is going nowhere but the shop.

Luckily the weather was up a little and the replacement rig fired up even though it had not been plugged in, albeit with much belching, farting and smoking. Just like a few truck drivers I know.

Fast forward to Tuesday morning. I'm in a truck that is not usually mine, I'm loaded and headed towards Indy with great hopes of not getting caught up by the weather that was coming. I'm running south on 65 and my wife calls. I'm talking to her for a few minutes and then hear it. That distinctive bang that signals your day has just gone in the crapper. A quick look in the side mirror confirms this as tire strips are flying out behind me.

It was then that my wife heard me say some things she does not normally hear me say. And yes, I did apologize later.

I pull over, creeping down the shoulder til I can see a yardstick and then try to figure out the nearest town. Crap, my map is in my other truck. I call the office, gonna have them look it up, but they can't tell by the mile marker alone. Don't ask me. Finally, I see an exit ahead, Remington, IN. The boss is on the phone. Good news. He tells me there's a Petro at Remington and they have a garage. Cool. I'll call you back when I'm on the road again.

So I pull up to the garage. Tell the lovely lady that I have a flat on the trailer and after gathering all the pertinent information she tells me to put it in door one. This I do.

Now here's where it gets interesting. There's one mechanic on duty. Two others are on the clock but they are out on road calls. And this one mechanic just started eating lunch. Knowing the importance of a meal, I do not hurry him along. I wait patiently in the truck. He finally comes out and gets started as I check the weather again and see how I'm doing.

I hear the air wrench that these guys use to take our big lug nuts off. (The ones on the wheels! Get your mind out of the gutter.) But it sounds as though they are not coming off. You can tell when the nut breaks free. After listening to this for a bit, I get out and see if there is a problem. Not that I can fix it but if I'm gonna be a lot longer, I need to let some people know, right?

And here's where it gets interesting. The mechanic tells me he does not have a socket for these nuts. WHAT!?! Here is a garage with 5 bays where they can do hundreds of different repairs from changing light bulbs to rebuilding engines, and they don't have a socket that will fit my lug nuts? Now I know what your thinking, but no. They are the same size nuts as the vast majority of other trucks have. Nothing special. So he's trying to get them off with the next size higher. And now I'm concerned he's gonna bust something. My confidence is waning fast in this fellows abilities. And the fact that he moves at the speed of frozen custard is not helping.

This should be a thirty minute job. I mean, I'm in YOUR garage. You don't even have to come to me. I brought it to you! Seems the socket that he needed was in the road repair truck. They went to NAPA and tried to buy another one, but NAPA didn't have one, apparently. So we waited til the road repair guy gets back, and then my repair starts.

The expected thirty minutes turned into an hour and forty-five minutes. RIDICULOUS! Needless to say, I was not happy. And by now I know that I will hit the bulk of the weather by the time I get to Indy. The truth is that I hit it a while before I got to Indy and it was bad from there on.

The one thing I was grateful for was that it had not been raining on those roads first. That would have been a nightmare I would have parked long before I did.

But I made it to Dayton, an hour and a half late after having started out almost two hours early, and then made it to Columbus, two and half hours late. Oh well, what ya gonna do?

By this time it's bad, traffic is light but what's there is crawling, 25-40 at best and I hear that the road that gets me to the truck stop I was planning on parking at is closed. Crap. So it's back across Columbus to the west side where I have two options to park. One behind a Wendy's in actual truck parking or an old warehouse that's up for sale. But if it's for sale then there's no plowing contract and we're supposed to get up to 10 inches which could stick me fast. I opt for the Wendy's. It takes a little maneuvering but I finally get in there amongst the others, out of the way, not in a legitimate spot, but I'm in the corner and everybody can get around me. I'm done.

The weird thing is that I sat there, in the seat, staring out the window for probably ten more minutes, listening to the weather band on the radio. Doing Nothing. Just Sitting.

I think they call that "detox"?

Anyway, I was parked, empty and safe. The boss calls me today after I woke up. Sit tight he tells me. They got hit harder than Columbus did and the road into our plant wasn't plowed at all. No way could I get the truck in there. So here I sit. Again. Still. Behind the Wendy's, (God Bless You, Dave Thomas) with a full belly, and a good broadband signal. I'm warm and safe. Other than being home with my family, I couldn't ask for a whole lot more.

As my mother would say, I'll be home tomorrow, Lord willing and the creek don't rise.