Yet another damn blogger and his barbaric yawp heard from...
Flashback: Rainy Days and Tuesdays
As I'm working some of my old stuff into the current blog I thought about doing a little "best of" with my older entries. Not ally a self-fisking (if I could do that I'd never leave the house), but a bit of hindsight reminising about the past. Here's an excerpt from on my my earliest blog entries about my dogs from April 2000:
The Wife is working night shifts all this week. I got the house all to myself. Well, myself and the bitey, scratchy, lovely, pup thing I call "Teena." Pups are amazing, running 90 mph, wild as a fucking rabid beast, demanding play, demanding rough housing, demanding food, then they just fall over and take a nap. Usually tucked into my elbow.
Last night I woke up to find puppy snuggled down on my pillow, right up against my head. She was having a little doggie nightmare (or she was chasing rabbits), I petted her a little. She never woke up, just snuggled closer and got quiet. What can I say, I'm in love! This is as close as I get to having kids of my own.
I even had a few nice words about my elderly puppy:
My older dog, the aging dobie whose name is Gigi, but I'll call Fartbox, is a little jealous, but I'm making the time to pay her more attention. A few days ago I layed her on her back, feet in the hair and trimmed her nails. She really does love it and the attention! The Wife used to paint Gigi's nails bright red. Nothing funnier to me that seeing the big, bad ass Doberman, on her back, feet in the air, COTTON BALLS BETWEEN HER TOES, as the Wife carefully paints each claw. Then Fartbox would wait quietly in that position until she said the polish was dry.
Why do I call her Fartbox? When she sighes and rolls over, it's a sign to cover your nose. Or flee the house altogether. That dog has cleared a room or two in her day...
Teena is still running around and is a very active tennis ball addict. Poor Gigi, AKA Fartbox, passed away in 2001 and she is still missed.
I Love Tunnels, Part 1
It's crazy, but when I'm booking down the road and enter a tunnel, I just gotta take a picture. If you hear of an accident involving a truck in tunnel, it probably wasn't me... probably...
Still kicking...
Still around, I'm working on a few things that might breathe a little life into this useless blog. Just got a wireless subscription through the network that operates at the truckstops I most often patronize, so maybe posting will pick up...
On Terri Schiavo
I see a few folks 'round the blogosphere talking about the Terri Schiavo mess. Check out my old rant via the Internet Wayback Machine. I sincerely hope no one leaves me in that state for 15 years. People need to face the facts, the human being known as Terri Schiavo is already gone. Terri won't be suffering because she's long gone.
All this argument over a brain-less sack of meat kept alive at the behest of machines...
Live from East St. Louis, Illinois.
Been slack in my updating... not that anyone reads these little pearls of wisdom anymore, but what the fuck!
Traveling has been good, the weather hasn't always cooperated but it's not been too bad recently. Still hearing from the Radio Rambos and the Panti-less, it's about the only entertainment get out here, spending 10 to 14 hours a day on the road. But as long as I'm talking about the lovely CB world, lets talk about another group of truckers who should be sealed in burlap bags and beaten severely with heavy mining equipment.
Seem like some folks buy a CB and they think that qualifies the as disk jockeys! They usually clog up channel 19 with their insipid music choices, blasting crap music into the ether and pretty much cutting off any other conversation on the public air waves. Last month as I was crawling through New Jersey at 10 mph, some fool decided to regale us with his favorite Christian music for about 15 minutes, interspersed with no doubt heart-felt commentary on how Jesus saved his life. If you know me at all you know I think the 11th commandment should read "Thou Shalt Keep Thy Religion to Thyself!"
So, me being who I am, I fought fire with fire and inserted my own music into the public airwaves when he finally paused to take a breath. I played the full and complete "Ty Cobb" from Soundgarden. If you're not familiar with the song (and shame on you) , the chorus goes a little like this:
Hard headed, fuck you all!
Hard headed, fuck you all!
Hard headed, fuck you all!
Just add it all to the hot rod death toll!Must have worked because "Jesus Boy" moved off to channel 16. I was tempted to blast another chorus at him and rub it in but, secure in my "victory," I gave him a break. And then continued trundling through New Jersey in 4th gear for another few hours, fully enjoying my trucking lifestyle and the heady stench of diesel exhaust fumes.
It's not often that spending 3 hours going 30 miles gives one simple pleasures...
Radio Rambos and the Pantie-less
You know what? People act the same way on CBs as they do in chat rooms on the internet. Behind a cloak of anonymity certain people feel free to act out in ways they never would in public. Most of these folks are very entertaining but a few are just plain weird. Or maybe they're just trolls. Anyway you look at it, the CB world has it's share of airborne depravity and I've just discovered the tip of the iceberg.
First off, there's the Radio Rambos, the ones who think a CB confers upon them powers of strength and invincibility, you know, like Superman. Why, just last month in Chicago, the dulcet tones of "Ass Kicker" graced my radio. A tough sounding dude who promised to deal out whup-ass to anyone who wanted to step up. A few other wannabees kept trying to take up AK on his offer, but "apparently "AK's radio never was quite working properly well enough to allow him to be able to set a time or place. Go figure... After a few of his listeners (instigated by me, maybe) wanted to know why he wanted to be known as the "Ass Kisser," good old "AK" eventually fell silent. Out of range, I suppose...
And then, as long as my short stint as a trucker has been, I've always heard this husky masculine whisper coming out of the ether and into my Cobra 29 CB: "I ain't wearing no panties!" In every state of the lower 48 that I've been to, at least once or twice a month, I hear the "Pantie-less Guy" make his bold, yet disturbing, fashion statement. Either it's a common meme that gets passed around from one driver to another or PG gets around a hell of a lot. I really kinda hope it's only one guy doing this and not a whole bunch of fucked up individual PGs, maybe raising pointed headed little children who will one day whisper "I got no panties on!" into the microphone of their proud daddy's Cobra 29.
Come to think of it, I don't wear panties either, but you don't hear me bragging about it...
On Truckstops...
Well, just for fun, let me tell you all about where I am now, somewhere in Illinois at a truckstop. A truckstop is only a little bit more than a gas station with a really big parking lot. You get fueled up here; you also have a halfway clean place to take a shit and a place to park the truck overnight so you might sleep for a while.
As parking lots go, it’s pretty big. It would have to be to handle the couple hundred trucks that pull in at all hours of the night. Very rarely one has to pay to spend the night, but usually it’s free. But think of what you are getting for free… A 75-foot by 12-foot spot on the pavement… and that’s it. Some of the fancier places have places to plug in to 120 Vac but they are quite rare. If it’s too cold or too hot, or you want to run your TV, DVD or video game, you have to idle your truck for the power so that you don’t run down your batteries.
I usually just crank up my truck only when needed. Other drivers seem to enjoy running their trucks all night; I guess wasting fuel doesn’t matter to them. I don’t care much about wasting fuel either. The company pays for mine. But the amount of our quarterly bonuses depends on how much we idle, among other factors. And the noise keeps me awake some times.
The bathrooms are usually clean (for a glorified gas station) although the graffiti in the stalls can be pretty thick at times (remind me to tell you later about some of the pitiful, plaintive requests for “love” you’ll find there). You can even get showers, but expect to pay around $8.00 or so. Most truckstop chains give free showers to those who buy fuel from them. Ain’t capitalism grand? You gotta pay to scrub your stanky ass!
And, of course, you can get food and other stuff a trucker might need. But you’ll pay a hefty premium for it. After all, you can’t just drive your 75-foot long, 40-ton truck to the local mini-mart or corner grocery to stock up (you might take up the entire parking lot), so they definitely got you by the “short and curlies” on that account. If you bring in your own mug or thermos, you can get truckstop coffee fairly cheap and it really isn’t too bad if you like plain strong java. There ain’t no Starbucks here!
Once you get past the basic necessities, a truckstop is a way to separate you from your money. Souvenirs, video games, fast-food joints and full service restaurants all compete to part a sucker, I mean trucker, from his cash. I carry my own food and entertainment and save lots of money. If I had indoor plumbing in this beast, I’d never leave the truck at all!
On The Road, On The Air
I guess the laptop and the wireless card still work after so many times being dropped from a height of about six feet to the floor of my truck. Pretty damn spiffy for a piece of shit frankenstien machine. Add one month of wireless service with at the "flying hook," and maybe my lazy ass can finally get around to blogging from the road. Maybe...
Lets see... What shall we talk about first? The fine class of inbred redneck CRACKER that one finds on CB these days? Those lovely car drivers out there that think 40-ton trucks can stop on a dime? Or maybe we'll chat about how Illinois is so gosh-darn proud of their roads that they jacked up the tolls around 200-300%? How about how peachy it is to drive in a snowstorm with substandard wiper blades?
Hmmm... All riviting topics, I know. I guess I'll just have to think about it while I'm eating my dinner. I'll get back to you...
Back from the Road
Internet use is kinda spotty to say the least, while you're on the road. But I hope with the next couple of weeks to try something new. I'm gonna track two weeks of being a OTR truck driver and then I'll post it to the blog whenever I get access, or get home. Whichever comes first.
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