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...My Life as 'Drive away' driver
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.. the trip continues from HERE 230115 IA-NC 2 RV's to North Canton OH ... spending the night at Cedar Falls IA 5 AM alarm. BB slept great, I did OK until 2 AM. Breakfast starts here at 7 AM on weekends and we pull out at 6 AM. BB grabs an orange and a yogurt. When I go in for our receipt, the pre-printed one is hardly readable so that offer to print a new one. They did, but it wasn't for my room. Then they re-print mine, but each time the printing is lighter and lighter. I keep the 1st one. But all this has cost us minutes. Non-stop from the hotel to the shipper to pick up our car. Three hours, so we are pushing it. I have almost everything moved from the rental to our car by the time BB uses the restroom. On our way in we notice that the shipper has 100+ RV's lined up in their employee lot again and most are the better paying no-tow units. Work is a-comin'. We haven't seen much snow since we left MN. As we got closer to Forest City there was more snow, but still mostly just drifts. In just the few miles north from the shipper to the border there is more snow. Some places covering the ground in non-drift area's. Once in MN there is even more snow but some of the fields are still bare from being blown bare. But once we are <> 20 miles into MN the ground is covered everywhere. I used to stop at the cemetery next to the airport when I was waiting for BB. I wish I would have today. Snow is pretty much covering the makers except for the one name on top. The only paths are where they have plowed for new burials. 2nd stop - instead I park in the cell phone area and wait. I have time enough to move some items and do some paperwork before BB calls. Besides the snow, the other reason I didn't stop at the cemetery is I wanted to be ready to drive as soon as BB called, not be 5-10 minutes from my car looking for a grave marker. 3rd stop was the Jimmy John's in Eagan. We looked and that area seemed to be the closest, quickest area to get food. Today I got a regular instead of a 'slim' as I had not eaten breakfast. Too much, a slim would have been plenty. We often will stop at Honey Baked but they take a little longer ... and now we see that this location is no longer open on Sundays. Not sure when that started. 4th stop was for fuel in Albert Lea at Loves. Gas was cheaper back in Owatonna but then the tank would not have been as full at the lot. 5th stop is back at the shipper. We had planned for it to take us four hours to get to the airport and back. It took us five. Now we know, but will we remember. We are the only ones there when we get to the lot but a few minutes later there are three more people picking up. We keep moving and do not talk to any of them. It is 32+ while we are picking up so that helps. Someone posted on FB that it was warmer in MN at Dodge Center a few days ago than it was in FL this AM. Reminds me ... last year, later in January we headed to FL with one RV to get away from the cold. After we dropped in FL we had to get south of Fort Meyers, down by the Miami area to be south of the freeze line. We didn't make but a few dollars that trip. 6th stop is Floyd at Loves for fuel. Today the person at the fuel desk just takes my cards to hang on to them ... and never turns the pump on. So I go back in, they have no idea how to turn the pumps on (would have been nice if they had told me that) Neither did the 2nd person, finally a 3rd person was able to get it started. When I went back in to pay, again that 1st person had no idea how to ring up a fuel charge. A 4th person came to the desk and was able to ring me up, after a couple of tries. All of this takes time. But it didn't change what we were doing. From here BB makes a reservation in Cedar Falls. It will be dark by then. 7th and final stop for the day is at the Comfort Inn. We walk across the parking lot to Kwik Star/Kwik Trip for food. BB gets sushi and I get deep fried chicken. No good sandwiches today and only two kinds of soup. Plus we had gotten extra cookies at Jimmy John's at noon. :) We did see a few RV's today. Easy to pick out the ones with the wrap on the front end. Load board US - 153 IA - 42/41 Nothing of interest shipping from OH, but there are a couple of short ones in IN that could keep us busy while we wait for work. We do have tomorrow mapped out. Should get to Toledo. Then from there it will be four hours to the drop on Tuesday. Since we were there last time, they have built a new Loves Truckstop at the next exit. We will park one RV there after we fuel, then swing past the airport and then to the drop. All within about a couple of miles. Could walk it, likely won't. 230116 IA-NC 2 RV's to North Canton OH ... spending the night at Holiday City OH Alarm at 5:30 AM. Breakfast is real eggs, bacon, potatoes, etc. I thought the eggs were good the first couple of bites, but then I realized that they were very, very salty. So salty that I quit eating them. We pull out at 7 AM. It is close to first light. IA scale is open but everyone is rolling across it including us. Just a few miles down the road and my check engine light comes on. BB says hers came on about a half hour later. That 'should' be early enough that it has time to re-set on it's own before we get to the drop. I have checked and there is a dealer less than 30 miles from the drop so we'll have a few more hours for it to re-set tomorrow. Today we don't stop in Center Point, but we have on other trips. Right across from the truckstop is a Case farm dealer. Over the last few months the place has become just about empty, I thought maybe they were closing down. The last time I only could see four pieces of new equipment. Two tractors, a rake and a ... small square hay baler. I didn't realize they even made those anymore. I never notice them being transporter or sitting in lots. But now I have looked them up and most everyone still makes the small balers. 1st stop is for fuel in Davenport at Loves. 2nd stop is the Loves in Utica for fuel and food. By putting in fuel here, we will have enough to get to OH where fuel is a little cheaper and from there we will make it to our drop. Food here is McD's. I end up with nuggets. Haven't had them for a while, and it will likely be a while longer before I do again. 3rd stop is the rest area in Rolling Prarire IN. A little over two hours. Seems longer coming past Chicago. Traffic isn't stopped but heavy. I find a truck going a little over the speed limit and follow him almost the whole way. People don't ride as close behind you if they can see you are following a semi. I noticed the billboard for the Loves on Grant says that they only sell truck diesel now. We used to stop there when it was a Flying J and we needed propane. Not a nice place 20 years ago. Not sure what it is like now. I had thought we might stop there if Utica didn't work. Glad we did not. On both the Indiana entrance and exit to the tollway, we used the 'ticket' lanes. There are EZ-Pass only lanes but I generally avoid them. Today there was a semi on both ends stuck in the EZ-pass only lanes that couldn't get the arm to raise, their pass wasn't working. 4th stop is the Loves in Edon for fuel and food. We put in 13 more gallons each, eventually. The fuel desk couldn't get our pumps turned on. They called Love's tech support and tried a few things including re-booting those pumps. Finally we moved to another pump. Our hotel does have an in-house restaurant, T-Sat. Today is Monday. So we get food at Arby's. Gyro's. Worst bun/bread I have had anywhere. BB is just done with gyro's. We'll see on that, there are only two items she can get turkey and this is one of them. From here BB makes a reservation for the closest hotel. We had hoped to make it another hour from here, instead we will do 10 minutes. There was also a place 30 miles down the road that showed a Best Western on the map but the map was old. Now it is a ma-pa hotel. 5th and final stop is the Quality Inn in Holiday City. I have stayed here under various names ... hotel names, not aliases for me. 100's of rooms and they are about empty. But when we walk in, we can hear the person in the next room ... why ... why ... ??? Today it was raining almost all day. Luckily we got out of IA, there was a tornado tonight in the area we passed through at 8 AM today. One of the other drivers said they re-routed their trip to avoid the tornado ... and then got stalled on the side of the road and then towed. Load board US - 188 IA - 81 Tomorrow will be interesting. 1st we need for the check engine lights to go out on their own. Then we still have 200+ miles to go. And there is a storm coming into the mid-west so even tho that is home, we may not want to take a trip back there quite yet. The short trip we had looked at yesterday is gone from near our drop. More work back in MN if we had gotten that local trip there :( 230117 IA-NC 2 RV's to North Canton OH (delivered) ... spending the night at Elkhart IN No alarm. We were both in bed early. Breakfast at 6:30. Eggs and maple sausage. Ready to leave at 7 AM just after the sun has come up. Enough water on the road that the reflection from the sun makes it hard to drive at times. 1st stop is in Clyde at the rest area. When we get back in our RV's, BB calls and says her check engine light has gone off. Mine has not. So we add a stop. 2nd stop is the last oasis in Cleveland before we exit the tollway. I shut my RV and re-start it after 10 second. My check engine light goes off and we pull back on the road right away. 3rd stop is the Loves in North Canton just past the drop. After we fuel, we leave BB's RV in the parking lot. After she has parked, I go to throw one more item in the RV and can't get in, she has parked too close to the next car. So I throw my things back in my RV ... not thinking that the person in the next car may not be able to get in theirs ... I swing through the airport to drop off BB to pick up the rental car. 4th stop is the drop. We have been here before but I didn't remember where to park until I was on the property this time. I have been using bolts and wing nuts to hold on our plates on these units. But there is no way to hold the heads as they fast the RV. Today my bolts were getting corroded and I had to use the vise on the threads to be able to turn the wing nuts. That was a pain. But I am afraid if we use cable ties that they will snap in the cold weather. BB gets there before I am done with my issues, and the drop is about half done inspecting. But when I am done, I ask and get the OK to go and get BB's RV. By the time we get back and get our things out of BB's RV, they are done with mine and start on hers. We head into the building to wait. No issues with either ... we are good to go. At first we sit in the lot to decide the where of where we are going to go. There are two trips close but not going where we want. We end up deciding to deadhead to IN where more of our shippers are and we will get there about dark so we will spend the night. 5th stop is up the road in Akron at a Freddie's Custard. Onion burger and a cherry malt for me. To go. Full, stuffed. 6th stop is the rest area near Genoa. This is one of the oasis they are re-building. I think this one used to have a DQ and a BK and those two will be replaced by a Hardee's. The coffee shop will be the same one but will be moved. 7th and final stop for the day is Elkhart at the Comfort Inn. We were going to stay at a Best Western but it was $100+. Then we looked at a Sleep Inn for half the price. Until BB looked at the reviews of the Sleep Inn and saw the why ... so we ended up at the Comfort Inn. We have stayed at the Sleep Inn last time and it wasn't an issue but maybe we didn't read the reviews first. We have a car so we drive to Callahan's for food. Home cookin' instead of Cracker Barrel. BB had almost the same thing as she would have either place. I got a chicken salad sandwich instead of meatloaf. Plus soup and apple sauce. Too much food again. I couldn't and didn't eat it all. We have spent hours looking at trips today. There have been ones to AZ and CA ... too far. We have looked in detail at other trips and up to a few minutes ago thought we had a plan. But it comes down to, we will make more money if we just deadhead home than keep working. That is what happens when we have to pay for a rental car, hotels, and only one of us driving. The math doesn't work. We make more with two of us driving and then deadhead home. Another issue playing in this time is the weather. Right now we can head home, if we wait a half a day, then we have to wait until the storm passes to move. Load board US - 286 IA - 64 230118 IA-NC 2 RV's to North Canton OH (delivered) ... spending the night at home 5 AM local? 4 AM home time? Anyway, it was early. Early, after a rough night. I dreamt I wasn't feeling well because of how much I had eaten yesterday. I didn't feel a whole lot better when I woke up. Breakfast - they had one carton of yogurt, peach yogurt. So it was eggs and sausage for me. We pull out at 7 AM. Plan was to buy gas near the hotel. But the actual price was $.50 more per gallon than listed online. So we decide it will be cheaper on the toll road. Wrong again ... it had been cheaper on the toll road, back in OH. We should have gotten off the toll road and fueled at one of the truck stops but that would take more time than we wanted to spend. 1st stop is for fuel at the Sunoco at the Rolling Prairie oasis. It looks like the storm has slowed by about three hours so we should miss it completely. 2nd stop is at a rest area near Minooka. 3rd stop is for food and fuel in Davenport IA at the Loves/Arby's. Love's is still under $3, the other two stations and most other stations we see today are another $.30+ per gallon. We are just a couple of minutes before 10:30 so we can still get breakfast at Arby's. And for breakfast you can get potato cakes. Didn't know that. Also had a bacon croissant. Third stop of the day and it is not even 10:30 in the morning. We didn't see this today, but I remembered it when we passed today. The truck wash in Walcott ... there was a semi, oversized parked crossways before the entrance. Now I am assuming here, but I am guessing he got to the door and didn't fit through. So he had to get turned around and have everyone move so he could exit on the one entrance lane. His oversized load was a Claas combine. ??? What was he thinking? BB had said the next stop would be Forest City and who was I to question? :) I knew it was four hours (not two) but went with it ... two hours in and BB is wanting to stop. 4th stop is the Flying J in Evansdale/Waterloo for the restrooms and some juice. Forgot about this a few days ago when it happened. Just as we were heading out of Forest City with our last RV's, there was some road-kill on the highway. And an eagle pecking at it. I wasn't sure if the eagle was going to move, so I drove into the on-coming traffic lane to miss them. The eagle did move and BB was able to drive over the road kill. I hadn't noticed it, but right in that same area, BB saw an eagle landing in a tree. For me, I think this is the closest I have been to an eagle in the wild. 5th stop is the shipper in Forest City to pick up our car. Another restroom break and quickly throw our stuff from one car to the other. No time to talk to anyone. BB heads out at the speed limit, I drive about 65 mph for the next two hours. That gets me to the airport about 10 minutes before she drops the rental car. This time I did drive through the cemetery, snow has settled a lot but still no good way to walk to look for graves and can't see much of the markers when you do find them. Then I parked in the cell phone lot, very crowded today. When I go to leave, it sounds like my brakes are dragging ... then a plane must have let off on it's brakes and all was good, for me. Only five cars in front of this airport and two of them are cop cars so all the cars in the cell lot must be waiting for the other airport. Bub's is open today. But out of what we want so we take it cold and cook it at home our selves. IF we had stayed in the Best Western we wanted to ... there was a truck coming to WI within two miles of the hotel by 8 AM. Plus a few others today from the area. ... and ... last Tuesday we were in NC, no work. This Tuesday we are in OH and there is work in NC coming back home to MN ... and more on Wednesday. Also trips to CGO and TX that we would have taken. Timing. Load board US - 191 IA - 73/72 There are short trips that will work, if it wasn't for the weather. The weather. Quick storm that has the freeways shut down in NE again. It should hit us overnight. We will see how things look in the AM. We are home with no cost for a rental car or hotel. |
