I went back on duty this morning and was shortly presented with a load going from our Otay Mesa drop yard to our Joplin, Missouri terminal. I was staying down the street at a local truck stop (the only truck stop in San Diego with parking, I think) and made my way over there to get the trailer.
Now, when I was with my finisher he showed me a lot of things, including changing a brake light on his tractor when one went dead. I wish I had paid more attention because all the trailers in this drop yard that have come up from Mexico are stored with their lights removed -- when they are in Mexico they have different lights so ours don't get ripped off. Anyway, after pretripping what I could of the trailer, I had to drag it to the front of the lot and install six lights (two "belly" lights, one in the middle of each long side, and four brake / signal lights in the rear). It was dirty, oily work and my hands were covered with nasty grease and mud afterwards, and I had no way to clean up as well as I would have liked. I did the best I could then stopped at the first rest area east of San Diego for a more thorough cleaning.
I'm hauling 20 tons of rechargeable batteries headed for New Jersey. I'm going to see if I can wheedle the other half of this trip (from Joplin to NJ) when I arrive, which would be a nice long run. This pay period was looking pretty bleak, but if I get either the rest of this run or another good long one it will be a decent one for me. I'm already ahead this month, with a 6,400 mile pay period for the first half.
I saw something unusual today: when I parked this evening in a truckstop I was walking down a line of trucks when the grill of one truck caught my eye. Looking closer, I saw the remains of a good-size bird stuck in it! The wings were still open, in fact it looked amazingly undamaged considering the impact it must have had when it hit. I would have taken a picture but I didn't have my camera with me and it was on the other side of the truck stop.
