First Job, pt. 2

Hello! First of all, I would like to wish everyone out there a very happy and healthy holiday season! It's early on Christmas Eve Day, and me and the family unit have a mellow Christmas
planned this year. Probably go to church later today, followed by dinner out (all after the Bears game, though - GO BEARS!) Tomorrow, the wife and I will watch our daughter open her presents, then it's off to Rockford to spend some time with my bro and his kids, and have Christmas dinner. That's about it...

Back to my story. I learned a lot from my trainer Manny (again, not his real name), mainly about driving out on the open road. I didn't do a heck of a lot of backing/docking, because we
were invariably in a rush, and had to get the load in/out. So Manny would do most of the
skill maneuvers, and I'd watch. He'd admit later that I should have spent more time on these
tasks, but, like I said, the work came first.
I do remember driving in heavy traffic in places like Washington D.C. (rush hour on the beltway in pouring rain) and Atlanta. I drove 8-hours from Atlanta, to Savannah, GA without so much as
a pee break (pretty proud of that feat). We went all over the place; down across the southeast,
over through Texas, then up into New Mexico and into Colorado. Manny was dying for a dispatch west out to Cali., but it never came. Instead, we spent some down time in Denver, at the company terminal waiting for our next load. See, OTR drivers sometimes have to wait (at least back then) as much as 72 hours for the next load to come available. During this time, you catch up on your laundry, correspondence, watch a LOT of TV, stock up on supplies, etc. So then
we get a crazy dispatch to Wyoming. This was a load of beans or something (I'm not really sure, all I know is they were big bags of stuff on pallets), headed out to Afton, WY, a little town about an hour south of Jackson Hole. As we left Denver, I remember it was sunny and pleasant outside. I also remember crossing the border to Wyoming (it was night by this time) and coming down into the valley and passing through Cheyenne (pretty town at night, as I recall). We drove through the night and into the next day to get to the western part of the state. Now, I come from the "Windy City," but let me tell you, I have never experienced wind like there was in
Wyoming. Unbelievable!
As we approached our exit (US 30 west to US 89 north), we were headed back into the Rockies,
at least the foothills. You kind of wind around, up and down, veer into Idaho for a couple miles,
then start climbing the hills, which, of course, is when it starts snowing. And now it's getting dark, too. So it was pretty damn treacherous. Manny was doing most of the driving at this point, and I remember getting bogged down as we were coming down the mountainside, heading into Afton. We pulled over to the side of the road and shut down for the night, as the road had become practically impassable. I remember hearing the scraping sounds of ploughs several times during the night, and me turning the truck back on, because I was freezing! See, the company pays you a bonus for fuel conservation, so Manny had shut the truck completely off.
The next sound I heard was the Screaming Meanie (must have been 6 or 7am). Manny was
the most sound sleeper I've ever seen, so even the alarm wouldn't wake him up right away. Me,
I shot out of the bunk like a cannon.
Anyway, we made our delivery successfully, but then had to wait again for another load. Afton is a quaint little western town (I remember a gateway over the main street made entirely of horns of some kind: elk? antelope? I dunno), but after our ordeal in getting there, I was anxious to get the hell out. We stayed for a few hours, then finally the dispatcher said, "No loads nearby (really?), just come back to Denver. So, we dead-headed back to Denver.

Next, the final chapter of my first job.

More soon (Happy Holidays!),

Steve