I've been out on the road for about six weeks now, and tomorrow I head home to Orlando. My truck will remain here in Lebanon, Tennessee for repairs whilst I drive home in a rental car. I'd rather cough up the dough for a rental and be home with family rather than wait three days or more for the truck to be ready. The truck has some issues that will take the repair shop here at my company's terminal a few days to take care of. Two days ago in Nebraska, an air valve that controls the truck's suspension broke. Without that valve, the airbags that act as springs for the suspension system completely deflated, rendering the suspension ineffective, and causing the truck and trailer to bounce very roughly over the road's surface. When the cargo in the trailer consists of a couple thousand glass bottles of high end, overpriced health beverage, not having a properly working suspension to cushion the bumps and dips in the road is simply not an option. The shear mass of a fully loaded tractor-trailer amplifies even minor bumps into major shakes. Western Nebraska is a less than idea place to have a truck break down. My truck is a Volvo, and parts for them are not easily obtained on a Saturday in a backwoods town like Ogallala. Mechanics from two different truck stop repair garages attempted temporary fixes with duct tape to no avail. I don't know why they couldn't figure out a patch, maybe it was the haze of a meth high, or the distractions from the pain from the crude new prison tats on their arms. Whatever the reason for their failure, I wasn't up for a weekend waiting for parts from Denver out there in the sticks. Action was needed, and action I took. I moved my bobtail (tractor without trailer) from the urine soaked truck lot to the less disgusting car and RV lot. Armed with a towel as a work mat, I crawled under the back end of my truck to see what the fuck was up. I can't really describe what the stupid little part looked like, suffice it to say it is about the size of a coffee cup, though not the same shape. It was broken in two parts, with the top of it, a piece about the size of a bic lighter was dangling from the body of the valve, hanging by a piece of duct tape. I removed the dangling piece and the duct tape sticking thereon and crawled out from under the truck. I figured out a couple of things from my reconnaissance mission underneath the greasy machine. First, the air pressure from the broken valve was blowing the top of the valve out from the valve body, and second, that duct tape wasn't going to hold the sumbitch in place. Also, I realized that this story would make one of the most boring blogs in history. Long story short, I bought some baling wire and wired the fucking thing back together. Bingo! I was back on the road. The only problem is that every 30 seconds, I had to release the excess pressure from the airbags using a control inside the cab to prevent them from exploding. Hey, I'm a driver, not a mechanic. It took all of my knowledge obtained from two years at the University of Georgia as an English major to figure out how to put broken piece A into broken piece B. It was almost 1000 miles driving from Ogallala, Nebraska to Lebanon, Tennessee. I must have had to repeat the process of letting the excess pressure off about 2000 times. No lie. Drove me batty at times.
Anyway, I hope that a week is enough for the mechanics here to fix all the shit that's wrong. The generator that runs the air conditioner when the engine is off (thus saving 90% of the fuel wasted idling the engine and saving the penguins in Argentina) is broken, one of the wheel seals that holds lubricating oil for the wheel bearings is leaking, and the vinyl stripes that decorate the sides of my booger green tractor are already peeling off after a mere 4 months since the truck was new. Can you say run on sentence?
Orlando to do list:
1. Sleep a night or two in the apartment I've been paying for for two months without having ever slept a night therein.
2. Spend time with my baby brother, a grown white man aged 30 years, with whom I share my apartment.
3. Pick up my beloved dog, Roxy, a seven year old longhaired Dachshund, who was being held captive by my most recent ex-wife who had run away with a jobless drug dealer. The ex dropped off my precious Roxy with my parents and is hopefully getting some direction in her life.
4. Go to St. Petersburg with Dear Old Dad to watch my favorite baseball team, the lowly Tampa Bay Devil Rays get their asses beat by the Seattle Mariners at the climate controlled Tropicana Field.
5. Drop off all the useless shit I have in my truck that I will cart home into the closet in my apartment will it will be forgotten until I move again. Hopefully to Portland, Oregon or Seattle.
6. Go to Disney World, because I'm an unabashed nerd and a former "Cast Member" (employee) whose Mom works for the company and gets me in free.
7. Examine, question, explore, and hopefully pave out a road of understanding of who I am, what I want, what I believe in, why I believe in it, where I am going and why I am going there. I'm pretty sure SG wasn't intended to provoke this reaction in people, but getting my ass handed to me intellectually on the message boards has caused me to question what I believe in and why I believe in it. I 'm not referring to that faggot douche bag Oyaji though. I despise that prick. I am pretty sure of myself and what I believe in, but I have found that people smarter than me articulate their points much better than I do. I'm also too lazy to spend hours linking to articles in support of the positions I take in my comments. It's much easier for me to insert a snide, sarcastic remark intended to be funny. I have a feeling I'm going to examine myself and determine that I will continue to drop sarcastic comments and ignore or mock my detractors. Yeah, I'm intellectually lazy. Fuck it[?]
This is all pretty weird for me considering all I really wanted to do is tug on my yam bag to some hot, classy, tattooed pin-up babes. What Hell have I stumbled into at a cost of 48 bucks a year?
Peace.
Anyway, I hope that a week is enough for the mechanics here to fix all the shit that's wrong. The generator that runs the air conditioner when the engine is off (thus saving 90% of the fuel wasted idling the engine and saving the penguins in Argentina) is broken, one of the wheel seals that holds lubricating oil for the wheel bearings is leaking, and the vinyl stripes that decorate the sides of my booger green tractor are already peeling off after a mere 4 months since the truck was new. Can you say run on sentence?
Orlando to do list:
1. Sleep a night or two in the apartment I've been paying for for two months without having ever slept a night therein.
2. Spend time with my baby brother, a grown white man aged 30 years, with whom I share my apartment.
3. Pick up my beloved dog, Roxy, a seven year old longhaired Dachshund, who was being held captive by my most recent ex-wife who had run away with a jobless drug dealer. The ex dropped off my precious Roxy with my parents and is hopefully getting some direction in her life.
4. Go to St. Petersburg with Dear Old Dad to watch my favorite baseball team, the lowly Tampa Bay Devil Rays get their asses beat by the Seattle Mariners at the climate controlled Tropicana Field.
5. Drop off all the useless shit I have in my truck that I will cart home into the closet in my apartment will it will be forgotten until I move again. Hopefully to Portland, Oregon or Seattle.
6. Go to Disney World, because I'm an unabashed nerd and a former "Cast Member" (employee) whose Mom works for the company and gets me in free.
7. Examine, question, explore, and hopefully pave out a road of understanding of who I am, what I want, what I believe in, why I believe in it, where I am going and why I am going there. I'm pretty sure SG wasn't intended to provoke this reaction in people, but getting my ass handed to me intellectually on the message boards has caused me to question what I believe in and why I believe in it. I 'm not referring to that faggot douche bag Oyaji though. I despise that prick. I am pretty sure of myself and what I believe in, but I have found that people smarter than me articulate their points much better than I do. I'm also too lazy to spend hours linking to articles in support of the positions I take in my comments. It's much easier for me to insert a snide, sarcastic remark intended to be funny. I have a feeling I'm going to examine myself and determine that I will continue to drop sarcastic comments and ignore or mock my detractors. Yeah, I'm intellectually lazy. Fuck it[?]
This is all pretty weird for me considering all I really wanted to do is tug on my yam bag to some hot, classy, tattooed pin-up babes. What Hell have I stumbled into at a cost of 48 bucks a year?
Peace.
VIEW 10 of 10 COMMENTS
coleen:
It's Season three, Episode five from CSI: NY. It's called Oedipus Hex. Definitely download it, that's what I had to do, you'll love it!
brigette:
My boyfriend wants to know what company you drive for. He is also very disappointed that you drive a Volvo. Get yourself a real truck...