Something that really blows chunks is typing up a longish blog and then hitting a wrong button and the whole fucking thing disappears.
But the vanished blog ran along the lines of
I had a really nice day today, other than a couple of things clouding my mind, not trusting in the mechanical reliability of my bike anymore and the fact that I'm a tad more nervous about the bills on the kitchen table that are going to take a much higher percentage bite out of my available finaces since my bike set me back a fine chunk of change this week.
But other than that and retyping this blog it has been a good day.. I went for a long walk to collect the pedal powered bike I left locked up by the motocycle mechanic's place when I picked up my Vulcan. I haven't been doing it so much lately owing to my residential location, but it is a very nice thing indeed to set out to travel slow and light (walk, I mean.) . See the things llike grass and pavement and weeds and houses and rusty old cars. It's good to slow down.
i was thinking about how It's probably easier to maintain your tranquility in the face of death than in the face of various aspects of life. With life there's so many balls to juggle. Transportation and bills and bosses and being on time and the weather and so forth. Death is just the one thing. When you're dead your bills are paid. I walked by a roadside cross for someone who had been killed in an accident on 6/12. It's odd to be having a perfectly fabulous day and see that someone who ought also to be having such is now turned into the earth.
My bike was still where I'd left it and I took it through the state park next to westover air force base.
I wanted to place another pic right here but If I try to add another one it just puts it in the comment box and not the blog, and that pisses me off.
I left the park at one of it's hidden entrance/exits and stopped at a gas station to grab a snack. A woman came by on a little electric scooter so I asked her about how fast It was. I had been thinking earlier today that such a vehicle would be a good thing to bring along with you on your big rig, so that when you're parked at a truck stop you can maybe buzz off to a neighboring town and get some relief from the monotony of the tuck stop menus. Last night when I was at the rents' house for my father's birthday that guy who has the show "good eats" on the food network was doing this really cool show where he and a film crew were travelling around the country on gorgeous BMW touring bikes stopping at local roadside eateries to discover the food that was available at such places across the country. No chain restaurants. Only places where the owner of the joint worked there. It did make me feel better about getting around on my vulcan right now, but it also made me think that I really want to discover the hidden things in the localities I will pass through in my trucking career. I understand that I will be pinched for time a lot and will by default be getting to know the truck stop menus quite intimately, but there are going be times when I have a few hours to kill and that's the opportunity you need to find whatever's to be found, wherever you are. If that sort of thing were predictable it wouldn't be an adventure.
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Such trips also occasionally teach you a lesson the hard way about which roads NOT to take. For example I would never take 250 as a shortcut between I-70 and I-77 because the southern part of that trip (near I-70) is very difficult to navigate with a tractor-trailer.
But these are the adventures that keep the job always interesting, if nothing else.
I get paid detention time by my company. That's a small consolation prize for wasting so much time, however. And if you figure out an average hourly salary at 60mph it's significantly less. Like $12 / hour or something... I forget. But I was mainly annoyed by the fact that it wasn't supposed to be a live-load situation. The trailer was supposed to be pre-loaded and waiting for me. And that was the third time in a row at this particular customer. Then add the fact that by the time they were done, I was beyond my 14 hour window and had to drive illegally just to get to somewhere to take my 10 hour break.
Plenty of truckers have satellite television. They'll attach the dish via suction cups or a PVC pipe attached to their truck while they're parked. Occasionally you'll see an extended condo (such as what many of the movers use) with the huge semi-spherical mobile satellite setup. That tracks to allow them to watch television while moving (one would assume there's a team member in the condo while someone else is driving). But those are large and not very practical for ordinary trucks. As to satellite INTERNET access, those dishes are usually a bit different. I'd recognize one if I saw it. I don't know about 4-feet, but they're definitely different. I believe it's a combination dish for net and TV. But since I don't watch television much, and already subscribe to WiFi plans AND Verizon cellular internet, I really can't justify spending even more money just to fill in the few gaps in service I might have.