Back at base, bugs in the software

An early morning relay run across Ohio in a snowstorm, my old friend I-80 in PA, and a little TA in a small NJ town ended my first solo tour of duty.  It's great to be back at my own desk.

IN and IL were bad, OH was worse.

Coming in from the cave to Columbus, it rained pretty much from the MO-IN line all the way.  After delivering that mess I drove a whopping 3 hours on Thursday.  And the computer wonders why my mileage sucks.  The APU burns more fuel than the damn engine does to keeping me warm for my layovers.  The hour spent navigating the cave at 2mph in reverse didn't help, either.

This last one was complicated.  The trailer saw 3 company drivers in it's 18 hour (Google-time) journey. 

We all knew it was going to be close, but about the time I was exiting the OHT I ran the numbers and my 11 hours drive time vs my ETA was looking in the ballpark of 1 hour difference, and if it took them 61 minutes to unload this I wouldn't make it home before I had to shut down.  In my better judgment I called for a relay driver to take it the last 90 miles.  The sick part was, the destination wasn't 20 miles from where I park the truck for my home time.  But traversing the central Newark area on a late Friday afternoon?  Forget it.  I traded trailers with Candice at the same TA I met up with John at on the 2nd.  I shut down, had a big juicy burger and fries for my last dinner, and washed it down with a REAL vanilla shake.  I don't know if there was something else in it, but for the next 9 hours I couldn't sleep. In fact, despite the fact I began the day at 0400, it was now 2300 and I felt like running laps around the lot.  Also, the empty one I got is one of the new ones with the aero-wings and is nice and shiny inside and out.  Oh wait, there's a couple of sloppily repaired  holes in the roof.  Maintenance is having me swing by a local place on Tuesday to get it fixed properly this time.

I got up early and confident I was awake enough to drive an hour and 10 minutes, I drove back down home and promptly passed out waiting for kyle to pick me up a few hours later.  When I got in the first order of business was getting a new battery for my car so I could go back and get all my crap.  No way I was going to pack up all that and bring it back to the house before another coffee.  Long story short, our Wal-mart doesn't have maintenance free batteries and I proceeded to pick up one that I didn't realize was overfilled- at least not until I got to the counter with a wet sleeve on my winter jacket.  The maintenance guy was great and let me use the shop sink to hose it off, then chewed out the guy who loaded them on the racks.  Even after washing it there and later at home I've got a nice acid-white splash with a little hole burned through the outer lining.  Better it than my hand, though.  We got one that wasn't leaking, but so far my first home time was off to a great start, but speaking of start, it works fine now.

You explain that one to me.

Later after hiking back to the truck I found out that the radio wiring harness on a 2007 Freightliner isn't your standard aftermarket radio format.  Actually upon doing a little research I find out they use the same double-high stack that most Volkswagens made in the 90's have.  So I'll be stuck with an mp3-cd / fm radio for almost 3 weeks this time.  Solution?  Go back to my PC and burn an ass-ton of mix cd's.  I got an adapter online and had it shipped back home, where I'll be spending my next time off for the winter camping trip.  With any luck, I'll be listening to XM or Pandora through an aux jack next time on a receiver that doesn't melt cd's or have engine interference issues.