I get by with a little help from my friends… I got a taste of being a solo truck driver last week on that move from Tulsa to Oklahoma City. I wouldn’t want to do it every week but it went pretty smooth thanks to the help I got from the lead driver on the show. He had about seven trailers to move around in and out of the loading docks. Knowing I was challenged when it came to backing up, he took pity on me and did all the back –ins and I would hook onto the trailers, pull them out, and park them in the street where they sat for the week while the show was playing. It definitely falls under Jorge’s list of things to do but I didn’t mind the physical labor for one week so he could enjoy his vacation.
In the past week I’ve spent more time in Oklahoma City than I ever have. It’s always been a place to get cheap fuel and pass thru but I found myself here for a week as Jorge was taking time off to visit his family. I had twelve months of 2009 receipts I’d been looking at for months and kept putting off the chore of adding them up. So Rocky and I spent five days in a local motel doing mostly paperwork and watching tv. Everyday Jorge would call and tell me about the delicious Mexican food and homemade tortillas he was enjoying, and I would tell him about my next Domino’s pizza. I was pretty much stuck there as I’d put the truck in the shop and they were dragging their feet about getting my horn fixed. It’s not enough to have those big air horns on a semi truck. It also has to have a working ‘city horn’. Since it is nearly time for its annual DOT inspection and the horn has to work, I figured it would be a good time to have that minor job taken care of. Well… $17 dollars for a new horn and another $100 for the labor to install it and we were on our way. Jorge rejoined us in time to pick up the show again and we were Tucson, Arizona bound.
It was real nice weather down there and I had hoped we’d be spending another week there. No such luck though ~ our next stop is Des Moines, Iowa and we have until Sunday to get there. We were looking at the weather map watching some big rain storms heading for Tucson so we figured we better get out of there and we did just that. As soon as we were unloaded, we dropped our trailer and started bobtailing –that’s trucker talk for not pulling a trailer- up to Des Moines. We had to make another unexpected stop at the Volvo dealer in Amarillo yesterday because the fuse on the wipers kept blowing out. Good thing we didn’t really need them too badly. We had stopped at the top of a mountain in New Mexico where there was a little casino on this reservation. Who knows, maybe we’d get our money back for the horn, right? Wrong! But when we came out back to the truck, the snow and ice were really starting to come down and we blew three fuses for the wipers just trying to get out of the parking lot. Finally it was working again and we only went a couple miles down the other side of the mountain where it was clear and dry and blue skies. We figured that was a perfect time to see if we could get somebody to diagnose the problem and fix it. Amazingly, they got it right in the shop and a couple hours and $200 later, we were back on the road. Something about a couple wires rubbing together causing a short or something like that. If it’s not one thing, it’s another. I keep telling myself we have to spend money to make money.
Looks like Iowa is in for some ice and snow this week. That’s how we ended up back here in Oklahoma City again. We’re trying to time it just right so we can slip up there in between storms and we’re waiting it out here in OKC where it’s not so cold. Sunday night we’ll be taking ‘The Lion King’ up to Hartford, Connecticut.
In the past week I’ve spent more time in Oklahoma City than I ever have. It’s always been a place to get cheap fuel and pass thru but I found myself here for a week as Jorge was taking time off to visit his family. I had twelve months of 2009 receipts I’d been looking at for months and kept putting off the chore of adding them up. So Rocky and I spent five days in a local motel doing mostly paperwork and watching tv. Everyday Jorge would call and tell me about the delicious Mexican food and homemade tortillas he was enjoying, and I would tell him about my next Domino’s pizza. I was pretty much stuck there as I’d put the truck in the shop and they were dragging their feet about getting my horn fixed. It’s not enough to have those big air horns on a semi truck. It also has to have a working ‘city horn’. Since it is nearly time for its annual DOT inspection and the horn has to work, I figured it would be a good time to have that minor job taken care of. Well… $17 dollars for a new horn and another $100 for the labor to install it and we were on our way. Jorge rejoined us in time to pick up the show again and we were Tucson, Arizona bound.
It was real nice weather down there and I had hoped we’d be spending another week there. No such luck though ~ our next stop is Des Moines, Iowa and we have until Sunday to get there. We were looking at the weather map watching some big rain storms heading for Tucson so we figured we better get out of there and we did just that. As soon as we were unloaded, we dropped our trailer and started bobtailing –that’s trucker talk for not pulling a trailer- up to Des Moines. We had to make another unexpected stop at the Volvo dealer in Amarillo yesterday because the fuse on the wipers kept blowing out. Good thing we didn’t really need them too badly. We had stopped at the top of a mountain in New Mexico where there was a little casino on this reservation. Who knows, maybe we’d get our money back for the horn, right? Wrong! But when we came out back to the truck, the snow and ice were really starting to come down and we blew three fuses for the wipers just trying to get out of the parking lot. Finally it was working again and we only went a couple miles down the other side of the mountain where it was clear and dry and blue skies. We figured that was a perfect time to see if we could get somebody to diagnose the problem and fix it. Amazingly, they got it right in the shop and a couple hours and $200 later, we were back on the road. Something about a couple wires rubbing together causing a short or something like that. If it’s not one thing, it’s another. I keep telling myself we have to spend money to make money.
Looks like Iowa is in for some ice and snow this week. That’s how we ended up back here in Oklahoma City again. We’re trying to time it just right so we can slip up there in between storms and we’re waiting it out here in OKC where it’s not so cold. Sunday night we’ll be taking ‘The Lion King’ up to Hartford, Connecticut.
There were all kinds of neat cacti around the theater in Tucson. The picture above is a closeup up one of them. I had to make Rocky keep his distance from those.