We hear it’s been a pretty warm August in the southern parts of the country and we are grateful that we’ve been able to spend most of our time with the new company up in the northwest. We have seen our share of Washington, Oregon, California, Nevada, and Utah in the past week. One night was spent in the northern regions of the California Sierras and we woke up to a temp of 35 degrees! We have delivered huge a/c units, several empty shipping containers from one military base to another, and are now hauling a load of insulation from Salt Lake City back to central California. None of it has been difficult yet although we’ve learned there is an art to strapping insulation so that it’s snug enough so as not to fall off the trailer but not so tight that the straps crush the product. This is definitely a learning process. With a tip of the hat to the old seasoned truckers who are more than willing to share their expertise with us rookies- we are slowly learning the ropes of this new variety of truck driving we have chosen to do now. We used to go to all the major downtown areas and navigate those narrow streets. This job is the complete opposite. We have already been on some backroads we had never before been on. That’s always fun for us. But this week something happened that has never before happened in all our years of driving…. We ran out of road! We made one delivery that was literally out in the middle of the Nevada desert. There sat a little guard shack with one soldier inside and another waiting for us to arrive with the containers. After we were finished with the delivery, our next pickup was about 50 miles to the south over a mountain range. According to our map, it seemed like a thru road and Jorge asked one of the guys if it was a good road for us to take. He said it was but warned we should be careful of a couple tight curves in the mountain passes. So there we were cruising right along and we did go thru a few S curves as he had told us. Right after that, Jorge came to a screeching halt. That was the end of the road – no more pavement! It continued ahead as a dirt road that went further into the mountains. Maybe the wagon trains of days past went thru there but we weren’t about to try it. We sat there for a minute trying to figure out how we were going to get out of this dilemma. We couldn’t back up because we’d just come thru those S curves so that wasn’t an option. Going straight was definitely not an option either. I thought we were going to have to set off a few road flares and pray some military helicopter would come and airlift us out of there. Jorge decided to do the only thing that seemed somewhat possible. There was a very small area just off the road that he was going to attempt to turn around. Keep in mind our truck and trailer is 75 feet long and it’s not an easy feat to turn this around anywhere. I just knew we were going to bury it up to its axles in the sand just from the weight – 40,000 lbs worth. By the grace of God and the wings of angels, Jorge was able to somehow flip it around and we drove all the way back around the mountain on the main road to finally make it to our destination. Lesson learned!
It's a nice relaxing weekend for us and today we are slowly moving west to the bay area of California. We are in search of a laundromat and Jorge is planning some more 'home improvements' when we finally do park. We'll be staying near Reno for the next couple days before we deliver Tuesday morning.
It's a nice relaxing weekend for us and today we are slowly moving west to the bay area of California. We are in search of a laundromat and Jorge is planning some more 'home improvements' when we finally do park. We'll be staying near Reno for the next couple days before we deliver Tuesday morning.