Paul's Valley,OK

Wednesday morning found me waking up to a chilly outside temp. J was snuggled up in bed all nice and cozy and I ventured out to grab a shower and some breakfast. With thoughts of a nice ham steak and eggs for breakfast, I took a quick shower since my stomach was already grumbling at me. Well, you all know how my luck goes. I am in the shower room getting ready to walk out and "ring ring" goes my phone. John was calling me with our next load. I was hoping that I was still going to have time for my much anticipated breakfast, but it wasn't meant to be. I had to hustle out to the truck, write the load info down and hit the road.

From the time he called with the load info, I knew that we were going to be late. He had me travelling 114 miles in two hours. Not possible in California on the roads that I had to take. I told him to let them know I would be there in three hours. And I made it right on time with litterally not a minute to spare. We were picking up in Santa Maria but we were in Buttonwillow. So I had to make my way over to CA19 and then to CA166 that runs west right into Santa Maria. But it is a two lane road that crosses from the valley over the mountains into Santa Maria which is on the coast. It is a beautiful drive, and one that I had driven once before, so I knew what to expect. If I recall correctly I think I told J that I NEVER wanted to drive that way again because it is windy and curvy with steep hills. Never say never I guess. ;)

Once we got there and got loaded, after some issues with the pulp temp of the product, we headed out and scaled at a truck stop right on the 101. We have been to this place before and they have an awesome restaurant, Pappy's, that is right next door. Knowing we were in the area, we couldn't pass it up. With a full belly, we head out to the truck, me going to bed for the night and J taking a short nap. If he had left right then, he would have had to deal with 5 o'clock LA traffic. So he decided to wait until around 2000 hrs California time to head out. He made a good decision because he had very little traffic to deal with. He got us into Ontario,CA where he stopped and woke me up for my shift.

I took off from there about 0500 with the intention of making it into Flagstaff,AZ. Along the way we met up with some friends of ours in Winslow for dinner after J took over driving in Flagstaff. J finished getting us to Santa Rosa,NM that night and that is where I took over this morning.

Right now I am sitting at the Walmart in Paul's Valley,OK where they just finished unloading us and J just went in to get the paperwork. We have a pre-plan that we are going to head over to pick up now in Elk City,OK that is going to Woodburn,OR. The only problem is that we are having problems with the truck and we are going to stop in Amarillo tonight and have Freightliner take a look at it. The codes I am getting is for the turbo and we seem to be losing power. I guess we will have to see if we get to take this next load up to Oregon or if we are going to get stuck with the truck in the shop in Amarillo while someone else delivers it. If we get stuck there, it looks like we will be stuck in the snow since they are predicting 6-8 inches. I will keep you informed!! At least I think my dad is going to come up and meet us tomorrow since we will have some extra time on the load.