Warrenton,MO

Our air card is acting up again so I apoligize for not having any entries in a couple of days. Well, ok, almost a week. :)

After getting the truck to the shop in Amarillo in the middle of a spring blizzard, we tucked ourselves into a hotel for Friday night. Saturday afternoon we got the dreaded call that the new turbo was in place in the truck but the actuator on it wasn't working and they would have to order that part. Since it was Saturday, they couldn't order the part until Monday and they would have it in Tuesday around noon.

With that bad news, and not wanting to stay in a hotel another 3 nights, not counting Saturday night, I placed a call to my Mom asking her to come get us the next day. Luckily Lubbock is only about 120 miles south of Amarillo and my mom is off on Sunday. So Sunday morning around 0930 my mom shows us to take us back to her place where we can wait in comfort.

We had a good visit and got some real home cooking, which is always a bonus. We also went to two of my nieces baskeball games. If you haven't seen 9 year old girls play basketball, you are in for a treat. These girls are serious when they play. And they even get fouled! One of the funniest parts though was watching the big referee trying not to laugh when he was calling the game. It was so funny. He would call a foul or call travelling and he would do so while he was trying not to bust out laughing. And of course at the beginning of the second half, he had to make sure the girls knew they were now shooting at the opposite end of the court than they were on the first half. It was an absolute delight to watch them play. They were in a tournament and got third place. They beat the 4th place team something like 13-6. Then the next night they played again to see if they would go to the finals. They lost that game 5-6 I believe. But they got medals and everything so they were happy.

Tuesday evening we called back up to Amarillo and the truck was done but they had to wait for the mechanic to come back in Wednesday morning to get the paperwork all done. We decided to go ahead and get up Wednesday morning and get rounded up and head back up there. Again, we were lucky because my mom is off on Wednesday and Sunday so that worked out perfectly for us. After stopping for an early lunch while we were on the way, we made it to the truck and had said our goodbyes to mom around 1230 or so.

After getting settled back into the truck and letting John know we were ready, we finally got a load assignment around 1500. It picked up at Tyson there in Amarillo, so that was nice that we didn't have to deadhead several hundred miles. We headed over there to pick it up but it wasn't ready and he said it would be a while because they were still behind from the snow storm the previous weekend. With that in mind, we headed back to the Petro to wait for the load to be ready.

Finally, around 0100 on Thursday morning, the load was ready and J headed over to pick it up. He then headed back to the Petro to scale and then he parked. We had plenty of extra time on the load, so he let me get a little more sleep. He woke me up at 0500 and guess what I woke up to? More snow in Amarillo!! Luckily this didn't amount to anything, but the winds were really kicking. After heading in and grabbing some breakfast, I took off.

I made it about half way to destination, and that half way point was Tulsa,OK. J took over there and was going to get us the rest of the way in. We had to make a stop in Springfield for fuel and they decided they needed to do our annual inspection on the truck and that they also needed to fix something on the trailer. About four hours later, J was finally back on the road.

He managed to drop this load around 0300 or so and then drove up to a Flying J here in Warrenton,MO where we are currently at. He got me up at 0530 and we headed inside for breakfast and a shower. I was hoping that when we came back out that we would have a load, but we weren't that lucky. Now it is just a little after 1000 hrs and I am still waiting. On the bright side, it looks like it is going to be a beautiful day. I will take that considering the way the weather has been this past week!