Well, we're on trip 5 of 8 (which means that we're over the hump, but still a long way from home). This has been a terrible week. It started out well enough. We didn't leave as early as we wanted Tuesday morning, but we were doing okay. We had a pretty good tack going on and were just about on schedule. Then we delivered in north cove and went to pick up load 3. We had a bad pickup number. This was around 20:30. USX didn’t get us a new pickup number until after midnight. By the time we were rolling with the load we were 4 hours behind schedule.

Then we got as far as Kentucky, somewhere between Lexington and Louisville, when Mara hit a bridge with our trailer. I'm still not sure exactly what happened, but I heard her tell USX that a van swerved over into her lane and she had to hit the shoulder to avoid it. Unfortunately that was just before a narrow bridge. To her credit, Mara pulled the tractor away from the bridge (hitting it would have been bad) and only clipped it with the trailer. That cost us 2 outer tires and rims on the right side of the trailer.

Mara was really upset, but as I pointed out, if we had hit the bridge with tractor, we very well might have wound up upside down in the stream that runs under that bridge. So I think she did good. She maintained control of a tractor/trailer that weighed out almost at gross, and she minimized the damage to the equipment as well as the danger to other motorists. We'll note here that the van did not stop. Anyway, we sat on the roadside for 4 hours while waiting for road service.

That's why we delivered at 13:00 today in north cove when we usually get there around 06:00. This means that the best we can hope for is to get home early Monday morning; around 04:00, I’d guess; assuming, of course, that nothing else goes wrong. I won't hold my breath, especially since they're calling for snow all throughout our route for the rest of the week. Goddamn, but I hate snow.

And the next Person who says "but isn't it pretty?" is going to get punched.