Change is in the air. It's exhilarating and frightning all at the same time. As worried as Mara is about her upcoming hand surgery, I really do see it as an opportunity for us to get off the road for good. After she's healed and gone back to work and settled in, I can start planning to come home myself. While she's out of work I'll be driving solo for U.S. Xpress; not great money, but a secure option.

Plus I think it would do us some good to have some time apart. We've been piled on top of one another for over a year on this physically and mentally demanding dedicated run. We take one another granted. We need some space to unwind and figure out where we go from here. We need to put truck driving behind us and get back to having lives.

It's better, financially, to do this in stages than for us to quit our jobs at the same time. So as scary as surgery is, this puts us in the position of having to do something that we want to do anyway but wouldn't otherwise have the nerve to do. That has to be a good thing.