Friday Morning in Georgia

Northbound on I-75 in the vicinity of Valdosta, Georgia. Just came off a mighty nap. Well, a crash, really. Was trying to wrap up a text message conversation at one point and kept dropping the phone because I was nodding out.

No wonder. I drove down to Kissimmee from Kings Mountain, North Carolina, picked up in Zephyrhills, Florida and drove up to Georgia, all on bumper naps. Those will only get you so far.

I'm in need of a shower. As if the humidity in Florida wasn't bad enough, it rained here in southern Georgia while I was napping. I loved lying there with the engine turned off, listening to the rain. But seeing as how I have no air conditioning and had the windows down when the downpour started, the driver's seat got a bit wet before I could mobilize consciousness enough to put up the windows. So now it's not just humid. It's literally damp.

Yeah, yeah. I know. I'll survive. But you have to remember. I'm a truck driver. This isn't just an inconvenience for my drive to work. This is going to be an all day thing. And my mood is going to worsen.

Well, today is the day I'm supposed to get back to Greensboro. I'm a little worried about that. After assuring me yesterday that he would get with the load planners this morning to make sure that they got me to Greensboro, my dispatcher sent out a message, on the way out the door yesterday afternoon, saying “I won't be in tomorrow. Have a great weekend.”

That means that this morning I will have to explain my situation to someone who will most likely know nothing about it (my dispatcher seems incapable of giving heads-up to other people on issues like this). After I explain myself, I can only hope someone will give a shit. But, of course, if they're going to do something stupid, it will be on a Friday.

What I'm hoping on and expecting is that after my delivery this morning, they will give me a load to pick up which I can drop in Greensboro. I'll shower somewhere along the way. I'll sleep in the truck tonight at the terminal in Greensboro. Tomorrow morning I'll pick up my rental car with no problem and be on my way.

That isn't so much to ask, is it? So why do I suspect that the Universe is laughing gleefully at the prospects of what it might put me through today and tomorrow? This is evidenced by the fact that my air conditioning, which hasn't worked for the last 34,000 miles, just started working. We'll see how it does later when it warms up. But I don't fancy showing up in Greensboro and asking them to repair my perfectly functioning air conditioning.