Tuesday, January 31st, 2012
That's more like it. I've decided that you can't be a real truck driver until you drive at least twice the number of hours you've slept. Certainly a long day today, but not without some good experiences. Happily, it was without bad experiences, which is great, but I also think that bad experiences are merely a state of mind. On to the day.
Nice and early start today, driving through Texas in the dark. Well, part of it anyway. That place is friggin' huge. Crossing from south to north is a tad shorter than east to west, but I digress. Were it day time, I'm sure I could have seen endless fields of wind turbines, powering whatever it is they power. In the dark, it becomes more of an alien landscape; its a veritable sea of blinking red lights. They flash in unison as the turbine blades spin to obscure their transmissions.
All of the red lights put me in the mind of Amsterdam, but then a new sensation assailed my senses. The pungent aroma of sulfur and perhaps brimstone filled my nostrils. This was certainly not Amsterdam. The smell would have been much different. I had stumbled into a circle of hell! The most odious of odors permeated the air, a slight breeze blowing right into my truck. It was all I could do to keep from vomiting or hacking up a lung. I'm sure that nobody lives around here, right? All of this petrochemical mining and resultant stench can't be good for a body.
Exiting Hell, the sun rose. Faintly at first (as always) then gaining strength someplace around Ludlow. I could tell I was in the western section of Central time, as sunrise seemed a lot alter than the last few days. A fairly uneventful drive up to Amarillo, past many miles of cotton fields, presumably feed by the Ogalalla Aquifer, which is bound to dry up soon at this rate. Massive cotton ginning mills, and bales ½ the size of my trailer were strewn about the landscape. Stray piles of fluff littered the ground, discarded and ignored as waste in the industrial process. I wonder how many people all that spare cotton would clothe?
Just north of Amarillo, the landscape changes dramatically, going from a very flat plain to rolling canyon lands. Sometime along the way, I blundered into Oklahoma without even noticing. Here, the highway narrows from 4 to 2 lanes. Being a slower truck, I find that all sorts of people end up behind me, usually faster trucks. I could be that guy who makes people fight for everything, or wants others to suffer because of my own circumstance. “Huh. you can go faster? Well choke on it! You're behind me and I can only do 62.” I could be that guy. Instead, I make it a point to slow down and take the shoulder when it is clear for the others to pass. Make no mistake, I don;t stop. I slow to 55 for all of 30 seconds while the other driver goes by. everyone is happy. I don't have somebody tailgating me, and they get to go as fast as they want. People seem surprised when a Swift truck does something like this. Good. They also seem very thankful. Even better, but not necessary. I do it because it feels like the right thing to do. It is self-less and selfish at the same time. I've heard that people are wired to be kind and helping in that it releases a shot of serotonin or some other happy chemical. Whatever. i just know that i feel better doing the right thing. We all know what the right thing is, just ego gets in the way sometimes.
Coming into Denver, I was kind of excited. Not because of the commuter bus that crashed into a guardrail on I-70, but because there is a prairie-dog town near the terminal! I got to see a huge town on the way from Lamar to Limon. It looked like L.A. metro, but with cute little critters instead of McMansions. HUGE. I would so live there with a pair of binoculars. I'd even design little hats for them to wear. Maybe not, but SO KYOOT! So, coming into the terminal, one has to take a bit of an indirect route. This route goes past the former prairie-dog town. Yes. Former. The last time I was here, they had traps set out for the little guys (the live trapping kind). I guess they were relocated so that somebody could develop this (honestly) pretty shitty piece of land next to some railroad tracks and on a “paved” road that even Somalia would be ashamed of having. Sad. Well, at least they should still have bunnies that eat the lawn outside the driver's lounge. I'll have to wait and see in the morning.
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