Tuesday, March 6th, 2012
It was a day like many others. Some part of me expects things to be magical the entire time. I'm sure that is the 7 year old in me that never grew up. Some times, he can be at odds with the reality of adult life. Perhaps everything can be novel with the right frame of mind, but that isn't as easy to come by as I would like. Not yet anyway. I'm working on it.
Really nothing spectacular to report today, save some amazingly sunny weather with very comfortable temperatures. I've enjoyed the sun and welcome the feeling of spring, however early and due to global climate change it may be. Out on the road, I ran into a bunch of Mayflies already. Seems like a fairly solid indicator to me of how we're adjusting seasonal norms. I mean, we don't go around calling the “Marchflies” or anything so preposterous.
Along weather related lines the wind has been fierce today gusting to 45 mph. Having an empty trailer in these winds (like I do) is a bit precarious. It kinda feels like driving on ice. The back tires of the trailer will kick into the passing lane, usually not by much. Little or no, one can certainly feel it in the driver's seat. What scares me more is when the drive axle does that. I'm not sure exactly how I can tell, but after a while you get a sense of your truck.
In other news, it seems that I have an incredible sense of timing, almost to the point of being psychic. In the Edwardsville lot, there is a profound shortage of trailer sin working order. This means that I spent about 3 hours this morning either hunting or waiting for a trailer. Instead of sitting hawkishly by the trailer repair bay doors, I took my laptop and went inside to have a nice, but unexpected chat with my sweetheart.
Out of the the blue, I decided to get up and check on the trailers. Just as I walked out of the drivers' lounge, they were opening one of the bay doors to release the newly repaired trailer. There were another 4 guys on that row waiting for a trailer, but I followed the yard jockey to where he dropped the trailer and connected to it right quick! There's a lot to be said for being in the right place at the right time.
Now I'm in Kankakee, IL, just south of Chicago. And by “just south” I mean an hour away. There is a new truck stop here so I had to stop. Going to the bathroom after a few hours is a great relief, so I made that a priority. Heading to the men's room, I make for the furthest urinal from the door (some odd feng shui thing for me Ii suppose). If you've never been into a men's room, first of all: really? What kind of woman hasn't ever even looked inside of one? The answer may be a sensible one, but certainly not curious. Anyway, I'm sure we all know what urinals look like, but we may not all know that there are these plastic things in the bottom that serve a couple of purposes: to keep the tiny bits of urinal cake from getting washed down the drain, to make it smell nice in some cases (really!) and to catch the inevitable tangles of pubic hair that “trickle down” Today I found that there were advertisements written on these plastic do-hickeys with a sharpie marker. The ads below matched one of the ads on the flyer at eye level above the urinal itself. No kidding. Each of the four urinals featured a different product that was being promoted this month. My urinal was casually mentioning “ear buds (brand xyz) for 12.99, normally 14.99, $2 savings”. This sounds like a brilliant merchandising scheme from someone who knows that guys look down when peeing. Brilliant. And very disturbing. Next it will be an LCD inside the urinal itself I swear.
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