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...My Life as 'Drive away' driver
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.. the trip continues from HERE 220610 IA-NY 1 RV to Syracuse NY (delivered) 1 RV to Kingston NY (delivered) ... spending the night at Warwick RI We slept in, sort of. We got up based on central time. Yogurt today, it's been a while. We pull out aast 8:30 local. 1st stop is the Sunoco a few blocks away. I need three gallons of gas to get to the drop, I put in four gallons just to make sure. While I sat at the hotel my fuel range went from 40 miles to not showing. After I put in four gallons, I should have had a range of about 100 miles, instead I got a range of 155. WAY more than needed. 2nd stop is in Kingston at QuikChec for dealer fuel, then another mile down the road to ... 3rd stop is at the customer. It seems like it takes forever but we were in and out in an hour. After they signed and I walked to the car I noticed that they had written that there were scratches on the drivers side. So I went back and took lots of pictures. I couldn't see any scratches, so far I have not loaded the pictures on my computer to blow them up. When BB first started driving, we hit all but one state within about nine months. Rhode Island. We need to be in the area for the weekend so we decided to head to Providence from the drop. When I am not working I spend time on genealogy and as part of that I take pictures of grave markers. There is a cemetery in Providence with a few relatives so that is where we are heading. 4th stop was for food. Soups On in Westfield. It is on a one way street and I miss the driveway so we need to go around the block again to get to it. It is in the back of a very old building, brass ceilings. They had a chicken salad sandwich so I ordered a whole one, then I decided to try a soup even though they didn't have my main favorites. At that point I should have changed it to a half a sandwich. Soup came first, mine was cheeseburger broccoli, actually pretty good. And the sandwich was the best I have had in long time ... so good that I kept eating when I should have quit. 5th stop is at the rest area near Charlton. They had a Papa Gino's and a sandwich shop. I had seen them on a few other Oasis so I wanted to see what they were. But we had just eaten. We didn't stop, but we exited the freeway at Worcester. Not a freeway but there are still toll readers. After a while I was trying to figure out if they were reading tolls for all the cars or just the semi's. The signs only gave a rate for the semi's. By not it is almost rush hour on a Friday night and we are heading into a major city. 6th stop. We found the cemetery, we drove all the way around it. It is a church cemetery but there is no church, and it is not being kept up. The grass has not been mowed and some of the stones are falling over. And the surrounding houses and roads are not being kept up. I don't think it was really a 'bad' area, there were no boarded up buildings, barbwire fences. The cars on the streets all seemed to be newer and it seemed to be thriving but just not being kept up real well. When we found a place to park on the street we pulled over. We didn't feel unsafe, but we also did not feel like staying. So we only stayed long enough to get directions to the next closest cemetery. On our way we saw a Spiderman car and twice when we were at a 90 degree angle to the driver he was wearing his Spiderman mask. BB got a couple of pictures of the car but wasn't ready when we saw him with the mask. Even with directions live we missed the turn to the cemetery ... 7th stop was in Johnston at a cemetery. The office was already closed but I had locations and they had a map on a huge sign. I parked next to the area in and within a few minutes BB had found the stones, somehow she seems to be able to find them faster than I can. All three stones I was looking for were in the same area, same row. From there we had not had a plan, but finally decided to head back south where there was a hotel that was cheaper. 8th and final stop was at a Comfort Inn/Suites in Warwick. Once we were checked in we headed to a Walt's Roast Beef. It was OK, something different. Not bad but likely would not head there again. Besides the sandwich I also got baked beans, but BB and I agree they were likely Bush's beans. So nothing special. There also was a Papa Gino's but that wasn't what we picked. While we were out, we fueled up at a Mobil. The car said we still had a range of 140 miles on an 1/8 of a tank but I didn't trust it. $4.99 a gallon. Cheaper than NY or CT. The bus that was on the load board last night is gone. Tolls are slow in showing up on our account and we don't get paid until they do. So far we have the IL and OH from Wednesday. The IN was also from Wednesday and also part of NY. Then more NY from Thus and Fri to still show up. Way back last week I had forgot my power cord for my phone so I had to buy a new one on the road. I used it sparingly until I got home and could use the old one again. But that didn't work either so I had taken it to the store and they looked at it and said the old cord was bad but the new one was good. I took the phone home and charged it for the day and got it to 100%. Now on the trip it is not charging very fast. Right now it is back to charging about 2% per hour and was down to under 20% charge. I will leave it plugged in all night and see where it is at in the AM. Load board US - 339 IA - 170/167 Tomorrow we will spend some time in the area before heading back up to VT. We have a hotel room in Rutland VT for the following two nights. Other family will also be arriving, then family time for Sunday and part of Monday. If there is work we will head out mid-afternoon, if not we will stay in the area until Tuesday mid-afternoon. At that point we leave one way or the other. Right now there is not anything in the five state area heading home. Only one going anywhere and that is heading south. 220611 VT non-work ... spending the night at Rutland VT No reason to get up and going early so we do not. My breakfast is the carrot cake from a couple of nights ago, and a yogurt. We do pull out at 8:30 AM. 1st stop is '40 steps,' we are early so we find a place to park, half the spots are still empty. Once we walk the steps, we are trying to take a selfie when someone offers to get a picture for us ... we just kind of helpless that way :) Then we walked the Cliff Trail to the north. The trail to the south is barricaded off. You need to take a 1/3 mile detour to get back to the trail. Before we leave, I am waiting for BB to use the outhouse and I here people arriving and wanting to take the south trail. They make it sound like it is the good one. Maybe next time. When we left we decided to drive past where the detour goes and then we drove past all the hold mansions. Lots of estates along the water front. One not along the water front is for sale, for $8+ million. It looks like there are a few of the mansions that are open for tours. One is the Vanderbilt Mansion. Once we got past the mansions we got onto Ocean Ave and followed that along the coast. At one point we parked and sat on the rocks for a few minutes. There was another place there was a sandy beach but parking there was $30 so we passed. We did get a few pictures and there was a few that we did not get. There are also two state parks in Newport, one is Fort Adams, built in the first half of the 1800's. By now we are hungry so BB finds us a place to eat. 3rd stop was Mel's Cafenio because they have cheesesteaks. They are supposed to be open until 1 PM but were closed before that. So we ended up a 'Pour Judgement,' a bar with street seating. I had some kind of bacon and pasta, very good but so much that I couldn't even eat all of the bacon. We had our food and were done eating within the hour but couldn't wait for the waitress to bring us our bill, we went inside to pay at the counter. We had only paid the meter for our car for one hour because we were going to get our cheesesteaks to go ... We have spent a lot of time the last two days driving at a few miles an hour on narrow, one way streets and BB needs to get to the open road. Sort of. We have four hours to go to get to tonight's hotel and almost all of that is on non-freeway. At one point we do add a few more miles to get on the freeway. It ended up being three hours between stops. 4th stop is the VT welcome center near Guilford. Someone was selling home cooked food of all kinds for a benefit for someone so we got some cookies, water and a couple of other things. They also had meals but we were still full. Other family arrived in CT via airplane this PM and BB has been 'stalking them' all day. When we leave the rest area we are 15 minutes behind them and that is about where we stay ... unless the computer looses track of them and we pass them ... but then the computer catches up and they are ahead of us again. 5th and final stop is the Comfort Inn in Rutland. The same one we stayed at with our RV's a few months ago. Once we check in, we pick up other family and head downtown to Hop'n Moose. We were not real hungry so we split one pizza. Rutland Raider ... two kinds of cheese, apples, bacon and maple syrup. It was good, if we had been more hungry we might have ordered a 2nd one. Kind of quiet here for a Saturday night. We are there at 8 PM and they are cleaning up around us. When we left we were the only ones sitting on the street, one other couple was sitting on their deck, not sure how many inside. Load board US - 336 IA - 162/159 220612 VT non-work ... spending the night at Rutland VT Ate breakfast at the hotel. Went for a half hour walk on the city streets. Drove to White River Junction for a memorial service. Ate after the service. Small service, less than 100. No one other than those pre-booked had any comments. Drove back to the hotel before walking to a nearby place for food. Evening food was at the Vermont Tap House. We had pizza again. They did have almost the same kind as last night but tonight we got one 'everything' pizza and one goat cheese pizza, plus a couple of apps. Too much food. Plan for tomorrow is to meet family for brunch before looking for work heading home. 220613 NY-IL 1 city bus to Chicago IL ... spending the night at Plattsburgh No breakfast today. We are going to be eating 'brunch' with family at 10 AM. We pull out of the hotel around 9 AM. This will all be roads we have been on before, just 50 mph max. 1st stop is the Creek House Diner. Our family is a 'known' here and they have the tables all set up for our large group when we get there. Small place, only one person working the dining area in the AM but she keeps up. There are 11 of us plus the other customers. Good food, BB and I split a breakfast and then split a piece of chocolate pie. When we are going to leave, the other MN people and us want to stop at a town called 'Barnard,' but can't agree which direction it is :) Finally we agree to head south, and realize if we had been having that conversation at the rear of our cars we could have seen the sign that said 'Barnard 6 (miles.) It's just an old store, one of us buys a T-shirt and some snacks and we sit on the porch for a while and talk, looking out over the lake across the street. 3rd stop is Woodstock. One of the biggest tourist towns in VT. On the way there BB has enough cell service to see that there is 1 bus going to CGO so when we stop I call dispatch and get the trip. Now we have a reason to get going. We did still spend some time, and some money in The Vermont Flannel Co store. Lots of interesting things including a 'vong.' a thong made out of flannel. (we did not get one of those) From there we headed to the shipper. Almost three hours to go on almost all back rounds. I had guessed we were two hours away and we would have been if we had been at our hotel. Somewhere on these back roads we passed an Amish wagon with a couple of pre-school children in the back. It might be the first time I have actually past one, or at least the first time for a wagon vs a buggie. 4th stop was in Middleburg at an Irving for fuel and a rest room. Gas Buddy said fuel was $4.89 and everything else we saw was $4.99 so that is why we stopped there. But they were $4.99 also. Which was much better than if we had waited until we got to NY. After another almost hour of back roads in VT and NY we are finally on the freeway and are less than a half hour from the shipper. I was asked to call back closer to 5 PM so a few minutes to five I am at an exit and call. My phone has no service so I call using BB's and find out they they have both left a message and a text with some of the info. Some of that info was that I am to call another driver for more info. We do have the OK to run extra miles to stay on the freeway instead of running the back roads. That is my plan but it will add an extra 100+ miles that I will not be getting paid for. After that call we drive the last few minutes to town before calling the other driver. One of our questions was how much the company will pay for hotels when we are in town. He is staying at the Days Inn but others stay at the Comfort Inn or Holiday Inn. We check in to the Comfort Inn and wait for the driver to call us back. He is running to Walmart and then we will meet at the shipper so he can show me the basic's. His routine is the pick the bus up in the evening and then leave town early in the AM. He is heading to NYC which is a half day trip. (more later) Load board US - 336 IA - 154/152 .. the trip continues from HERE |
