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...My Life as 'Drive away' driver
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. the trip continues from HERE 221207 CA-OR 1 bus to Salem OR ... spending the night at Woodland CA Close to midnight ... more later ... and now it is four days later. Breakfast, great breakfast from the in-house breakfast. Two eggs, how you like them. Choice of meat, choice of toast, choice of juice. All included in the price of the hotel. We have plenty of time to get to Livermore today so we don't pull out at the crack of dawn. but it was still early. The frost hadn't started melting off our windshield yet and the sun was fulling shining on it. 1st stop was just down the street at the Flying J for fuel. 2nd stop was the Walmart in Fernley for a few odds and ends. BB had suggested doing the shopping before we left Winnemucca this AM but I thought getting out of the car for an extended time would be good. Opps, I missed a stop sign on the way into Walmart. Usually traffic coming from the street has the right of way. At this intersection they/we did not. One of the other four did, and the person there blew their horn at me. Not sure if they saw I had a FL plate or if they cared. Lots of new snow but BB isn't much for taking pictures and I try not to when I drive unless I have my camera (not my phone) ready to go before I start. The scenic view area east of Donners Pass is still closed, from there we would have gotten some great pictures. And Donners Pass was still closed. 3rd stop was a scenic view area near Emigrant Gap. Just as I was pulling off, the Amtrak was going under the freeway. A couple of minutes earlier and it would have been an even better picture. I took a few pictures, BB did not get out of the car. 4th stop was a few miles later at Gold Run at the rest area. 5th stop was the In-n-Out in Auburn for food. Drive-thru. 6th stop was the Flying J in Lodi for fuel. I don't remember where we were when we called dispatch. He needs me to run a bus to Oregon. Usually I would have outright declined but he sounded like he was on his death bed and also had non-health issues going on. BB is always looking at the weather so she knows the weather in OR is not good but looks closer. BB didn't quite say she would stay in CA while I went to OR but she did not like the idea of going to OR one bit. I finally pull over to the side of the road at an exit and call dispatch back to get out of the trip. After a long back and forth I finally agree to go as far as I can. Today is Wednesday, and as of now, it looks like we may have a break in the weather to get through with a bus on Friday and then a second break to get back through with the rental car on Monday. So this is not going to be a money making trip. BB wanted to just get a hotel and see what happens to the weather by the AM. I prefer to always go as far as I can before shutting down. BB 'just can't see a scenario where we can deliver before that.' (She was still saying that Thursday AM when we were half way to the drop) 7th stop - We are to the shipper before 5 PM and get my bus inspected. One other driver is there, also heading up to Oregon. Said he has done it many times ... yet knows nothing about chains and permits ??? Not having chains IF required is my big issue. 15+ years ago I had been running back to back trips when the chain law kicked in. Even back then, I refused to go without chains. All five drivers that did go that week got fined $1,000+ for not having chains. On the next trip I /we had to stop and buy chains before we got to where they were required. Here the law is different, but I don't know how they handle it. Instead of being early, the dispatcher is an hour late. An hour we could have used, at this point we don't know if that hour will come back to bite us, yet. 8th and final stop is the Best Western in Woodland. Nice big parking lot. The food in the parking lot closes at 2:30 PM daily so we walk to the gas station. Their hot shelf food looks like it has been sitting there since noon and it is now 8 PM local. Their other shelf food doesn't look much better. We end up going back to the hotel and buying one of their frozen meals. Boston Market, meat loaf. Long day, and we will leave in the AM when our 10 hours is up. Load board US - 247 IA - 8/7 221208 CA-OR 1 bus to Salem OR (delivered) ... spending the night at Salem OR Beep, beep, beep ... hotels that have a large area for truck parking are nice. Kind of. Listening to the trucks back up alarms at 4 AM is not so nice. BB is up before the alarm and ready to go. The storm warning in OR still starts at 10 AM and we are still four hours away. We decide we will head out as soon as we can be ready. 5:30 I head out with the first bags of luggage and to start the bus. ))) light bulb ((( By the time I am putting things in the bus, BB calls ... before she can say anything, I say "Houston, we have a problem." We are ready to go, but as drivers, we are required to take 10 hours off. My 10 hours will be at 6 AM. So back to the hotel room I go. Sometime before 6 AM, I realize that I could call a 24 hour permit service and request my OR permit instead of using the company suggested one where I will have to call sometime after they open. I call and someone picks up right away. That was about the only good thing of this call. For the next eight minutes I was repeating the same information over and over again in a different way until they repeated it back to me correctly. Finally they said they would call me back with a 'better connection. I waited five minutes and they never called back. I also called the OR scale to find out if they could sell me a permit, no. I would have to call a main number and they do not open until 8 AM. BUT I did find out that I do not have to have a printed copy so that will save us time and money. A few minutes after 6 AM we are rolling, no breakfast. Not often that we only take 10 hours off. Usually it is 12-14, so short night for us. Still dark for ... 1st stop is in Corning at a former Flying J, now a Loves. Plenty of room in the car area to park the bus. BB runs in to use the restroom while I call for an OR permit from 'our company.' This call took less than three minutes. The earlier one took 8 minutes and we were maybe half done. They never did call back. I'm guessing that took down both my phone and email wrong. 2nd stop was a rest area near Weed. BB is watching the weather every few minutes. Taking this trip heading to where a major storm is forecast is really stressing her out. It's not a trip I would normally have picked and usually am more set in my ways to say no. But there were other issues going on and I had finally said "We'll take it and get as far as we can." In Yreka (I think) is where the signs say if chains are required. Those signs are not flashing so ... so far ... it looks like we may be able to make delivery today. The storm was supposed to have moved in around 10 AM but BB has been watching the highway cams and the roads are just wet, so far. We do hit some snow on the pass in CA but not on the higher passes in OR. There is is just raining. BEEP ... BEEP ... BEEP .... but it stops before I can see why an alarm in the bus is going off. Then it happens again. Finally on the third time we see that it is a door alarm and it does not go off for a while. At first we thought it was the elevation but after going off a dozen times I think it has to do with inclines as the alarm would go off once we reached the top. Alarm never went off on the down hill side. We pass the OR chain signs and they are not flashing either... whew. BB was watching and my permit has come in so I am legal to enter OR. No issue at the scale. But I did notice that my weight was only 200# less than legal. Good thing I did not add more fuel before crossing the scale. I have been looking at the gauge every stop. I am using about 300# pressure for every 100 miles. 3rd stop is in Medford at the Pilot for CNG fuel. Two pumps are down, one still working. We had decided that we would eat here and that would save us stopping for a full half hour break later. Here we can combine it with a fuel stop. I am just done fueling when BB comes back with the food, that leaves us about 10 minutes to eat. Eat and throw/eat and go. 4th stop is in Oakland OR at a rest area. 5th stop is in Halsey for the bus wash. Here it is one guy with a hose on the side of the building. We weren't sure we were at the correct place. I walked in and asked before pulling up. Someone else was just leaving so no waiting. Three trucks waiting when I was done. This guy has been doing it for a while. He knew which company I was working for and used to do a lot of RV's for us. We haven't washed RV's for 2-3 years. NOW we change our car reservation from tomorrow to today. Yesterday and most of day, BB couldn't see a scenario where things would actually work out where we could be delivering before Monday. I knew there was a chance that it may be Monday, but I am always ready to push forward until we can't. Before picked up this bus, BB was ready to just get a hotel near the shipper and 'see how things looked in the morning.' We had talked about how to make sure we didn't end up with all of our luggage inside a bus garage again. BB was going to take part of her luggage with her when I dropped her off ... or I would find a place to park and call and BB could meet me. 6th stop - Salem Airport - But when we got to the airport we saw how small it was. One flat parking lot with Budget using part of the lot for their rental trucks. There was enough room there to park the bus and wait and no one would care. So that is what we did. Glad this was not a test, I ended up going over the curb twice in the last hour of this trip. 7th stop is the drop. I get there about a half hour before close. I find the office and the find some one to pull the bus inside and inspect ... and I wait. The moving and inspection took about 10 minutes. Then I stood around for 20 minutes waiting for someone to sign. No idea what the hold up was. I finally found the person I talked to originally and asked who could sign. He could. He had been within 40 feet of my bus the whole time. It's like they had no idea what was going on. The other bus from last night was already here when we got here. Front plastic was never taken off. I thought about doing it but these people were not doing me any favors. We had thought about heading south an hour or so, IF we had gotten in and out quickly. It was now after 5 PM and fully dark. We head to a hotel, but first food. BB is beyond tired and doesn't what she wants, just what she doesn't want. I finally pull into a DQ and we go through the drive thru. Final stop is the Comfort Inn. First room doesn't get warm so we get a 2nd room which doesn't get warm. It does eventually. Now chains are required on I-5. Hopefully they will not be required when we get there tomorrow. We have a narrow window between two storms to get out of here. We also have about 10 hours back to the buses. Most likely we will not pick one up tomorrow but wait until Saturday morning. One of the drivers I track :) just came across Donners Pass today and by the time they were over, chains were required. And now will be required until Sunday or Monday so whatever we take, we will go the southern route. We would have had to have left last night to make it over. Today chains were required before buses were assigned. Load board US - 217 IA - 7/6 221209 CA-CO 1 bus to Denver CO (Saturday) ... spending the night at Livermore CA Up and showered by 4 AM (local) Breakfast at 6:30 when they opened. So so but the person taking care of the area seemed to be doing all the right things. When I went to check out, I asked for a receipt ... I don't remember saying my room number but someone from the office said "James?" They wanted to know why we switched rooms last night ... so I said we wanted to compare rooms :) ... and a couple of more smart aleck comments before we got serious. I did explain that the fan didn't blow very hard so we couldn't tell if the room was going to warm up or not ... and that we stay more nights in hotels than we do at home. I said we have stayed in hotels 260 nights ... actually our count is 212 as of tonight. But a high number either way. All that chatting cost us time, we pull out at 7:15 AM. ... running late again ... we are heading to Denver, via I-40 ... and then most likely home or in the direction of home. For the holidays. (Later ... ) 1st stop is at Creswell at a rest area called Gettings Creek. The pass we came over in CA yesterday, they have been checking for chains before we delivered last night and still are. That is on the northbound lanes, we are hoping to get through before they start checking on the southbound lanes. If they do, we will need to shut down until they stopping checking/remove the requirement. 2nd stop is Grants Pass at a rest area called Manzanita. Which is confusing because the city of Manzanita is closer to Portland and near the coast. 3rd stop was in Yreka for food. We've stopped here before at a little deli off the main street and also bought some cherry's that time. None of the names we found online this time looked right so BB found another. The top rated deli in town. Street parking only and when we drove past the sign on the door said closed. Online said open. So as I drover around the street BB quickly found a 'Nature's ... something and we headed there. Interesting place. It seemed to be as much of a gift stop as a deli. I ordered the only thing that looked 'safe.' A cold chicken sandwich. It was good. BB had quiche, it was better. They did have one bacon quiche, but it also had jalapenos so that didn't work for me. Soup was tomato and very different, but good. Too full for desert but we got a cookie and lemon bar to go. Back at the car I call the dispatcher to let them know we will be back tonight. (Even though we have one more pass to go) That all took over a half hour. Not on a tight schedule but it will be past dark by the time we get back to Livermore. 4th stop - Lakehead rest area. Not planned but needed 5th stop - Redding for fuel at the TA. BB had looked at prices but didn't see any common fuel names so we decided to just stop at the known. It was $.40 a gallon more than the prior exit. And I didn't get the large discount that I got when I was fueling the last RV. Close to $5 more by stopping at a known. (even later, it is now the evening of the next day) At about 3 PM, BB dials the phone and we call dispatch on speaker phone. Rhode Island buses are on hold so I'm going to Denver. And getting paid to go the south route. We'd go the south route anyways or we'd be sitting in a hotel waiting for Donners Pass to open. IF I would come back, he'd try to get me to the mid-west. Too late for that. Christmas is coming and I always commit to work for my other company the end ever every quarter. And we have already been out over two weeks. And those two weeks are not in the sunny part of the country. 6th stop is the Dunnigan rest area. No street vendors here this year. Or maybe it is too late in the season. Down by the bay ... We see a fire from quite a ways away. It ends up being at a refinery but I don't remember seeing 20 foot high flames on a burn off before. Also lots of black smoke. I thought there would be a slow down for that as it is right next to the freeway but maybe it happens often. Right beyond the fire there was a sign that the express lane was closed due to an accident. By the time we finally get there, all five lanes are closed and traffic is getting past on the shoulder. That took a while. Later there was a stall in one of the center lanes. This was all way after dark. (when I no longer like to be driving) 7th and final stops. Mr Pickel. The doors were still open but they had closed twenty minutes ago. So we head to the Cheese stake place. BB is done, she doesn't even get out of the car, I go in and order and wait for our food. Final, final stop is the Quality Inn. When we walk in, they say hi and ask if we want to leave the room on our card ending in XXXX. Didn't even ask our names ... we spend too much time here. Load board US - 167 IA - 2/0 CO - 4 .. the trip continuesHERE
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