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...My Life as 'Drive away' driver
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.. the trip continues from HERE 230524 CA-CA 1 bus to Santa Ana CA (delivered) 1 bus to Duluth MN (Wednesday) ... spending the night at Santa Clarita CA We are up too early for breakfast, but we planned ahead and got large philly's last night and saved half for this AM. Still a lot of food for that early. I take the city streets but find out later that the freeway would have been faster. We may have lost a couple of minutes. Our bus is first in line. While we are inspecting, another driver stops to talk. He has been driving for 20 years, six months. Just a few more months than me. He now drives mostly buses. Today he is heading to GA. (not a bus I was offered) We don't talk long but he has to show us how he has a hammock set up in his bus. It is already set up so I'm guessing that is where he slept last night. More money to pocket for him. (but more time wasted for us) ... and that philly is catching up to me. I need to use the restroom again before I leave. So I leave the bus blocking cars in the lot and run in. A few more minutes gone. Traffic is not bad and the bus runs at 65 mph on most stretches. BB had planned on stopping at the first rest area but the first two were both closed so she ends up at a small gas station. Somewhere about an hour into the trip I finally realize what I am sometimes seeing in my peripheral vision. One of my windows is swinging up with the right breeze. So I pull off at the next exit and park on the ramp. BB is following in the rental car and her first thoughts are it is a breakdown. Almost four hours later we are at the TA / Blue Beacon wash in Lebec. Three trucks ahead of me in each line. We should be OK. ... I had contacted one of the other drivers last night via FaceBook and they had left at 6 AM, we left at 7 AM and they were not able to make it to the drop the same day so we were expecting the worst. We should be OK with this few of cars. But it does take 45 minutes instead of under five minutes. Up the Grapevine Hill the bus is down to under 45 mph. But traffic is not until we get must close to LA. There is four turns before the drop and I have those written down. But I had looked at the map wrong and wrote down the wrong exit number. Not a big deal, next exit. But going this route there is a RR crossing sign. But all that is left is the RR ties. No rails. As soon as I get on the property, I call my contact. This time he picks up and tells me where to park. It wasn't quite clear to me so when I do stop I ask two guys if I am in the correct area. By that time, my contact is walking to the bus. He does a quick check and I am in and out in 15 minutes. By now it is time to call the bus dispatcher back for more work. He wants to know if we can come back to Santa Ana again tomorrow. BB says no, she has not had as much fun as I have. We never take RV's to LA for this reason. Too much traffic. 'My bus' heading to Duluth is ready. We talk but dispatch says for me to call back in the AM which is rare. He does not give me the bus number as we are still 5-6 hours from the shipper. It is 3 PM here and I haven't eaten today so we stop at one of the first places we see. Jimmy Johns. Instead of the usual small I get a regular sized. I didn't need that. We do eat and run ... or crawl. We figure we spent about five hours traveling about 120 miles. We prefer the open road. No accidents, just traffic. We finally decide to just shut down as soon as we cleared the heaviest traffic. A hotel in Santa Clarita. Right near Six Flaggs. Large lot, I think this is where the other driver parked once she knew she wouldn't make the drop. Other hotels beyond charge for large vehicles. We had looked at one close to the drop just in case. We had stayed there before with just a car and it was a nice place. Don't remember why were were there but that time we ate at Farrell's Ice Cream Parlor. We did walk the parking lot for about a half hour. The sidewalks were all hills. 8 AM - Livermore CA - Quality Inn - leave hotel 8:30 - Livermore CA - leave shipper Noon - Buttonwillow CA - Sinclear - CNG fuel 2 PM - Lebec CA - Blue Beacon - bus wash 5 PM - Santa Ana CA - drop bus 5:30 - Santa Ana CA - Jimmy Johns 8 PM - Santa Clarita CA - Comfort Inn Loadboard US - 196 IA - 21 MN - 14 WI - 1 230525 CA-CA 1 bus to Duluth MN (on hold) 1 pickup to Fresno CA (delivered) ... spending the night at Tulare CA ??? not sure what today will bring. Dispatch said I could have a Duluth MN bus but they never gave me the bus number. So we are up, eat breakfast and rolling by 7 AM local. We had gone down to eat at 6 and most items were not out yet so I had yogurt. As we left I saw that they had eggs and ham. An hour down the road we stop at the rest area near Buttonwillow. This one is open, otherwise we would have stopped in Lost Hills at one of the truckstops. We were looking at the SureStay/BestWestern in this town but there are no rooms available. Ever. The hotel is still listed on their website so not sure what is going on. It looks to be an old Motel 6 with doors opening to the outside. Another hour plus down the road we pull off at an exit and call dispatch. Now my bus in on hold. It still has my name on it ... We drive another 20 miles and discuss our options. We had planned on fueling another hour down the road where gas is $.20 cheaper but that only amounts to $2. So we stop at the Loves in Santa Nella. By now we have decided to do move a pickup from Sonora to Fresno. At Loves we get it printed out. But we decide to make an extra stop to get good food instead of eating shelf food. Back roads for most of the rest of the day. Next stop is Turlock at the In-n-Out. And we were in and out in about 15 minutes. Food to go and more back roads. We have been to Sonora before to a cemetery. Spent an hour before we realized we had been looking at the wrong cemetery. We should have been looking across the street. Heading east, there are lots of signs that remind us that the road / passes in Yosemite are still closed. I'm seeing almost daily updates on FaceBook about the progress of trying to clear the roads there. I had called the shipper and gotten a voicemail. When they call back, the call goes to my flip phone and BB doesn't like the speaker on that so she picks up the call (rare.) Even though this pickup has been sitting there for three weeks, the shipper didn't know that I was coming today. So when I get there, we have to wait until they take the tools and mounted tool box out and take all the seat covers off. So it was not a quick in and out. They also didn't know I was coming so they had not filled it with fuel. There is no requirement that they fill it, just being nice. From here we take the back roads. BB had made it sound like it was a lot of twists and turns. It was. But only two changes of road numbers, one which ended at the other so it should have been easy but instead I followed her. 60 miles and we stop for fuel. It is on the correct side of the road and I should know how much more fuel I will need. I'm a few minutes late but time to call the bus dispatcher. My bus is still on hold and now he has nothing else. Hmmm Tomorrow is Friday of a long weekend and we are 2,000 miles from home with no work. From here I am on my own. We will be on the express way so there is no way either of us could follow the other. I have been to the this drop and BB gives me the exit number and name. But ... as soon as I get on the expressway, the exit numbers don't add up. I had thought the whole trip was about 120 miles. Based on the exit numbers, I have 120 miles to go to get to the exit and I have only put in enough fuel to get sixty miles but the gauge went up by 100 miles range. So for the next 60 miles I am trying to figure out which is correct. By the time I get to Fresno, I know that the number BB gave me was not my exit number, maybe a highway number. I thought I would remember the exit but I don't. Once I start leaving town I am ready to pull off but haven't found a good exit. Then BB calls ... "I gave you the wrong exit ... you need to take 'x'" But the exits are numbered the same coming back as they were coming down :) But this time I guess correct and am to the drop shortly. I had only gone nine miles passed my exit so about 20 miles and time wasted. On the plus side, I left the unit with more range than I picked it up with. Smaller place, easy routine. By now BB has been here long enough that she has found good food. (We are about two hours behind where we thought we would be when we took the trip) Cheesestakes. Little place in a building with a gas station. Great food but no-one else came in while we were there. We ate there so we were there about an hour ... at meal time. After we are done eating, we talk. Where are we going? BB has looked at the reviews and Fresno is (still) not good. And the good ones are close to $200. So we decide to go to Tulare where they are close to $100 for a nice hotel and there are still a couple of cemeteries that we haven't been to. All times Central 9:00 - Leave Comfort Inn in Santa Clarita 10:15 - Rest area near Buttonwillow 12:00 - exit ramp near Los Baros 12:30 - Santa Nella Loves for fuel and paperwork 2:00 - In-n-Out in Turlock for food 3:30 - at shipper in Sonora 5:00 - fuel at Arco 6:45 - drop at Fresno Load board US - 201 IA - 14 MN - 8 WI - 1 CA - 10 No known plans. Sometime today we made backup reservations for a car back home. Just in case. Santa Ana bus pays really well. Hard to turn that kind of money down. IF we do it again, we will not try to do it all in one day. We would try to be in and out before the rush hour. And we will look at getting a car near the drop. There is a Hertz a couple of blocks away but no cars this time. The only car close we could find was over $200. But, with doing a local we need the car for two days but the extra fuel at $5 a gallon. 230526 CA-WI 1 bus to Beloit WI ... spending the night at Rocklin CA This AM we are up at our usual time. Green eggs and ... sausage. Yesterday the meat was ham. We have decided not to do a trip that could have worked for us. But it would have been 10 hours of just driving time. Too close to push for a Friday on a Holiday weekend. One of the drivers who also works at our long haul company just posted that they got an RV heading back from CA, right next to where they were dropping off. ))) the rest is written over one week after these events ((( We had talked about doing another local trip and about visiting a few cemeteries. But we ended up sitting in the hotel until check out time. Plan had been to visit one cemetery, eat, visit a second cemetery. But when we pulled out, BB saw that there was a Black Bear restaurant just down the street so we headed there. We used to eat here more often but we now haven't eaten at one for about two years ... since our car was broken into while eating. Foods still good, I got a meatloaf. Then we headed further away from the shipper to a cemetery in Delano. The place still says to wear a mask so I did, but no one else was. This place has a few thousand flat makers and an office so I asked the location of the marker I was looking for. In and out in a few minutes. BB didn't even get out of the car so no walk for us today. By sitting eating at the Black Bear and sitting in the hotel all AM we no longer have enough time to stop anywhere else. I decide to take the back roads to I-5. Long road. At 3 PM local, bus dispatch calls me before I can call them. No Duluth bus but one going to Beloit WI. Now we realize we are running late. Cheapest fuel is at the Loves in Patterson. It is a zoo, only one driveway for in and out and travel trailers are blocking it. We do buy food, don't remember what it was. Then we buy Cherries from a vendor in the parking lot. They try to talk me into buying three baskets because they are ready to close down (?) But we have no way to keep them cool so we stick with just one. We arrive at the shipper. There are four other drivers there picking up. We talk to three of them. The first two said they first met about 20 years ago in Roswell delivering buses. The other person I talked to, I had talked to before but don't remember his name. This third driver had been down the road already when he was called back. Instead of leaving tonight, he gets the weekend off. Then puts some miles on one of the electric buses before he takes his original bus somewhere first for a demo before he delivers it. From this 3rd driver we find out that we are driving electric buses to places like Vancouver WA and San Antonio TX. So they are not all being flat bedded. I will need to talk to dispatch. I'd be interested if there isn't 750 / 11 hours between charges. From the first driver we learned that we may have lost most or all of the AL contract. I will need to check on that. The 2nd driver didn't have much to say. All four drivers were heading to the hotel here in town. THAT got BB's attention. She doesn't like driving until 7 PM (9 home time) and then eating right before we head to bed. Now that it has been a week, I don't remember where they said they were staying. We end up taking about an hour at the shipper, some times we are in and out in 15 minutes. And the trip out of town takes an extra hour. It is the Friday of a memorial day weekend. I am reminded several times that the other drivers are already shut down for the night. There is still room at the hotel to park a bus at the hotel. 'Our spot.' Once we check in, we walk next door to the Taco Bell. They lock the doors behind us, an hour before the time on the door says they are to close. 1 PM / 11 AM local - Tulare CA - Comfort Inn - leave hotel 1:15 - Tulare CA - Black Bear - food 2 PM - Delano CA - Cemetery 5 PM - Firebaugh CA - roadside phone call 6 PM - Patterson CA - Loves - fuel and cherries 6:30 - Livermore CA - shipper 10:30 - Rocklin CA - Comfort Inn 10:45 - Rocklin CA - Taco Bell Loadboard US - 195 IA - 29 MN - 7 WI - 1 .. the trip continues HERE |
