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...My Life as 'Drive away' driver
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.. the trip continues from HERE 2024 07 25 IA-OK 2 RV's to Oklahoma City OK spending the night in Oklahoma City OK Breakfast for me was a hard boiled egg and yogurt. Out of the hotel at 7:30, our usual time. 1st stop is the 'truck parking' at Pattonsburg, pit toilets. While we are stopped I see I have a call from local dispatch so I call them back. They are busy and have work in my mileage range. They also ask where I am and if I can work this weekend. No and no. I have no time so I don't respond to the where I am question. 2nd stop was the Loves in Ottawa for fuel and break. Food is Hardee's. BB and I split a chicken tender box. BB thought the first tender was good but didn't eat much more than that. She thought the others were bad, I guess I didn't as I ate what was left. 3rd stop was the Loves in the Towanda Oasis. They now have a DQ and Subway instead of McD's and DD. We decide to change our next stop as BB thinks she mis-judged on how much fuel she needed. I was getting less mpg so I filled at Ottawa and would have put in another half gallon if it had fit, based on the math. From the first fuel yesterday to our hotel, I was getting 17.5 mpg. From the hotel to today's fuel stop I was getting 16.6 mpg. By the end of the day I was down to 15.8 mpg. 4th stop is the Loves in Tonkawa for BB to get more fuel. She puts in another two gallon. 5th and final stop is the SureStay / BestWestern in OKC. Right next to the drop. The properties join on two sides, the other two sides of the hotel are streets. After checking in, we walk across the street to Taco Bell. Lots of food nearby if we had wanted to drive. Temps are still in the 90's tonight. We did cross all three state scales today, no issues. No major traffic issues. Some road construction a few places. Did hear a 'crack' going through Kansas City, thought it was a chipped windshield but I haven't found it yet. A dump truck had pulled on the freeway right in front of me even though he had a mile lane before he had to come over. Load board US - 135 IA - 2/0 MN - 5 WI - 0 Tomorrow morning we will use one of the RV's to go to the airport and pickup our rental car and bring it to the hotel. Then take both RV's to get fuel a block away and then be in line at the dealer next door by 9 AM. If nothing else we might be first in line, we have nothing else to do. Once we are done we will walk back to the hotel, check out and race back to MN. It is about 700 miles / 10 hours back to Albert Lea and then another two hours to the funeral. We don't think we have enough time to pick up our car on the way so after the funeral we have to drive back to IA to pick it up ... another 5 hours because we are short on time. 2024 07 26 IA-OK 2 RV's to Oklahoma City OK (delivered) spending the night at home We made it home. (below is written up later) We were up by our usual 6 AM, ready to roll at 7:30. BB had oatmeal, I must had yogurt. There wasn't much food at this $40 hotel. It looks like an old Motel 6, even the layout of the rooms. But it was nice for the price. And location, location, location. We got to the airport before 8 AM, there was already a line and they do not open until 8. BB walked out to see if this location had a 'preferred' list. If they do, it is a screen with peoples names on it and where to find your car. No line. Well it did have a list, but we were not on it ... hmmm. Back in the now longer line, BB looks at her reservation. Sometime yesterday when we decided we might not make it home in one day, she switched our reservation from one day to two days. I guess anytime you make a reservation, the default is noon ... and now we know that anytime you CHANGE a reservation, the default resets to noon. She was able to change it to 8:30 (it was now past 8 AM) and her name appeared on the list. Good to go. Back at the hotel we each had our own idea's of how we were going to do things this AM. But we got it worked out. 2nd stop was for fuel at a near-by 7-11. Seemed like not too bad area of town but there was a young gal sleeping near the sidewalk at the stoplight. 3rd stop was back to the shipper. We had talked about having fueled last night. Not sure we'd have gotten there any earlier. They had told us 10 AM. We knew we were not going to beat the people who slept in their units and in line when the gates opened. But getting there an hour early should ... maybe get us there ahead of others. We stop at the door, and I can see another one of our drivers walking to the door. I beat her. But ... she had already talked to them and had already moved her unit to the check in area. This is the same person we had seen at the lot picking up her paperwork when we were pulling out of the lot. We park. The check in person is already done checking in a travel trailer and tells the other driver they are next. No cutting the line, they have already talked to each other. If we had been there five minutes earlier we would have likely gotten out of the lot a half hour earlier. As soon as we have our stuff cleaned up, BB walks across the parking lot, checks out and gets the car. Once we have our things moved we sit inside. It is already sweating hot. I do talk to the other driver a little. They haven't worked for almost 90 days. They have had hip surgery and needed to either take a trip this week or go on long term leave. They only drive RV's so when the shipper started hauling them it really cut into their work. They started about 8 years ago so within months of when we did. They do rental cars almost all the time. We didn't have any extra time so we didn't offer her a ride. Her Uber was there, but not at the right building when we were walking in to keep cool. It was only a 7 mile trip to the airport and she was going to be stopping every 1-2 hours to walk because of her hip. 10:15 and we are done and ready to roll. 1st stop on the return trip was the Loves at the oasis in Kansas, Belle Plain. We decided to go to the truck building instead of the McDonalds/welcome center as we thought it would be faster. No salads for BB, but we each grabbed something. I grabbed a hot turkey and cheese. It was food, barely. 2nd stop was the Loves east of Topeka. We looked and no salads here either. The closest thing to veggies was a package of sliced pickles so that is what BB got. 3rd stop was the Loves in Eagleville. Here we fueled and got food. BB got her salad but there was nothing I liked and the lines at fast food were both long. I ended up with a hot dog, no bun and a chicken roller stick. I also got two packages of chips and a cookie. I was expecting to be getting tired. When we decided earlier today to make a run for it, we were going to be getting home before 9 AM, now it is going to be a 12 hour drive day, plus the time before we got in the car. One of the few things of note. When we pulled out of this Loves we had to wait for two boys in their Amish wagon to go past. No hands on the reins. They were both eating their ice cream cones. 4th stop was in Dows at the rest area. From here I expected I would be getting tired and told BB the best way to keep me awake was to talk to me :) ... we can go for hours without saying much to each other. Talk we did. Guess she decided it was time to get to know the person she married almost 30 years ago. But it did keep both of us awake and I didn't even notice when it got dark. Someone with our company on our company FB page (that I am not on,) mentioned that they took the 'managers choice' option for their rental car. It was an electric. They had never driven one before, they had a few surprises including having to stop for an hour and a half to charge it. We made sure we were getting our mid-sized car and one with cruise. Because of all the safety radar, etc, I set the dash to show my speed and not the mpg. But there was a graph on the radio screen that would show the mpg for the last ten minutes. It would sometimes drop below 40 mpg but often all of the bars were 40 mpg. Not bad for 70-75 mpg (plus) Long day but we made it home. Sometime today BB remembered that she has an appointment on Tuesday. She had completely forgotten about it until we started planning next week and I mentioned it. And I need to get my DOT med card done sometime in the next two weeks. Load board US - 148 IA - 2/0 MN - 3 WI - 0 |
