As promised, I am updating from my destination in Illinois. I was fortunate that during my pickups all of the shippers apparently wanted to get done early for the day and get home to start their Thanksgiving holiday. I was able to get all three pickups done about 4 hours ahead of schedule. With getting an early start, I thought I could possibly make it to my destination with enough time to be able to go to my mothers house for a nice turkey dinner. Mother Nature had other plans!! I made it as far as Big Cabin, OK and ran into a line of storms that was producing tornados and the whole southeast corner of Oklahoma and southwest corner of Missouri were both under tornado warnings and watches. I checked the radar and it looked like the line would move out after a little while so I went into the truck stop and drank some coffee and had a little bit of conversation with the waitress. After killing some time I went and checked the radar again and found that although the line was moving, it was also redeveloping over the same areas and the conditions were not getting any better. Finally I got too tired to continue so I went to bed shaking my fist at the sky (that doesn't help by the way). Waking up the next day I found that the weather had cleared where I was at so I was able to continue. I made it through Springfield, MO and ran into the rain again but checking the radar it looked like just moderate rain so I kept going. I would periodically check the radar to see when I would be out of the rain but it kept moving with me and the freezing rain and snow was catching up behind me. Fortunately I made it to my destination before the ice caught me but just as I got here it started snowing.
It was a close chase, but I won the race. Unfortunately it delayed me enough that I couldn't get to moms house for turkey :-( I did stop at a Denny's to have my Turkey Day dinner and was very disappointed in what they offered and how it was prepared and served. But that is yet another disappointing Denny's story that I am not going to talk about at this time.
I unloaded this morning in Danville, IL and am still waiting on my next load assignment. As I said in my last post, freight has slowed down considerably and it is taking quite a while to get my load assigned. A little frustrating but again, I am trying to keep my stress level down so therefore am attempting to stay as calm as possible about it. I really don't want to do another 34 hour reset. I have already had 4 of those 34's in the past 3 weeks and I obviously cannot continue to have them if I expect to be able to make a living out here.
I will leave it at that and update when I know where I go next!
Happy Trails,
Mike
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