I'll Get You My Pretty...and You're Little Dog Too!

Funnel Cloud of a Brief Tornado in Shelby, OH

Amazing weather yesterday and this morning. Luckily I did manage to miss most of it. Saw some heavy rain for a short bit as I headed for Chicago from Louisville. I stopped to shut my eyes for about a half and hour and when I got up it was gone. But I got to see a hellacious light show before hand. It was so beautiful...flashes of lightening every 2 seconds. Most of them just in the clouds but a few were earthbound too. Now they had a little more excitement back home. A small town, Shelby, close to my home of Mansfield experienced a brief funnel cloud but it did not fully form thank goodness. Shelby is probably about 20 miles from my house. It was scary for me since I wasn't home but my daughter and all the furbabies were. I'm so glad that no damage was seen there. I worry that something will happen at home while I'm out on the road. But I am thankful that I didn't run into any of that bad weather. I heard it got pretty nasty north of where I was.

Tonight I'm parked at a teeny, tiny Pilot truck stop with only about 15 parking spots...maybe not even that many. But of course you know there's more than that parked here. They are parked around the edges, next to the scales, and in the striped no parking areas. Got one guy parked right in front of another truck that's in a parking spot (he'll be getting woke up to move his out of the way I'm sure). From what I'm seeing out my window I think there's another parked cross-ways across several trucks that are in parking spots. But hell...I bet they don't have much choice. When you're out of hours you're out of hours. And there's not a lot of choices around this area for parking. I was lucky (or unlucky considering I was out of hours) that I got in early and had no problem getting into a spot. There were about 4 open when I got here. Now if someone parks in front of me...no problem. I'm stuck here until tomorrow afternoon. If I leave in the morning I'll be bumping my 70 hour clock before I can even get to the receiver. But the delivery time isn't even till 8:30 pm anyway and I'm 4 hours away so if I wait until afternoon to leave I won't have to worry about the 70 hr clock. Hopefully it won't take them long to unload me so I can get on to the 2nd receiver (another 5 hour drive) so I can get unloaded and parked for the rest of the night before my hours run out.

So let me mention here that the tool I use to make sure my hours are all straight is Driver's Daily Log. It's not pretty to look at but it does the job and it does it very well. It's already got the new HOS rules in it all I have to do is switch over to them come July 1st. It really helps me keep  my paper logs in proper order and I never have any mistakes on them.

I'll be working this weekend...3rd week straight...but by choice. I could go home every weekend if I want to. But I need the extra miles (money) right now. I will go home next weekend though. I'm gonna need a break by then. Going to tell them I need three days...that's one day for each week I've been on the road...I think that's fair. Need some downtime OUTSIDE my truck. :-)

While I don't have to get up early I am getting tired. I got up and on the road at 2 am so yea...I think it gives me good cause to get my ass in the bunk and snooze! Night y'all!