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Posted on 06/08/2021 6:00:02 PM PDT by luvie
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Darn those bad, bad weeks. They just mess everything up!
I think you need to take a vaca and go see your friends/family in CA. Unless it’s on fire right now. You haven’t taken off in forever!
Yeah, you nearly need a magnifying glass to see some of them. LOL!
I’m glad to see those extra 7 states disappear. LOL! You did good!
Heck if I’d known it was timed, I’d have sped up a bit. LOL!
Or not. :)
“Sen. Clinton, I think, is much better known, coming from a nearby state of Arkansas. So it’s not surprising that she would have an advantage in some of those states...” Barry Obama whose home state of Illinois, and not Arkansas, shares a border with Kentucky.
Again, your map didn’t match that of Barry’s brain.
Well, he’s an idiot. What else can we say. LOL
Friends and family ask “Where was the best place you went?”. Easy question: The best place I ever went was everywhere I ever was”.
It is always the people you meet that make make life experiences great. The objective of my driving for 2 years was to get the “Lay-of-the-land” of our country, and at about 150,00 miles a year, I got a fair but not complete view of the 46 states I drove through.
I had plenty of time to get out of the truck and set foot in most of those states after I mastered my 5 most important guidelines for driving a big truck, like the five fingers on one hand, as I say.
#1: Learn how to drive you truck so you don’t kill anyone.
#2: Learn how to drive your log book so you get every possible mile out of it.
#3: Learn how to drive your customer by calling them after loaded or empty and letting them know if you can deliver or load earlier that scheduled. An empty trailer needs to get loaded and a loaded trailer needs to get empty so you can sell it to a customer. The variety of responses are; We need what you have, get here as fast as you can and we will load/unload you immediately; We don’t need what you have but we will fit you in if we can after you arrive; The warehouse space is not paid for until your scheduled delivery date and time so no early delivery, or the product you are loading does not exist yet so no early loading. This creates “tourist time” close to your appointment location.
#4: Learn how to drive your company. Let your fleet manager know you are available earlier the scheduled. You are now a “runner” and you get challenging rescue loads to handle. If you think big do what I did and tell your boss “When a problem lands on your desk, give it to me and I will solve it for you”. Sometimes you get two loads at once.
#5: Learn how to drive yourself. Once you set high exceptions of your ability you will be tested by many company wide challenges.
The reward is that you ping pong around the US and Canada. You find that wherever you load/deliver is probably the first and probably the last time you will ever go there.
Excellent rules and I think you DID make the best of your truck routes. Bet you saw lots of cool stuff.
HELLO KATHY,
THANKS FOR POSTING A PHOTO OF GIL SECOR, “THE OLD MAN”, ON MEMORIAL DAY WEEKEND. BLEW MY SOCKS OFF!
DOWNLOADED IT, TWEAKED IT THROUGH PHOTOSHOP, MOUNTED AND FRAMED IT, AND HAVE IT HANGING ON MY WALL NOW.
SHOULD HAVE BEEN ABLE TO HAVE BEEN ABLE TO HAVE FOUND IT ON MY OWN, BUT I’M MOT ALL THAT MUCH NET SAVVY...BUT I’M
LEARNING!
THANKS AGAIN FOR ALL YOU DO. IT’S LIKE THE EXTRA MILE IS JUST SOP WITH YOU.
G-D BLESS, AND KEEP, YOU AND YOURS.
100% 2:38
H!!100% 3.26
100% in 2:25 (actually, my finger slipped on Virginia when it asked for N. Carolina - but I knew I made the fat-finger slip).
I REALLY LIKED YOUR POST! APPRECIATED THE GLIMPSE OF YOUR MIND.
SOUNDS LIKE YOU HAD A RIGHT TIME OF IT. IT’S AMAZING THE THINGS A PERSON GETS TO SEE AND DO IF THEY’VE A MIND TO SEE AND DO WITH...NO MIND, NO NOTHIN’
MY FIRST TRIP CROSS COUNTRY WHEN I WAS A KID FROM NY TO CA OVER A LEISURELY 3 MONTH SPAN OF SUMMER, WAS NOT HOW MUCH RICH LAND WAS UNDER CULTIVATION, BUT HOW MUCH WASN’T.
THAT WAS A LONG TIME AGO, BUT I BET THAT’S STILL THE CASE.
KEEP THE FAITH.
I grew up in upstate, NY. Dad would buy a new car every two years and we would take these HUGE family trips across the country to visit relatives. We went across the northern tier to Idaho (visiting relatives in Indiana and Illinois), then south to Albuquerque and headed east to Ft. Worth, TX. We would usually hit 23 or so states on those trips. By the time I was four years old, I’d crossed the country by train with Mom and my sister. By 18, I had lived in NY, CA and Missouri and I figure I had been in at least 35 to 40 states. I moved to California after college, worked in field service engineering for a power plant company, and I had work assignments in about 10 states which required living in those states a week to six months.
By age 27, I had been to 49 states. I finally hit 50 on my honeymoon to Hawaii when I was 32!
Hey there! Good job! I had to guess a few and still didn’t get 100% LOL
I like it better now than I did then. I stressed too much at testing. LOL!
100% at 2:22. Child’s play. I’ve driven thru most of them.
Great result! You have really gotten around in your lifetime. If not by car, then by train.
Hi Luvie,
Well here is a short list: Alamo and most of Texas;
In Mobile AL all through the Battleship USS Alabama BB-60 and the USS Drum SS-228;
Went to New Orleans several times including 1 week before Marti Gras and waded in the Mississippi;
Skin-dived in the Atlantic ocean in South Florida and skin-dived at Lithia Springs and snuck out of the spring pond into the Alafie River on advice of a local dive shop;
Full immersion in all five Great Lakes;
2 days in Colonial Williamsburg;
Went through the White house, saw both houses of Congress in session, went through the adjourned Supreme Court and all the sights of our Capital including but not limited to the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, The Holocaust Museum and the toughest place to leave once there, Arlington National Cemetery...I wanted to stay there to keep our Nation’s Heroes company in gratitude for their sacrifices;
Top of the World Trade Center, when we had them. If I was in charge we would have rebuilt then to a 1/16th of an inch on the outside and modern on the inside after we decided what enemies were responsible with a 100 or 1,000 or 100,000 lives price per murdered people in that full attack...but I digress. A Knicks game at the Garden just to say I saw something at the Garden, Several Broadway plays courtesy of the Broadway Ticket Development Fund booth in Times Square;
Niagara Falls a few times; The Meteor Crater; Fossil Butte National Park and snuck onto a Wyoming excavated coal seam site when the overburden crane was out of service for maintenance...I got caught and lectured by the crane crew after I went to the seam itself, then the overburden drill rig and finally to the huge walking foot dragline crane. I go places that say KEEP OUT;
Went on Public Transportation and walked a lot through some very notorious places in most big cities. I drove for CR England and the only driver that ventured with me was a mid 20’s driver from Laos or Cambodia that was a Buddhist Monk trainee before he came to the U.S.A.. We went to a taping of the Conan O’Brian show at NBC 30 Rockefeller Plaza and another taped show for free with tickets distributed waiting in line at the TDF. All other drivers thought that criminals attack was certain in New York Boroughs. I explained that on Manhattan, there are residents wearing $20,000 dollars of clothing and jewelry walking the streets on 5th avenue and no criminal would bother them because they obviously have no valuables.
That was not the case in New Orleans where during Marti Gras I parked at the I-10 Marti Gras Truck Stop on Tuesday morning one week before Fat Tuesday and walked the 1-1/2 miles down Elysian Fields Ave to the French Quarter where the Quarter had all streets blocked so no vehicles allowed for the full-on party for Marti Gras. I stopped and talked with residents on their door stoops as I leisurely made my way to the Quarter. After watching several Crews parade, including the Crew of Pegasus it was time to go back to my truck. The only sober people there seemed to be me and the N.O.P.D., who held court in all the roped off intersections. That’s where I mentioned that I had walked to the Quarter down Elysian Fields Ave that morning and was ready to walk back at about 10:00 or so.
The police there told me New Orleans was then the murder capital of the U.S. and that I would surely get mugged and probably killed as the old rule of mugging no longer applied. They would have to come scrape me up out of the gutter…
The old rule was an experienced mugger that would size up a potential victim for jewelry and expected wallet cash and only bother to risk mugging if the reward was significant, and he knew how rob without making a mess of it.
The New Rules, I was told, were a gang of several pre to mid-teens who were looking to rob anyone they may find, even for $5, and maybe just for the experience, and they were inexperienced, and if I did not do as ordered and spooked them they would just shoot me for the trophy of “making their bones” and run, leaving me for dead and the police to clean up later. I was advised to take a taxi back to the truck stop or I would surely wind up on the coroner’s table. Good advice for me, the guy who got along with everybody and had never had a bad experience with anyone or anything in all my wilderness, suburban, urban, or inner-city adventures.
This list is a fraction of the 2 year adventure I had as a working tourist. I have seen some of the best and worst our great Country has to offer, and never a dull moment throughout.
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