The Trucker's Wife

Monday, November 15, 2010

Make New Friends, But Keep The Old....

I've decided that the state of Pennsylvania needs to put me on their payroll as official state photographer and tourism spokesperson! I spend more time there than anybody else and take great pictures!

more PA beauty

Tuscarora Mtn again. This was a five tunnel day!

Somewhere in Pennsylvania

I talk it up pretty good, so you'd think that would be worth something to the state!

One of the tunnels. This is a very silly sounding name!

There is a tunnel in Pittsburgh called "the Squirrel tunnel". I like that name. We went through it on Saturday, but I was on the phone with Lil Deb at the time and didn't get a picture. Also, Mr. Trucker was panicking because he wasn't certain we could fit inside it, but we made it out the other side...

Anybody want to take a stab at THIS pronunciation?
This was in Mechanicsburg, PA

On Saturday after we stopped at the Sheepskin Shop, we made our delivery at the WalMart distribution center in Winterville, OH. From there we took a very windy (that's wind-ey, not windy) county highway all the way to Akron. We passed through some pretty small towns and saw some pretty interesting sights. For instance, we both exclaimed out loud when we saw a lighted sign (it was night) for "Sweeney Dodds Funeral Home" in Amsterdam, OH. Unfortunately, sometimes these things come up so fast that I can't get a picture, so you will just have to imagine that you saw it, too, and believe that I am NOT making it up.

Right after Sweeney Dodd's, we found a BBQ place in Carrollton at which to stop for Mr. Trucker's birthday supper. We knew it was a sign that we should eat there, because the place was called "Jimmy's" (Mr. Trucker's favorite name to call just about anybody), AND it had only been in business for five days! They serve pulled pork, brisket and smoked chicken barbecue and it was really, really good!!!

When we stopped for the night Saturday at a rest area just outside of Mansfield, OH, it was 70 degrees outside! It was quite a bit cooler the following morning, as we headed for Indiana and our delivery at the Dollar General headquarters in Marion.

I have a high school chum who lives in Muncie, IN, about 40 minutes from Marion, so we made arrangements to meet in Marion for supper. Sharon and I sang in choir and played violin in the orchestra together in high school back in Midland, Michigan (just a few years ago), and although we didn't stay in touch right out of school, we reconnected not that long ago. When Sassy was a high school junior, she and I did a couple of college tours in Indiana, and while we were there we met Sharon and her two beautiful daughters for several hours. That was the first time I had seen Sharon since graduation, and yesterday was only the second! She brought her really lovely husband, Butch along, and he and Mr. Trucker got on like a house on fire. It's amazing how much Sharon and I still have in common!

One of the things we have in common is that neither of us has
aged a bit!

After Sharon and Butch dropped us back off at our truck for the night, we spent some time perusing the aisles at the Love's truckstop in Marion, Indiana, at the intersection of I-69 and Highway 18. Love's is starting to stock their shelves for Christmas and they had these large dolls for sale that are (obviously) made in China

"Collection Them All!", the box suggests

Another customer caught us taking pictures of the box and snickering and wondered what we were up to. We told her about the website www.engrish.com, which is a lot of fun. It shows examples of Chinese and/or Japanese signs and advertisements that are attempting to be, well..."Engrish".

We also told her about the website www.peopleofwalmart.com, which is relatively self-explanatory, I think. You may wish to check it out. Everytime I do, it makes me feel better about my own lack of personal style and panache!

Speaking of style and panache, Mr. Trucker bought a new cap last night. You can't tell it by these pictures, but it is actually pretty stylish (at least I think so, not that I'm the world's authority on style, just ask my daughters...). When he pulls the sides down, it looks kind of "skateboardery".

That's right! I'm blogging about YOU, Mr. Trucker!

Don't look away when I'm tryin' to take your picture!

So what do you think, readers? Hmmmmm?

Whoa dude! We just got pulled over by an Indiana State Trooper and I thought Mr. Trucker was going to poop in his pants! It is just a "routine Level 3 paperwork check", or so says the officer, who complimented me on my laptop. He said he is a professional photographer and LOVES the Macbook Pro, which is what I am using. We are sitting on the side of I-65, 33 miles south of I-80, waiting for the officer to bring the paperwork back to the truck. Nothing like a little excitement to round out our day!

Here's a Silly Sounding Place Name that we weren't anyplace near. I got it off a truck

Today's Silly Sounding Place Name:
Okahumpka, Florida

Saturday, November 13, 2010

Happy Birthday, Mr. Trucker!

We are sitting in the truck in a WalMart parking lot in Mechanicsburg, PA, with both windows open and the sun beating in. I am in a sleeveless top and the thermometer on the truck says 70 degrees (in the sun) when across the wire (cellphone) comes these pictures from Sassy in Minneapolis, taken this morning...

This one's just to sneak in a little cuteness

Minneapolis, November 13, 2010

My prediction: It's heading this way...!!!

I guess we had better enjoy this balmy weather while we can.

Everyday, this job surprises me in some way. Yesterday morning, we started out with a Land O Lakes load that had two (delivery) stops. The first was in East Brunswick, New Jersey, to the East Brunswick Public Schools. You never know, the first time you deliver to a particular stop, what you're gonna find there. In this case, the address we were given took us to an elementary school for a 6:30 a.m. delivery. We got there at 6:15 a.m. to find...an elementary school. No loading dock, no sign of any kind of life whatsoever. Now mind you, we're used to going to places where we back the big rig up to a loading dock of some sort, they drop a dock plate in place and scoot on and off our trailer with a forklift, either loading or unloading pallets of product. So we were a little confused and concerned. The phone number we had didn't help much either, cuz it was for a school district, and guess what? They don't open till 8:00 a.m. I walked across the street to a building that looked like school district offices because I could see school buses starting up and a few signs of life, but there were no overhead doors or loading docks there either. Then Mr. Trucker texted me to come back across the street. The loading party had apparently arrived. It consisted of three men with two regular sized vans. One of the men, the one clearly in charge, I'll call Mr. Cynical. He seemed to think that Mr. Trucker was going to offload their five pallets of stuff for them. Fortunately, he had two other guys with him, one of whom he kept telling NOT to get up into the truck. The other unfortunate young man, the one with all the piercings, got the dubious distinction of going up in the truck, breaking down the pallets and trucking the cases of cheese to the open doorway on a hand truck (dolly), where Mr. Cynical, Mr. Trucker and the other guy carried these 77 cases of cheese sauce and 50 cases of string cheese by hand to the backs of the waiting vans. By the time they had finished, the parents were starting to drop off kids for school, so after a quick trip inside the school to use the bathroom, we got out of the parking lot to make room. Mr. Trucker spotted this sign in the gymnasium, and couldn't resist snapping a photo

Why Latex? Why not other allergy-producing
products, like peanuts, or soy?

Hopefully they're not referring to another common latex product, in which case they'd be wise to ban it from their elementary school.

We left East Brunswick (which appears to be a really cute little town, although when I mentioned this to Mr. Cynical, he shrugged and said "is it?") and headed for our second stop in Jersey City. As I have mentioned in a previous post, I believe New Jersey should be called The Graffiti State (rather than The Garden State). Here are a few lovely examples

I think Mr. Cynical had a hand in these

Some of the silliest sounding cities are in New Jersey

I love the way "Piscataway" sounds

Seriously? The Oranges?

Who would name a city Mahwah?

And although I couldn't get a photo, I saw the town Parsippany!

When we go to Jersey City, we are right down at the docks. This is where all the stuff comes in on ships or goes out on ships and it's really quite interesting

There are scores of these huge crane-like things for loading
and unloading big shipping containers

Here's a ship to be loaded or unloaded

And here are stacks and stacks of shipping containers

Once again, we were just across the river from New York City

NYC skyline

NYC

The place we were at to get loaded was, literally, chaos. It is a very busy wholesaler and the parking lot looked as if someone took a handful of toy trucks and just dropped them. There was no order to anything, trucks kept coming into the lot even though there wasn't room, so no one could move to get to a dock or out of a dock, and local day cab drivers kept zipping in and out around everyone, cobbing up the works...it made for some very short tempers, I'll tell you. We were there for over four hours and I did some heavy duty praying that things would go smoothly, cuz you could clearly see that nothing was going smoothly. God answered my prayer because Mr. Trucker actually got some pretty decent breaks getting to his dock and back out again, although not without some headaches. He was feeling so lucky when we stopped for the night that he decided to buy a lottery ticket. The cashier at the truckstop told him they didn't have a lottery, but this morning when we went in for our coffee, we found out that she had not told us the truth. We found this out because we saw someone buying a Powerball ticket and when Mr. Trucker asked this morning's cashier if they had a New Jersey lottery, he told us in very sarcastic tones "This IS New Jersey, so yeah, it's a New Jersey Lottery". Apparently they don't think Customer Service is Job One at the Pilot truckstop in Bloomsbury, NJ. But cross your fingers on that Lottery ticket, and if we win, we'll share it with ya!

This morning we headed for the border (couldn't get out of New Jersey soon enough for me) into Pennsylvania and some more spectacular scenery and fine weather.

Pennsylvania

Some sort of orchard

We decided to make a stop at Pat Garrett's Sheepskin Shop, at exit 19 off I-78 in Strausstown, PA.

Pat Garrett's Sheepskin Shop

Apparently this Pat Garrett is a Country musician of some renown, judging by the photographs and articles papering the walls. Pat himself actually walked through with a cup of coffee, prompting me to call my brother, Steve, who is a musician himself. When I asked him if he knew who Pat Garrett was, he responded "Yeah, he killed Billy the Kid". Which turns out to be true, but that was ANOTHER Pat Garrett. Anyway, here's the link to his website www.patgarrett.com.

Mr. Trucker was enticed by a Sheepskin Bomber Jacket, which looked very fetching on him, and which Pat Garrett told him was "made for him"

"It IS my birthday, after all..."

But his innate ~~tightwadness~~ frugality prevailed and he did NOT yield to temptation. It was actually a very good buy at $300, but right now $300 is a lot of money to us.

Well, I'll sign off for today with two final notes:

1) I'd like to get my hands on the sadistic bastard who invented the world's thinnest toilet paper, that tears after you've only gotten two or three squares and then immediately retracts so far up into the casing that you can't get any more to come out...

2) Hey Lil Deb and Katie: Would you believe I'm actually starting to get USED to only brushing my teeth once a day?

Today's (VERY) Silly Sounding Place Name: Aquashicola, PA.

Thursday, November 11, 2010

New York State of Mind

Yesterday we were mostly in New Jersey and Pennsylvania. Sorry Snooki, we won't be coming for a visit THIS time

I've never seen this TV show, just heard about it

Here is also another random New Jersey shot, just for Cuz T in Michigan, who I know reads this blog faithfully. He's the only one (besides my brothers) who will understand it, and even he will probably scratch his head and think "now why'd she include THAT?".

In Burlington, NJ. Reminded me of Uncle B & Aunt E

Guard shack humor. Although I don't think they intended it
to be funny.

After leaving NJ, we crossed the Delaware, just like Washington did when he threw the quarter across the river....no wait, it was a silver dollar, and it was the Potomac River...or was it Uncle Sam?... ummm... I better quit while I'm ahead...

Crossing the Delaware River from PA to NJ

Actually, I did research this and George DID cross here into
Trenton, NJ, to fight the Hessians

Anyway, we drove through PA, where I lost count of the number of times we crossed the Susquehanna River, although we never did locate the Susquehanna Hat Company--see http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=THZV5g1CNZM.

Would you believe roses? Blooming in November?
Outside the Service Plaza in Allentown, PA

From Pennsylvania, we entered New York state and ended up in the lovely Finger Lakes region. We passed through Watkins Glen, NY, at which time I was instructed by Mr. Trucker to text brother-in-law, Jimbo, that we were ''passing through Watkins Glen". Apparently, it's a NASCAR thing...

Jimbo, this one's for you! Also, a sneak preview
of a place which will be mentioned later.

It was dark but we were passing very close to one of the Finger Lakes. I asked Mr. Trucker what the name of the lake was, because I thought his GPS showed names, and he said he thought it was "The Middle Finger" lake. Do you think he was joking? There was a winery or wine cellar every 100 feet or so as we drove along the lake. It caused us to wonder whether, if you had a cellar full of Boone's Farm or MD 20/20, you couldn't just throw a sign out in your yard and call yourself a winery. We were looking (to no avail) for a place to catch a quick bite before arriving at our destination for the night. I say to no avail, because most every place we passed was closed, some of them were just turning off their signs as we drove past. One of these places, which Mr. Trucker would have killed to have eaten at, was called "Red's Hots Wienery"...get it...wienery, as in hot dogs...pretty clever, no?

It was actually getting kind of creepy the closer we got to our destination, because we were definitely in the middle of nowhere, and driving on all kind of back roads in the dark until we reached Dundee, NY, and Dundee Foods, where we parked awaiting our 7 a.m. unloading. We bundled up, cuz it was getting cold, and walked into town (just under a mile) to score some dinner. We ended up closing down Wise Guys pizza at 10:00 p.m. Mr. Trucker asked one of the football-playing-looking types who waited on us what there was to do in town. The young man said "nothing" and told us the population was only in the 800's. We walked back to the truck under cold, clear, skies and I believe we could see every star and constellation in the galaxy.

This morning it was only 28 degrees when we awoke. You would be surprised at how warm and cozy we are in our little cab together, with our "Reflectix" curtains holding in the heat. Mr. Trucker even turned off the bunk heater in the night because it was so "stinking hot" in there. After unloading, we headed out of Dundee, where they have some spectacular houses