STRAYCAT’S DOGGONE BLOG

Life Day 22569: Blather from Blair’s, VA

April 27, 2009 on 11:01 am | In On The Road |

Good morning. I have a little while before I have to pick up my load, so I may as well do something productive. There is not much to write about since my last post on Friday. I’m not even going to use my usual “chronicle” format on this post.
I’ll just say that Saturday was totally unproductive. I basically vegged and geeked all day long. I was tormented by various and sundry miscreants, all with the same basic “sob story” about how they were stuck there and needed money. They aren’t even creative anymore. I’ve noticed that they all want money now. No pretense of asking for food. In fact, if you have the audacity to offer to buy them a sandwich, they become indignant and look at you like you just asked them to fly to Mars. One in particular (I cant remember if he was the fourth or fifth to bother me today) became quite aggressive when I refused him. I had to threaten to call the Police before he finally left me alone. He did not look like the type that would welcome an interview by the local Constabulary.
Sunday started off about the same, but improved late in the afternoon when I was sent directions to a customer where I was to pick up an empty trailer. The problem was that there were no empty trailer available there. While I was waiting for further instructions, I stopped by a local supermarket for consumables. It was called Bloom. They have “smart carts” there that allow you to enter your shopping list into a computer on the cart. The cart will then direct you to the items you entered inside the store. I was browsing, so didn’t use that feature, but it sounds like an interesting feature. The future of shopping?  Anyway, I digress. Their second attempt to find an empty trailer for me was successful. After I picked it up, I drove to a nearby small truck stop I spotted on the way in. I had endured all that I could of the Pilot where I had spent the better part of the last two days. It was full, but as I was passing the Waffle House for the second time, the cook actually came out and flagged me down. He said that I could park in the back of their lot for the night if I wanted to, so I did. Quite naturally, after that, I went inside to eat. Although it was late afternoon, I opted for breakfast. It was good. About an hour after I finished “breakfast”, I received a PrePlan that picks up here in Blair’s, VA and delivers A.S.A.P. in Ottawa, KS. I left Charlotte about 1815 (2015 local time) and drove here to Blair’s. I parked for the night at a small local truck stop. It is quite clean, and has a nice large manicured lawn on which to walk the MMM.
Today, Monday, is a good news, bad news, good news, bad news kind of day. The first good news was that I found this truck stop last night. The first bad news is that my customer had moved. I was not happy when I discovered that this customer had moved. The last time I had a similar situation, the customer had moved 180 miles from a small town in central Pennsylvania to the suburbs of Philadelphia. It took half the day to convince the CSR that the customer had actually moved (they had moved over two years prior), and to get him/her to do their job and send me the correct information. I’m off on a tangent again, so let me come back. The second good news which I found out this morning when I called for directions, was that their new location is directly behind the truck stop in which I’m parked. The second bit of bad news is that this is a “live load”, and it won’t be ready until 1430 this afternoon.  I had breakfast this morning at Bojangles Chicken and Biscuits next door to this truck stop. It wasn’t too bad. I’ll try them again for lunch/dinner and let you know how they compare to KFC in an addendum to this post.