I'd spent the night at Colby - I was within thirty minutes of running out of hours, so it was time to stop for this tubby trucker. The next morning the Mighty Binder was kinda needing some extract de dinosaur (super light oil category), aka Motion Lotion - so I tooled on over to Bosselmans. While fueling, a guy came up to me and asked if I could do him a favor. This usually turns into money or a ride somewhere - generally I'll do neither. Panhandlers - nope, and gotta have permission from the boss for each and every rider. Plus, my passenger floorboard is filled with luggage, laptop bag, a couple of coats, a tool set - well, over the road in a day cab means said day cab is full of stuff. No room for passengers or much of anything else.
So, I told him it depended on what it was. He informed me his truck wouldn't start and it needed a jump - he had the cables all hooked up and just needed a volunteer.
This, I will do. Been in the same boat. Pay it forward and all. So, after I filled up and got my receipt (very very important, those receipts), I pulled around to where he had his rig parked and pulled beside him - battery box to battery box. The cover comes off far easier if I extend the outrigger just a bit, so I threw the PTO in gear, idled the motor up, stepped out and extended said outrigger and removed the lid.
We hooked his cables up and just stood there bee essing for a while - truck to truck jumping can take a while at times. After about fifteen minutes or so, he gave it a try and his wagon fired right up. We bundled everything up and I was off to the races.
So, I was headed for the house and had most of the morning and all of the afternoon available for the odd tinkering jobs I might need to get done. Actually, I just had the morning because it's too damn hot in the afternoons lately. At any rate, I had Done My Good Deed For The Day, I was pretty full of myself, and Things Were Looking Up.
One of the projects was a new windshield. Only a couple of months old, the current glass was cracked in such a manner to really excite a DOT inspector, but not in a good way for moi. So, I got on the horn to my supervisor to discuss this development. He, understandably, wasn't tickled about a new one so soon after just having one installed. I offered to MMS a pic to him so he could see it. Well, that was a great idea right there. That was my mission.
Capturing the cracks so they could be seen on the small screen of a phone proved to be somewhat problematic. I took several and none of them satisfied me. I was really concentrating on getting a good shot when I realized I was drifting out of my lane into the fast channel. With large SUV beside me. I came back to the real world and swerved back into my lane. They were extremely unhappy with me - I could hardly blame them. Clearly my head was located somewhere south of where the sun don't shine. I pantomimed smacking my head with my palm - I felt pretty small and sorry. Here I'm supposed to be the consummate professional driver, and I can't even keep it between the lines. Frankly, I'm surprised my boss didn't hear about it from them. There was no one else to blame - it was all me.
So, I dropped down to sixty five from seventy - they were speeding as they passed me, not that it matters. I let a clot of traffic get by, then attempted the picture thang again, which the above is the result. It got sent and I've got a new windshield. I'll be cleaning little flakes of glass from odd spots in the dashboard for a week, but the DOT types won't want to park me - for that offense. I'm sure a determined go getter could find something wrong. It just doesn't pay to ignore the obvious stuff, and a pair of cracks like that kinda stands right out.
Just goes to show ya, I guess. I went from a legend in my own mind to a skulking knuckle dragger of ill repute in just a few moments. Hero to zero in five point seven seconds. Life certainly has a way of doing that, fer sure.
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