The New York State of Mind

Thanksgiving is one of my favorite holidays...when I ponder the thought, any holiday connected to food works for me. It felt especially good to be home, albeit the Saturday after Turkey Day. No harm done, there was plenty of left over bird and it works well in the microwave. Also, on the menu, Cheryl prepared one of my favorite dishes of pasta which is a combination of broccoli and sun dried tomatoes in extra virgin olive oil topped off with pine nuts. Not taken for granted was a chance to sleep in a house with four walls and roof, a welcome change. The run was a long one, at 33 days out.

Sunday morning was reserved for church at my hometown Providence Presbyterian and the lighting of the first candle of Advent. Judge James filled in on the keyboards for musical director Lisa Baty. After a month away, it was so good to see my church family and Pastor Joe Brice. Pastor Joe is a jovial southern gentleman who beams light everywhere he turns. When I greeted him in the reception line after the service, he emphatically warned me that if I was going to San Diego, he was coming along. He didn't sound like he was kidding.

Wednesday arrived and just like that, home time was over. One last Ghurka shaggy at the local cigar lounge in Hiram and out into the grand abyss of expediting we go. With smoke in hand, the phone chimed "The Price is Right" theme which signaled the company was calling with a load opportunity from Huntsville, Alabama to Syracuse, New York. 1,151 miles of pavement. Not a bad way to start this trip out. Pick up was scheduled for the next day...so I get to spend another magical night at home with those four walls and a roof. Luck be a lady tonight!

The next morning, Cheryl was up and out early to take our canine son, Louie to the vet for his annual checkup and a teeth cleaning (yes, he gets dental too) along with TJ, one of his feline sisters for a check of her own. The load was scheduled to be picked up at 6:00 pm, three travel hours away, so that meant there was plenty of time for a breakfast of a fluffy ham and cheese omelet combined with warm cornbread baked in my Grandmother's one hundred year old iron skillet. I could do this every morning for the rest of my life...yikes! Give me a mouth full of egg and Johnnycake and happiness sets in. Wash it down with good old 8 O’clock java and put a period at the end of that scenario.

Run number one on this trip was a nighttime start, but that's ok, I had enough rest to do it comfortably. With load onboard, GPS pointed the Fat Cat (my new nickname for the truck because she has a huge 500 HP Caterpillar motor) to I-65 North out of Huntsville through Nashville, Louisville, Cincinnati, Columbus, Cleveland, Buffalo and east on the New York Thruway to Syracuse.

In Upstate New York, there is no sign of autumn. Here, it is done. Dead, gone buried. I couldn't spy one solitary leaf, even on the ground. The trees up here are bare. I mean bare to the point that makes you wonder if there were ever leaves on them in the first place. The grip of winter is at hand in this Finger Lake region. I saw DOT depots along the way with mountains of what appeared to some sort of cinders and those dome-like huts for what I believe is the ever lovin' salt. Up here, winter doesn’t assault the local citizenry, they assault it. Like Desert Storm, they confront it, contain it and defeat it. The plows in the arsenal are enormous...they look like the bows of ships. The Snowmeisters just don't plow one side and turn around a come back the other way like every other genteel little community in the North. No, the massive snow movers here are positioned on the center line and both sides are cleared at once. They don't fool around with frozen precipitation up here. Move it out of the way, get out of the way, here we come. Snow days for the school kiddies? No way. That notion provokes a hearty laugh in these parts. Watertown, north of Syracuse is one of the snowiest towns in America. Forget about inches, they measure annual snow fall in yards. Now there's a place for a one horse open sleigh...make that mule team open sleigh.

My old friend Bob Raunec from New Jersey lives up here now and we met up for coffee on Friday night. I hadn't seen Bob in a long time. Times sure have changed, coffee on a Friday night, imagine that. I couldn't have fathomed that residing in the land of twenty-something years ago. Friday nights were reserved for swilling beverages of barley hops and malts or some other concoction in celebration the weekend. Today, Bob looks good with silver hair and beard in our land of fifty-something. I've always said “never complain about hair color, retention is half the battle.” I can vouch for it, having lived with a follicle deficit for years. But, after all this time, I wouldn't even begin to know what to do with hair. We talked about good old days, ailing parents, the present and future. I learned about the passing of our old friend Jerry Johnson who left us a year ago February. A massive heart attack took him to the Promised Land. Jerry was one of the best. He would do anything for anybody and include the shirt off his back. Rest in peace, old friend, I'm sure you have a great seat upstairs. There has to be a special place reserved for people like him.

Now, it's Saturday in Syracuse and the sky looks like a snow sky...a bit of it is in the forecast. I'm taking inventory of my winter wear and checking on my tire chains. It's a good thing this truck has a stout inter axel differential on my drive wheels. That means when I flip a switch, the wheels won't spin in a slippery situation, but ice is ice and so the winter season begins. Laredo and Brownsville look real good right now. Even that zoo of a truck stop in Ontario, California seems appealing. But, until then, I'm in a New York State of mind.

Oh Canada

Today, it was a long 3 hours in the Customs and Homeland Security office in Detroit, Michigan right next to the Ambassador Bridge to Canada. It's the only port of entry to our neighbor to the north where you actually drive south into Canada. My mission was to obtain my Canada FAST card. The "Fast And Secure Trade" plastic that allows me to quickly and easily travel with freight back and forth across the border. I had filled out lengthy paperwork weeks beforehand to prompt a thorough background check and now it was time to show up in person for my appointment only time at one the designated border crossings. My choices were Seattle, Washington, Buffalo, New York and Detroit, Michigan. I chose Detroit because I was fairly certain freight would take me there. I got that part easily correct. It was now time to be interviewed, photographed and finger printed to complete the procedure. The days of just showing your driver's license and answering affirmative to the question "are you an American citizen" are apparently over to gain access to Canada and the United States. I'm glad they have a process for weeding out terrorists, but I'm not used to this kind of scrutiny, just to go to Canada. Heck, I once canoed my way into Canada at Boundary Waters on the Minnesota/Ontario boarder. That's right, we were fully outfitted, on the water in Portage Canoes. They just wanted to see if we had fishing gear and the appropriate license to go with it. I wonder what they'd do now if an entourage of camel jockeys paddled by.

I arrived at an official building with paperwork under arm and encountered a room full of various looking people apparently there for a variety of reasons. Some guy walked in with the prettiest long blonde hair you've ever seen with one of those plastic beret type things going over the top of his head to hold the hair straight back...something that a woman would wear. He appeared to be middle aged with Aerosmith "Dream On" lines on his face. It seemed kind of funny to me see a guy with a wavy golden blonde mane held back with a dollar store hoop and I had to suppress my urge to laugh out loud. At that point, they probably would not have issued me the card and I would have had a time of it explaining that kind of spontaneous laughter. No joking around in this hall of federal efficiency. There was no small talk going on either between the contestants as everyone seemed hesitant to say anything in this place. A sign on the wall in a conspicuous place warned that cell phones were to be turned off and that any communication, including texting would have to be carried on outside. Government fear was thick in the air and the look of concern covered everyone's faces. Everything and everyone looked so official and orderly.

I was called for my appointment and was greeted by a gruff black woman seated behind plexiglass with a voice hole. She quizzed me about my background to see if my answers matched my application and then motioned to an oddly arranged row of plastic chairs along with an order for me to take a seat and wait. The way they had these attached from underneath chairs set up, you would have to climb over one if you wanted the seat in the corner. I found that kind of odd in this edifice of bi-nation wisdom. An hour and a half later of watching an industrial looking clock on the wall tick, I was called into the office, this time by a no nonsense Canadian official to be grilled under bright lighting. She reminded me of an evil woman on a James Bond movie. The one with the knives coming out of her shoes. They had a camera pointed in my eyeball and asked all kinds of probing questions. I felt like a criminal trying to get this card. At the end of the process, my gruff border agent official friend read me a list of do's and don'ts that took a half hour to complete. I had to sign a document about 4 times saying I was presented with the mantra and understood it in its entirety. She said if I didn't follow the rules I could be detained or locked up for an indefinite period of time. She emphatically added that WE have the facilities here. OK, gotcha, so there's a dungeon with shackles underneath all these cubicles, plexiglass and impeccable steel gray industrial carpet for rule breakers. The officer then gave me a piece of paper that said I had permission to leave. I flashed back to Hillside School in 1969 and the bathroom passes.

It was a major CF leaving this place as there was no signage to direct you out amidst a maze of construction barriers and fences. My next move was a wrong turn and before I knew it, I was on the ramp to the bridge to Windsor, Ontario Canada! Crap. No room to turn a big truck around on the American side just beyond the toll booths where I displayed my permission slip, so they gave me orange colored paperwork to turn around on the Canadian side. Fear flashed before my mind with a thought of what if they don't let me back into the US? Over the bridge I traversed to Canada, only to receive more paperwork from the Canadians to make the U-turn. Next, I had to wait in a long line to get back on the US side where I endured another series of questions by customs agents to get back in America. My instructions were to shut the truck off and answer the questions honestly and correctly because the Customs Officer didn't like surprises...like finding out you were a wanted felon or were attempting to bring non-declared goods to the United States. I think he was lying when he said he didn't like surprises, because I believe these guys live for hauling border maggots off in cuffs and leg shackles. I'll bet he was thinking a hog tie and carry off by six officers would be even better!

I passed this inquisition and was instructed that I had permission to proceed. I saw two guys in turbans in a truck next to me in the customs lanes on the way out and I wanted to yell over "thanks a lot!"

Back at the truck stop in Ann Arbor, as I was backing into a parking spot on a full lot of trucks in the pouring rain, some lout in a US Express truck cuts me off, almost hits me and takes the spot I was aimed in. Sometimes, in these lots, it turns into a game of chicken with tractor trailers. In this case it was ok, because just that moment, a better spot opened up and I lurched forward and missled her in. What a day! I'm about to fall off to diesel dreams and hope tomorrow is a better day.

Heat Up The Exchange

I just had a heated exchange at the fuel stop with the manager of the fuel store. There is enough disrespect going around, so I'm kind of ammune and hardened to a lot of it. I try to be courteous and cheerful and add something positive to somebody's day as I shlub along in this modern day life of expediency and efficiency.

We already know that customer treatment has taken a spriral downward these days in a lot places. One of my absolute pet peeves is the scenario where you wait in line for a lengthy period of time and finaly reach the check out or service desk. You begin to open you mouth to voice a request or submit a question to the clerk. At that very nano second, the phone rings. Does the clerk continue to address your patronage? No way! Now this is the store that you took the time to get in your car, burn your gas and travel to in an effort to buy their goods in person. They will answer the call and carry on a long conversation with an idiot on the other end of the line that they can't understand and in the process completely forget that you exist.

Well, something similar happened to me tonight. I'm about to get about $200 in fuel and standing at the fuel desk ready to be served when suddenly the clerk decides she's going to have a big conversation with the guy behind me. This young lady wasn't asking me the usual questions like "what is the name of your company" or "what's your truck number?" or "would you like a cash advance with your purchase today?" I decided that I had enough and simply walked out. The manager came running out after me and asked what the problem was. I told him his rude clerk wasn't interested in my business and decided that she would rather carry on a conversation with the guy in line behind me. He tried to tell me that he was standing right there and it didn't happen that way. I was quite irritated by his response and angrily shot back  "maybe you could care less about whether I buy your fuel, but you better teach your clerks what correct customer service is. The other stores in this chain don't operate like that."  The conversation then heated up to the point of no return. And I won't return.

About that moment, a trucker fueling up nearby had his fuel overflow out of his tank and all over the fuel island, apparently because the automatic shut off failed on the pump nozzle. It looked like a dam water main break the way all that diesel was shooting out of his tank. Better put out that cigarette good buddy. It could have been a real hot time in Jackson tonight.