Strange and Wonderful

 

I was having trouble with the motorists. On my way home from South Bend, traveling down US 31 I was trying to maximize my speed, to get back as soon as possible. There was a car that just wasn't going to let me pass. Gaining on him steadily I'd take the left lane and then there we'd sit, going exactly the same speed with me just barely behind. My truck is governed so I couldn't go any faster. My only option was to move back over into the granny lane which can be tricky if other cars have moved up behind us. Pissed off at me for taking up the hammer lane they'll line up behind the car that I was trying to pass giving me nowhere to go. I'd then have to slow way down and let things clear out to my right and then get over, which isn't so bad, I'd have to slow down anyway or I'd have been way to close to that other car.

So I slowed way down, put a lot of space between me the guy I was trying to pass, then resummed cruise control at my top speed hoping that the other guy would keep his speed up. Not so; I'd gain on him steadily and then when I tried to pass he sped up again. I tried several times. Sometimes I think people do that unconsciously and when you demonstrate to them that you are going faster than they really care to go they'll let you by. Not this guy. I don't know whether he was being stupid or malicious, but he obviously wasn't going to let me by.

I could have just stayed out there in the hammer lane and perhaps he would have eventually relented, but then I would have held up traffic behind us and there's no telling if it would have even worked. Or I might have been able to keep up my speed by tailgating the jerk. Every time that I'd try to pass I'd think, “What, you want me on your ass?” But besides being rude that would be extremely dangerous; not that there aren't thousands of truck drivers out there who would be happy to take either of those options, regardless of the possible consequences. No, I eventually dropped back and reset my cruise control to a slower speed. No biggie.

Taking off from a stoplight my enemy was able to get far enough ahead of me that I wasn't going to have to worry about him for awhile and stepped up my speed again. I was empty and could take off fairly quickly, but still had to run through the gears, much slower than a car from a dead stop. I was quicker than a loaded truck, though, and passed one who had been at the light ahead of me as he struggled to gain speed. Further down the road I looked in my mirror and saw the truck gaining on me. As he pulled into the passing lane I turned off the cruise and slowed, to help him get by me. I just can't understand these guys who make a passing truck work for every inch. I, for one, don't want to drive along with another truck a few feet to my left.

I kept off of it until enough space had opened between us for a comfortable following distance and then resumed my speed. I'll be damned if the truck wasn't now going slower than I was before he'd passed me. I've seen it before, but I still find it hard to believe. You have to understand that besides the childish ego need to be first that seems to animate many drivers, of all stripes, in the trucking industry the company that I work for is known as one of the slowest on the road. Everyone else feels that they have to be in front of a company truck, no matter the cost or the circumstances; the conditioned response in what I term “Pavlov's Drivers.” One failed attempt to try to re-pass this guy was sufficient to tell me that I never would. I dropped back and “took my place” behind him. Again, no biggie, it was only a matter of minutes that I'd have saved, and one ill timed stop light could easily erase those gains anyway.

A little later down the road there seemed to be something gumming up the traffic. It could be that my new nemesis had caught up to the old, though if so why the big truck didn't use the extra speed that he did have, that I only wished that I'd had, to pull away I don't know. I don't honestly know what the problem was but traffic was being held up and I found myself in the midst of a pack of impatient cars, one of my least favorite places to be.

I was trying to maintain my space cushion and wishing that things would clear up when I noticed a bird winging its way toward the highway from off the shoulder. It was a medium sized bird, about the size of a crow, but more slender, and dark but not black. Its shape was unique, though I couldn't identify it at the oblique angle from which I was seeing it. It flew into the open space in front of me and proceeded to continue down the highway as if it were another car in line. I could see then that it was some kind of a duck. It kept flapping its wings and heading down the highway.

It was going fast, but not fast enough for traffic. I thought at first that as I drew near it would swerve away but it didn't. It just kept right on following the road in front of me and I realized that if I wasn't going to hit it I'd have to slow down. So I did and traffic passed us by leaving us alone on the highway. Still it continued down the road, constantly varying its position, sometimes high, above my line of sight, sometimes low, just above its own shadow on the pavement; sometimes over on the median or back again to the shoulder but every time that I thought I might get past it it'd veer back over in front of me again. I was amazed at how fast those little wings were carrying it. I clocked it between 50 and 55 mph.

This went on for several miles. Whenever another car would pass I'd try to see if the occupants noticed this odd creature, but I couldn't tell if any did or not. No one slowed down to look in any case. Finally, just before we got to the Eel river my pilot bird veered off to the right. I wasn't able to distinguish any unique markings from behind so I tried to get a good look at the bird as I passed. All I could quickly identify were two white stripes along the bottom of the wing though. Looking at Peterson's Field Guide that would make it a Mallard, but I'm sure it wasn't. I'd have recognized a Mallard and this bird was larger than any Mallard I've seen before. Perhaps it was a Merganser? I'll probably never know, but it was a strange and wonderful event. After my traveling companion left me I was free of traffic until I got to Kokomo, so I owe it a debt of gratitude for that too.

(It was a female Mallard, duh. Ms Jonathan Livingston Duck. The best theory to date is that she was riding the compression wave in front of my truck. 6/5/10)

 

The Gauntlet

 

There are 16 traffic lights in the 47 mile stretch between my home and work. I have, on more than one occasion, caught all of them green except the last one, which doesn't really count since I turn there and the turn signal is on a sensor and won't change until there is a car waiting. I have, actually, been fortunate enough to roll through it on the skirts of the car that triggered the signal, but never on a morning when I'd made all the other lights.

Of course this only happens in the morning, between three and five o'clock; possibly five thirty. They are all trip lights, you see, like that last one; only there I'm the trigger. The lights will all stay green until someone comes along to alter the equation. The trick is to watch for the “changer,” and then to know how the light behaves once it's been tripped. They turn green again pretty quick, but they'll change back red quickly too, if someone else comes along. So it's balls out, pedal to the medal the whole way, until you're actually close to the light.

The character of the traffic changes each half an hour. You see; I don't have the same schedule every day. Sometimes I have to leave the house at 2:30 or 3:00, I usually leave around 4:00, but sometimes I get a break and don't have to leave until 5:00 or 5:30 (it's not a matter of sleeping in, I just stay up later the night before). Once I didn't have to leave the house until 7:00, but that was an anomaly. As the half hours progress there is more and more traffic. We used to say that in the wee hours there were only drunks and cops on the road. Once I started driving a truck I amended that to “drunks, cops and truckers.” Now I know that isn't true either. I'm a trucker still, but I'm not driving a truck at the time, I'm just on my way to work and it could as well be screen printing that I do. There is never a time without traffic in America.

The trip lights are pretty sophisticated and behave differently at different hours of the day. For instance: the left turn signal from IN 67 onto Ameriplex Parkway will interrupt oncoming traffic to give me a green arrow while keeping the cross traffic light red, if there isn't anyone waiting there, but only before 5:00. After 5:00 it changes to a cycle that necessitates a green for the cross traffic before I'll get a green arrow, even if there isn't anyone there. Likewise the two main lights in Mooresville are trip lights until 5:00, then they turn to a standard cycle and will turn red for me even if there isn't anyone waiting at the intersection.

Sometimes the lights malfunction, or seem to. There is one light at the entrance to a business park that will sometimes be on a standard cycle even in the wee hours of the morning, and it changes quickly. Usually lights like that allow for an extended green on the heavily traveled highway side, but not this one. It changes so quickly that it's nearly impossible to time it accurately to roll through a green, and there isn't even any traffic coming out of the business park. There's another one that I truly hate. It's at the entrance to a large strip mall, Heartland Crossing. When it malfunctions it goes to rush hour mode and makes you wait minutes while it gives a long green for the cross traffic, and then an extended green turn arrow for the oncoming traffic, all while there's not another car in sight. I have seen people run this light when it behaves like that. I've certainly been tempted to, but with my luck a cop would suddenly appear just as I did.

The first “malfunctioning” stop light is the last one before Mooresville and I have sometimes wondered if they aren't trying to break up traffic through town into discrete packs. But it's still miles from town and only happens every once in awhile. As far as what could be a purpose for the Heartland Crossing malfunction the only reason I can fathom is that it's somebody's idea of a cruel joke. Especially since I later realized that the light actually cycles through quite quickly during rush hour, it never acts like that except when I'm on my way to work in the wee hours of the morning.

It's a whole different ball game in the afternoon.

*      *      *

Back when they were repaving the White River bridge outside of Martinsville, a process that reduced the bridge to one lane for over a month, I used to wish that I knew of another way over the river other than going all the way down to Spencer. It obviously wasn't too inconvenient since I never brought up Google Maps and tried to find a way. Later, when Morris was in the hospital in Spencer and I went that way to visit him, I realized that IN 67 passes through Paragon.

Traveling north on IN 37, on the other side of the river, I always hail the sign that says “Paragon, so many miles that way” because once, long, long ago, I had a job out in the country on the other side of Paragon. I was working for Parker Pools and we were installing the very first of those one piece fiberglass, in ground pools to be sold in Indiana. My cars were all (junk) on the fritz at the time and Tom Parker, my boss, would pick me and my house guest Ed Slicer up at home. Ed and I would jump in the back of Tom's pickup truck full of tools and ride with the wind our hair all the way to the job site.

I remember that as a glorious summer; happily married and living in our own home beneath the eaves of a mature hardwood forest in the hills of Southern Indiana, with a beautiful two year old daughter and another child in the oven; working out doors with my hands, more physically and mentally fit than I'd ever been in my life. Getting to ride to work in the back of a pickup truck through the magnificent countryside was just icing on the cake.

So when I passed through Paragon again I said to myself, “Hmm, file that away until I need another alternate route across the White River.”

There was an accident in Martinsville today on my way home from work. There was a cop parked in the median with his lights flashing before the turn where IN 39 crosses the bridge, and traffic was backed up past the extensive turn lane onto the highway itself. Ah, a perfect time to explore that alternate route.

I hadn't remembered it being such a small, winding road; or the wonderful old architecture along the way, passing through townships that predate the great depression; it must have been a river thing. As for the river itself I thought it interesting that on the eastern side, just before the hills start there is a gate that can be shut to close the road. I imagine that the long piece of bottom land on the western side sometimes floods. Once over the river and into the hills it was so windy, with other roads branching off at organic angles, that I eventually got lost and ended up back north, almost to Martinsville again. I certainly didn't save any time and would rather have made it home sooner, but it was a beautiful, interesting drive and I don't regret it a bit. I've since been online and traced the route so I know how to do it next time, but regardless, the entire experience just brings home to me again how lucky I am to live in such a beautiful area.

 

Sunset in the Woods, Wind in the Fields

 

Bare trees on the forest road. Though I was in shadow the tops of neighboring hills still glowed red with the setting sun, visible intermittently through the boles and branches. As the road curved to the West the flaming sky shone from behind the inky structure of the forest; turning East the rising full moon swung recklessly through the tree tops.

I had another interesting optical illusion supplied by parallax recently: In the flat northern part of the state, on the way to Chicago, there are wind farms. Power transmission lines run through the middle of one. The towers are huge but still dwarfed by the enormous windmills and so, due to perspective look to be further away. What a shock when those far away power towers moved quickly in front of the, seemingly, closer windmills!

I find wind farms beautiful. Some give a confused aspect as a whole so I only focus on a few windmills at a time, enjoying the correspondence and or interaction of the turning blades, but some seem coherent and attractive all together. I doubt that aesthetics ever enter into the placement of the windmills, but it should.

 

Falling Stars

I saw the most beautiful meteor fall this morning on my way to work. It's Friday the 13th, which I've always said was my lucky day, and it was pure luck that I happened to look out the driver's side window just as it was falling. It was a big one, with a long tail and it lasted a long time coming deep into the atmosphere before fizzling out; I think maybe it was quite close. Although it appeared as a white streak across the black sky the meteor itself cycled through the spectrum several times as it fell; just momentary flashes of color. It was dazzling. It made my day, which was a good thing to have happen early because I had a hard one ahead of me.

I think the coolest meteor that I ever saw was when my daughter Shoshana and I stopped to look at the stars at a small lake up in Morgan Monroe State Forest, on our way home from Indianapolis once (on the Forest Road that I take home from work), when she was about nine years old. Suddenly, centered in the sky before us like it was staged, there fell a huge, bright meteor. It then broke into three pieces plus quickly consumed fragments and continued to fall for a little before blinking out. We were both looking right at it.

I remember another time on a camping trip when Shoshana was about the same age. We were looking at the stars and she said, “Wouldn't it be cool if we were out there.” The obvious answer to that was, “We are.”

The Leonid Meteor Shower is coming up and is supposed to be a good one. I'll be out the door on my way to work during one of the peak viewing times: 4:00 AM, 11/17. It'll be the dark of the moon too. If there isn't any cloud cover then I'm there; I'll budget extra time. I always try to look up when I leave the house anyway, to see the Milky Way. On really clear nights, without a moon I can begin to see how that haze is made up of millions of individual stars, like I could when I was up in the mountains; even though the neighbor across the street has installed a new security light (which at least helps me find the steps). Sometimes I get in a hurry and forget to look up. Then I'll catch a glimpse of the sky someplace, like over the big cornfield beside the Beanblossom when I turn left onto Sample Road. I have to slow down and look, wishing that I'd taken the time before I left, when I'd have been able to enjoy it more. Such Beauty.

* * *

Things haven't let up at work at all. I pulled another 14 hour day today, with five stops! I've never had five stops before. It was the heaviest load that I've ever pulled for Electrolux too, over 20,000 lbs. and except for one stop that has a dock and a clamp truck (a specialized kind of lift truck) I had to tailgate the whole thing. Most of the places usually have helpers, but they were all shorthanded today. Ah well, Friday the 13th, more exercise for me. I'm beat though. It's amazing that I'm still up and running. I usually power drive home but I just couldn't. Everybody passed me by and I was just as happy to let them. It was still a relief to pull onto the Forest Road. There was nobody left to pass me by, just the bare trees lining the way. The woods are beautiful naked too.

 

Moonlight Sonata

The moonlight is beautiful, tracing the branches of the late autumn woods in shadow across the leaf littered ground and revealing the road beyond my headlights like a luminous ribbon. Getting up as early as I do I enjoy the moon more than most, as her phases sink into dawn.

Yes, the trees are mostly bare now. I'd thought of writing, the leaves are thinning like a man's hair, but that was a week or more ago. There's only a few tufts left now, around the ears, as it were. Secrets hidden by the leaves are now revealed, some beautiful, some best kept under wraps. I particularly like the tapering end of Dolan Ridge, upon which I live. From the top of the ridge I can look out, for a brief spell, across the Beanblossom Valley to the hills beyond, and if I'm coming home from work and it's dark, or getting dark I can see the headlights of cars as they climb or descend the hill. That's useful information as the stop sign there at the junction sits in a tuft of grass in the middle of the road, a left over from times past, and to turn left up the hill requires caution.

The darkness accumulates. As early as I start in the morning you might think it strange that it would be dark already on my way home from work, but after a 14 hour day that's possible, and we're more than a month away from the solstice.

Christ, they're running me ragged at work! I'm not sure what the deal is. It had become quite easy, with mostly only one or two stop loads that got me back to the yard early. I wasn't making much money, but I liked it. Holly, the morning gate guard at Electrolux, said that it was the beginning of the slow season, which for appliances starts before the rest of retail. I'm wondering, though, if it doesn't have more to do with the new dispatcher I had, who was just recently fired. I didn't think that my dispatcher had much to say about the loads themselves; that he just distributed what he was given from Electrolux as he best saw fit, but now that my old dispatcher is back it's been hell. I wonder if we're playing catch up, or did I piss him off before he left and now it's payback?

I mean, every load now is three or four stops, and they're long, mile wise. I know that I'm still the low man on the totem pole, with the sleeper cab, but come on. By all rights I should have slept on the truck three times last week. Give me a break. Then, the one day that I did make it back at a reasonable hour my first delivery for the following morning was so early that I had to pick up that evening; I wouldn't be able to make it on time if I'd waited for the yard to open in the morning. But that load wasn't ready yet so I had to wait. There's nothing that I like to do more after my work is done for the day than wait around for the next day's work. There is absolutely no compensation for that time spent, it's just my contribution for the privilege of having a job, I guess.

They said that the load wouldn't be ready for an hour or two. I parked my tractor and got out my book, I'm reading Proust, then decided, what the hell, I haven't had a chance to visit Morris at all this week, and bobtailed to TLC for my car. Trucks do drive 10th street but it's awfully narrow and those miles would be unauthorized, plus, if there wasn't a lot of parking available then I'd have nowhere to tether my horse.

So I got to the hospital and signed in as usual, then made my way through the sterile hallways to the Special Care Unit, went through the doors and saw that Morris' bed was empty. No, his space was empty, there wasn't even a bed there. I heard the nurse, who was talking on the phone, say, “Just a minute,” and then she turned her full attention to me, bless her heart. Morris had been moved just the day before to a facility outside of Spencer. Going home that way might add more miles than 10th street, but it's sure as hell a prettier drive.

So he's about the same, really. I've seen improvement though, corroborated by the nurses this time rather than hope dashed by their qualifications, and the staff at Kindred Hospital in Indy sent him off with high expectations, rather than saying “There's no way to tell.” With his own room and the expectation that he is healing and can actually hear me I've begun reading the book I bought for him so long ago: Kidnapped, by Robert Louis Stevenson. What pleasure to read aloud such well crafted, old fashioned language. It gives my tongue a workout.

Returning to the day I was talking about I'd figured that by the time that I got back to the yard my load would be ready. No such luck. We truck drivers are allowed a 14 hour day, after which we must shut down, regardless of what the circumstances are. They took it to the very limit before I was out of there. I drew my lines on the graph honestly but without wriggling room. These days the log book, once called a “comic book,” is taken seriously.

By all rights I should have slept on the truck that night, although I would have had to do it there on the TLC yard, which we're not allowed to do anymore. No matter. I have a deep aversion to sleeping on the truck. Once it was my home, when I was on the road, and although a single night at my real home proved to be rejuvenating I was, perhaps, more comfortable sleeping on the truck. But that was when I had no choice, and it was a different truck, with a different mattress. Now I don't care if I get home after my bedtime, I'll not sleep on the truck again unless I absolutely have to.

 

Too Much

I eat too much, drink too much, drive too much...TOO MUCH!

 

Small Graces

It was so pretty this morning: at the top of the hill where I-74 plunges into the Ohio Valley to cross the Whitewater River, before that joins the Ohio, on the way to Cincinnati. The wide valley was filled with a silver mist. Above the mist was a band of pale rose fading into a sky just light enough to dim the stars, with Venus a bright jewel. It was just a moment's joy before I was lost in the haze. It was thick and I had to reign it in on the long downgrade. Later, though, on the Outer Loop North I climbed another hill into the clear air with a similar, even better view before I rolled back into the fog filled canyons of the Great Miami River. The hills were closer together there, and deep cut where unnamed tributaries converged with the Miami giving scale to the vista. And still there was the silver mist; the band of rose, stronger now with the sky above becoming aquamarine; and Venus as lovely as ever.

*      *      *

Yesterday was a bad day, for a number of reasons (including, I might add, my attitude), but it very nearly was much, much worse. I had to deliver first in Peoria, IL, which makes for a long run in itself, but then I had a second stop in Springfield, an hour and a half away with just as long a trip back. I might have welcomed such a run just a couple of weeks ago. I would have seen it as an opportunity to visit Morris in the hospital since it wouldn't make sense to drive home afterward. What? Drive home just to go to bed? But unfortunately we're not allowed to sleep on the yard anymore. I used to anyway but they've taken to closing the gates, which means that I can't pretend the next morning that I sneaked by and am just signing in on the way out. So I was stressed, I admit it. I hate truck stops, particularly with a trailer and the load for the next day pretty much required that I pick up my trailer that evening. So I was trying to make it back in time to drive home. Cosmic accounting aside it would be worth it to drive home just to sleep in my own bed.

I actually had phenomenal luck, considering that I wasn't even on the schedule at my first stop, and that there was already another truck in the door at my second. I might have appreciated that at the time but I was too wound up. I drove like a mad company man, within reason, and made the whole trip, including picking up the next day's load, in twelve hours. That was plenty of time, splendid!

I chastised myself several times as I started for home. The rush was over (though rush hour was in high gear) but I was still in rush mode; driving aggressively not in my limited, safety conscious big truck, but my capable, security inspiring car. I tried to calm down but couldn't seem to.

I began thinking about where I was going to get gas. I knew that I'd need to on the way to work that morning. I thought that I could make it to Martinsville, with cheaper prices, but wasn't sure; I might have had to stop at that Marathon station out in the middle of nowhere. I don't know by what grace I checked my back pocket to feel my wallet then, I clearly remembered picking it up off of the floor of the truck before leaving, but my pocket was empty. I started moving things around on the passenger seat, and looking between the seats and on the floor.

Shit, no wallet! Could I use cash? No, my money clip was empty and I'd even given the last of my change away to a desperate woman at the truck stop when I'd fueled that morning. I was already a third of the way home and knew I'd never make it there. The only option was to turn around and hope that I could make it back to the truck.

I didn't know exactly how close I'd come to a complete disaster until I got back. I didn't go through the guard station again, but pulled into the locked back gates, where we park our trucks, and rolled under the fence. Fortunately nobody saw me and raised the alarm. When I got into the truck sure enough there was my wallet, not on the floor where it sits when I drive (so it doesn't bore a hole in my butt) but on the utility console, next to my CELL PHONE. It was actually my phone that I'd forgotten, not my wallet. The true scope of my predicament struck me then: I'd have been out of fuel, miles from home or work, without cash, without credit, without my phone, without ANYONE'S PHONE NUMBER (even assuming I could locate a phone and panhandle enough for a long distance call), and with no time or energy left before I had to get to bed so that I could get up and do it all again.

I made it home right at my bedtime, if I was going to get eight hours of sleep. Who needs eight hours of sleep every night anyway? Thank goodness for the small graces.