ROUTE: Maumee, OH to Auburn, NY: 485 miles (423 loaded + 62 deadhead)
This assignment was originally scheduled for a pickup on Wednesday 01/14 at 18:00. My previous delivery was finished by 13:30 that day. I managed to schedule a dentist appointment for 14:00 and when I arrived at the terminal it was starting to snow and didn’t seem like it was letting down. Since the delivery was scheduled for Friday 01/16 at 10:00 and it was a drop-and-hook, then there was no urgency to depart on Wednesday night. I checked with my DM and he changed the pickup to Thursday morning. Good thing because the weather got worse as the night progressed to the point that the company grounded the fleet later that evening.
Thursday I started my day at 09:30, fueled and arrived at the shipper at 11:30. This load was heavy and a hazmat so I how to make sure to scale it and there is a truck stop about 30 minutes away. I had breakfast there too and had a personal call scheduled at 14:00. I left the truck stop at 15:30 and drove five-and-half hours until 19:00 to a truck stop where I would spend the night. Glad that the company wisely grounded the fleet the night before as I saw half a dozen trucks off the side of the road that must have occurred the previous evening. The road conditions were better but still dangerous. At one point I saw a three-truck accident on the other side of the I-90 and felt bad for the people on the side as they were going to be stuck there for hours.
Friday 01/16 I started my day at 07:00, after the minimum DOT ten-hour break. I managed to make the delivery on time for the 10:00 scheduled appointment.
BOOK REVIEW: Flights by Olga Tokarczuk (2018), FICTION – RATING (***)
I don’t think I understood this book. It was a beautifully written plethora of stories that didn’t seem to have much in common. I was expecting that they would all converge at the end to make sense of it but they didn’t.
The original story of a wife disappearing with her three-year-old son while on vacation at a Greek island ends abruptly. It is picked up again toward the end of the book without any obvious conclusion. There’s a bunch of stories of doctors engaged in the art of preserving organs which left me perplexed. More confusion is created by multiple POVs. The narrator lives in present-time but many of the stories occur in past centuries. Maybe I wasn’t paying close attention, one of the problems of audiobooks. There’s many subtle messages which did not add much for me.
I think others will find it fascinating but I read to be entertained and I could not follow the point the author was trying to convey.
