It's been a while since I've had time to write. Had a lot of short runs lately and the short ones always seem to take longer than the long ones. The reason being, the loading and unloading takes longer, than the drive from shipper to receiver. A lot of people seem to think (including our load planners) that we just back up to a dock and they instantly load or unload us. Not even close. I think the only reason for an appointment is so that two trucks don't show up and try to occupy the same dock at the same time. What usually happens is you show up on time for your appointment, they assign you a dock to back into, and then you sit there in said dock for four to five hours. The whole time wondering to yourself... now why did I have to be here at 4:00 a.m.?
Two days ago I stopped in Greenville Texas to visit a friend, have dinner, and just get out of the truck for a while. After all I have three and a half days to go 1200 miles in this run, so I didn't feel at all guilty about taking a little time out for a real meal. Dinner was great. I had steak for the first time in weeks. But the real fun didn't begin til after dinner. My friend drove me back to the little truck stop where I had parked, we said our goodbye's and I got my tooth brush out of my truck and went inside to use the restroom and brush my teeth. Sometime during the ten minutes I was inside a thunderstorm rolled in and stopped directly over the building. I came outside to find a pretty good rain already fallling. Wind, thunder, lightning in the distance. In the distance, that is, until I stepped off the curb. B O O M! ! ! Lightning struck so close, I couldn't tell where it hit. Apparently my foot was the catalyst that the lightning needed to strike.
There I am halfway on halfway off the curb, I can't hear, and I really can't see. Have you ever stared directly into the flash when someone takes a picture and you see that little purple spot for a few seconds? Well this was more than a spot. Even my perriferal vision was purple. I'm standing there totally deaf and blind, wondering if I'm still alive. Stunned. It took a few seconds for me to realize that I'm getting totally soaked, so I must still be here because I can feel the rain, even though I cant see it or hear it, I can feel it. Then it comes to me. Well I
DON'T want to be here when the next one strikes. So kinda like a blind, deaf, Frankenstein, arms outstretched, I begin walking in the direction of my truck. I wish I had video of this. It would take first place on AFV hands down. All I could think about was getting to the safety of my truck. I don't know why, when the door I just came out of was only three feet behind me, I would walk 50 feet across an open parking lot. With each step my vision would come back a little more. But, trying to find a purple truck when all you can see is purple, kind of like trying to find a polar bear in a snow storm.
With my heart pounding like a scared rabbit I climbed in and waited for my senses to return. Well this is too good to wait til morning, so I call everyone I can think of and tell them all about my fun little experience. But wait, there's more. I turn on the radio only to here there is a tornado warning for Hunt county. I grab my map to see just where Hunt county is in relation to where I am and... Crud! I'm in Hunt county. Great! As if a really near miss with lightning was not enough, now I have to worry about tornados.
The rain bagan to fall in biblical proportions and then the winds came. The whole time I'm in the front seat with my head on a swivel trying to spot the tornado, which fortunately, never materialized. When the rain stopped falling down and just started going sideways at over 70 miles per hour, I was sure there was a tornado over there somewhere, I just couldn't see it in the dark. It was blowing so hard, water was leaking in around the edges of my tightly rolled up window and trickling down the inside of the door. I looked in my mirror and could see my truck leaning over about two feet to the right. I have a load of paper onboard and am quite heavy, so to see it leaning that far did not settle my nerves any.
It packed a lot of punch, but it was a quick mover and only lasted for about 20 minutes or so. The winds subsided, the rain eased and the tornado warnings were reduced to watches, and as far as I could tell, no damage to me or the truck. I'm tired. It's 11:30, the fun seems to be over, so off to bed.
It wasn't til the light of day the next morning that I could see the awsome power this storm packed. Not as much wind damage as you might think. The occasional highway sign partially missing, a few limbs broken on trees and such, but, water everywhere. I passed over a gorge that had to be 80 feet wide and 40 feet deep and saw grass wrapped around the bridge supports 35 feet up! 20 or more cows standing on this little mound about the size of a pitcher's mound and several more walking through chest deep water to join those already on the only dry spot left in their field. Sights like this went on for over 400 miles that day.
I know to some of you who read this, this is nothing. Storms like this happen all the time. But I come from San Diego, Ca. where if two drops of rain fall out of the sky, the local news stations pre-empt regularly scheduled broadcasting to bring you Team Storm Watch Coverage and the guy who has the easiest job in the world, most days, gets to lead the news instead of being burried somewhere in the last two minutes of the newscast. So to me. ...that was a storm.
