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Friday, August 30, 2002 Sweet mother of crap, I'm finally fucking home! I drove over 900 miles today. That's right. 900+ miles. I slept about 30 miles south of the Virginia/Tennessee state line last night. I started driving at 7:00 a.m. I stopped ONCE in Memphis to fuel up and grab a sandwich. I got to Dallas at 9:00 p.m. I am supertrucker. Hear my jake brake as I bear down on your four wheeling ass. I'm delirious. I've never been so happy to be home. I'm going to take a bath and get all the sweet lovin' I've missed for the last month. You damn skippy. More tomorrow. suzie 10:24 PM CST [link] [6 comments] Thursday, August 15, 2002 Hello again, kiddies. I arrived home yesterday evening and in a couple of hours I'm going to be back on the road. Tonight I'll spend the night in Memphis. That's right. On the 25th anniversary of Elvis's death. It should be interesting. Nothing truly remarkable has happened in the last few days. I saw a few accidents, a bunch of border patrol (la migra!) searching Mexican buses, and some chic in a car who had her skirt hitched up to her waist. Woo, dammit. The EG&G guys were already gone when we arrived at the Yuma Proving Grounds on Tuesday to pick up the Meerkat and support vehicle. The engineers with the little tank were still out there. They were kind enough to help us load the same crate they unloaded for us last week. I don't know what they're working on out there, but they're not working very hard. As we were tying down the vehicles they stepped outside every five minutes to watch us. Finally it seemed that they gave up all pretext of doing their jobs and retired to a picnic table under a covered tent and sat to observe us. I didn't realize what we do is so frigging entertaining. Weirdo geek types. I had a dream two nights ago about Jeremy Taggart. I had caught him doing some kind of Indiana Jones impersonation on video and he was pleading with me not to show it to anyone. He has such pretty curly hair. :) Someone had slapped a Pookie name tag on him and I wanted a picture with him wearing it. One of my old school friends, Heather, was there. Amber Benson, too. I asked Amber to take a picture of Jeremy and I, but she couldn't because the battery on my camera had died. I always carry a spare, but Heather had taken off in my black Peterbilt and my camera case was in it. I really wanted that picture, so Amber and I went looking for her. We found her on the top of a mountain. She was crying because it was September 11th, 2002, and no one had remembered but her. I felt really bad. And I never got my picture with Pookie. Stupid dreams. Z bought me a cord & software so I can get online with my laptop via my cell phone. It only connects at 14.4, but I'm frigging thrilled. I'm still getting mondo weird Michael Jackson fan/hate mail. When I get back I'm going to do a whole new photo shoot with him and my mom's Elton John doll. Plus I'm going to put up a page with some of the email I've received. Good times... good times. Two more weeks and I'm off for two months. I've driven over 7,000 miles since the beginning of this month. I'm so sick of driving I think I could easily hand over the keys to my truck and get a job at the post office sassing customers. Rawk. I just might do that. Ta. suzie 01:26 PM CST [link] [10 comments] Sunday, August 11, 2002 Woo! Home for the night! I missed Zack and the girls SO much! Here's a brief recap of my last week: Rode along to Albuquerque with my parents in their truck. It's not so bad because their sleeper is frigging huge. It's got a tv/vcr, bathroom, microwave, fridge, and a place to plug in my laptop. Plus it's got windows on every side, so if I get bored I can peek into people's cars as we fly past them. People carry a lot of CRAP in their cars. I know that travelling with one's parents can seem like a real drag, but if you can do it in a separate vehicle and get paid for it, it's really not so bad. Besides, the older I get the more I can appreciate the fact that my parents are really cool people. And my dad pays for everything out on the road. I always feel like I'm twelve years old when I run up to the register with a pack of gum and say "Dad, I want this!" Thassssss right I'm still spoiled. Got to Albuquerque. Had to climb over a 10 foot concrete wall to get to my truck. Almost fell and broke my rotten neck. Seriously scared the hell out of me. I was hell-free for two whole days. I scratched the face of my beloved Swiss Army watch. Not to mention my arms. Blah. Got loaded the next morning. Haha, not drunk. I WISH! Kidding. My trailer had the flip axle on it, so it was extra long. I had to watch my corners extra close. I only hit a curb once, and that's when Dad (or Bossman as I call him on the road) made me do a u-turn in a teeny parking lot. I scraped a rim on the very back of my trailer. Oh well. Spend two days driving to Yuma, even though it's a 10 hour trip. The main thing I like about New Mexico and Arizona is the 75 mph speed limit. We stop at a tourist attraction on I-10 called "The Thing." They advertise it for 100 miles before you get to it. Big ass billboards saying "What is The Thing?!?" I was dying to know what it was. My dad agreed to stop because we were way ahead of schedule. Woo! My parents had been there before and the whole place had creeped them out. Dad paid a dollar for each of us to see The Thing. They had a bunch of torture displays, most of them badly carved out of wood, and some old cars. I noticed that a few of the cars weren't even real. The antique looking ones where just a bunch of metal welded together. I would have taken pictures, but I was in a hurry to see The Thing. I barely gave a third glance at a car that supposedly belonged to Hitler. There was a really terrible Hitler blow-up doll in the back seat. Anyhoo, we finally got to see The Thing. I don't want to ruin it for fellow tourist trap aficionados, so I'm not going to tell everyone what The Thing was. If you want to know, email me. I think it was fake, anyway. I was kind of disappointed. Oh well, at least it was only a dollar. Their gift shop was filled with bizarre overpriced knick-knacks that were alternately religious themed or some kind of small animal (cats, dogs, owls) covered with rabbit fur. Ewwww. I visted their bathroom before we hit the road again (never turn down a chance to pee, right?). They had white paper stapled to the walls of the stalls for people to write on. This is very smart of the owners, because I wasn't even a little tempted to write on the painted walls. I penned this on the paper:
 My air conditioner broke in the middle of the night in Yuma. I had to drive it through the desert for two days before we got it fixed. That was awful. When we got back to Albuquerque it was raining like crazy. I went out at played in it for awhile and then called Zack. Fun!
 The next morning we were loaded with ISO containers. They were green and had US ARMY GSTAMIDS stamped on them. Every time we stopped people would ask us what was inside. I started telling people, in a very quiet and confiding voice, that we were transporting cryogenically frozen alien embryos from an army base in New Mexico to a laboratory in Washington DC. Truckers eat that shit up. Every one of them has some kind of conspiracy theory brewing in their heads, and most of them involve the government and UFOs.
 After we got off the main highway in Virginia we drove through some back highways to get to General Dynamics/Robotics. I tried to call Jim a couple of times, but he's never home. Damn it, Jim! I'm a truck driver, not a psychic! Haha, that really doesn't read as funny as it sounded in my head. Nothing ever does. I almost wet my pants when I saw Burkittsville, MD. I soooooo wanted to stop, because I'm a Blair Witch Whore, but there's no way I could have gotten my truck and trailer into town, especially with the flip axle down. Bummer.
 My mom was excited to show me all the small Virginia/West Virginia/Maryland towns. "Aren't they quaint?" mom cooed every five minutes. They sure were. The houses were beautiful and the trees were gorgeous. It's just too bad that every town smelled like cow shit. Oh well, you can't have everything. We dropped the ISO containers and headed for Texas. We have to be in Yuma tomorrow night, so I'll be driving all afternoon. In Yuma we'll pick up the Meerkat and support vehicle and head back for Maryland. Then we'll spend a week shuffling them back and forth between army bases and proving grounds and geek labs. Then I get to come home for a couple of months. Yay! I love to go out on the road, but I love coming home even more. I'll probably get a chance to check in on Wednesday night again. Double yay! Love y'all. Talk to you soon. PS - They sell huge bottles of hard liquor (like Tanqueray & Maker's Mark) in Sam's Wholesale in New Mexico. And it's CHEAP. If you ever get out there, stock up! I sure as hell am. :) suzie 09:12 AM CST [link] [11 comments] Thursday, August 1, 2002 I'll be leaving in a few hours. I love hitting the road, but I hate leaving Zack and the pups. I love being lulled to sleep by the soothing sound of a truck motor, but I'll miss being woken up every half hour by Zack snoring. No, wait... oh hell... yeah, I'll miss it. I love the smell of diesel fuel in the morning, but I'll miss the smell of Zack's cologne as he kisses me before he leaves for work. Ok, enough of that. I woke up at 4:50 a.m. in order to get ready to leave today. I'm effing nuts. However, I was pleased to have the extra time to burn a couple more cds. I left Kazaa running last night and this morning I have Our Lady Peace on Craig Kilborn, the Buffy Musical, and the premiere episode of Smallville to watch while I'm gone. Yay! I've already have all these things on video tape, but my truck doesn't have a television, much less a vcr. Woe. In case you weren't at all curious, here are some things I burned for this trip:
- about seven years of Our Lady Peace bootlegs (1995-2002). Now I've got to load all my stuff in the truck, run by the post office to mail a cd to Raspil (bathroom walls from here to Timbuktu, babe), and I'm out of here. I'll miss you all. Don't forget about me.
I love you, Zack. suzie 07:12 AM CST [link] [8 comments] |
