Today was one of those days where I only wish I could have gotten myself out of bed earlier. Not that it would have helped, mind you, except for the fact I'd have been able to shut down the truck earlier and get the day over with. I woke up at around 5, but couldn't convince myself to get out of bed until nearly 6. I got breakfast, then started driving back toward Mobile to wait for a trailer again. There was a problem already, though; just a after I left the truck stop I got a message telling me to go north about 80 miles to pick one up from a company drop yard and I couldn't get the message until I stopped where I thought I needed to be. So after wasting half an hour going down there, then turning around and going back north, I went to get the trailer, then headed to the docks to pick up a load.
I arrived at the front gate without a problem, but the first guy to give me directions omitted a key piece of information (namely, where I was supposed to make another right turn), which resulted in me driving straight out the back exit of the place. I was more than a little angry, at this point, as I was several hours behind schedule and running out of time to pick up this load. The second time I asked for directions from someone else and gave me better directions, which got me to where I needed to be. The place loaded me remarkably quickly - I barely had time to confirm the route I was taking - so I simply closed the truck and drove back to the truck stop I spent the night at to scale the load. It was just fine where I left the tandems, so for once, something that could have gone wrong didn't.
The rest of the day was fairly uneventful; I didn't make any other stops, nor were there any big traffic hangups. But when I got to the OC here, I found that the transient (overnight) parking was full, many of the spaces taken by bobtails even though there's several signs that say "no bobtail parking" in the area. There are also probably a hundred empty tractor parking spaces that people aren't using, for whatever reason. So instead of being able to park near the fuel island, I'm parked well back in the trailer parking area, at least a quarter-mile from the main entrance. So I'll have a bit of a walk just to go inside to take a shower; as soon as I post this, I'm doing that, then going to bed. I need to be up at 5:30 and out of the OC at 6, since I really, really need to maximize the hours I have available to drive.
Ugh, I really hate when the place is filled with bobtails. I can kind of understand when the bobtail parking is so far away, but if I remember correctly it's not really all that far. I despise parking in the trailer zones too; sometimes the space between rows of trailer is not large enough to get your truck and trailer out when there's someone parked directly across from you. And the distance thing. What I do now though is drop the trailer and park in the empty bobtail section! Making note of where I drop it so I can find it easier in 10 hours :P Well, actually I do that regardless of whether or not there's spaces available in the transient parking anyways :P Need that external power source!
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