Browns Summit, NC

I'm starting to write this while I wait on road repair. Yay.

Anyway, my day started off with the unexpected beeping of the Qualcomm as I received a work assignment. I'd been hoping to sleep in, but no, I ended up waking up at 7:30 to that infernal thing. I looked at it and saw that I had an open pickup window and a delivery appointment on Saturday, leaving me some extra time, so I tried to get back to sleep. And failed miserably. I gave up on it entirely around 10 o'clock, got online for a little while, then decided to head inside for lunch and a shower. Even that didn't work out so well; I had a long wait for the lunch line and the shower line was so long that I decided to forego that entirely instead of waiting at least another 30 minutes.

So, I ended up hitting the road. I got to where I was picking up an empty trailer, only to find that the trailer I'd been assigned wasn't there. Instead, they had just one of our trailers, an "A" trailer that probably is as old as I am. It wasn't in the best of shape, either; it was road legal, but had one rear marker light out and another that looked ready to fall off. Also, it looked like someone had broken open an economy-sized bag of popcorn, as there were kernels strewn about the trailer. And I only have a hand broom, so I only swept out the worst of it and hoped that the next place didn't notice or care.

Thankfully, they didn't say anything, but that's because this is such a bureaucracy that it's a wonder they can actually ship anything out at all. I arrived at 6 o'clock (or so), slid the tandems and opened the door... then needed nearly twenty minutes to back the trailer into a spot since there's so little room to maneuver here. It took me three tries; the first two attempts were so far off that I couldn't salvage anything useful and I just had to go around again. Once I dropped it, I had to drive to another lot to get the load, or so I was told. Turns out that it wasn't there either, so I was directed to a third facility. They said it was there, but that I had to go to a fourth location to pick up my paperwork, then come back to get the trailer. So, after more than half an hour of running around aimlessly, I had my paperwork in hand and found the trailer.

But, as I wrote earlier, I was waiting on road repair. Why? Because as I walked around, I noticed a big rip in a tire's sidewall. We're talking an eight-inch gash along the inside. Needless to say, the tire was completely flat. So I called, spent ten minutes on hold, and tried to work the landing gear. Even that proved difficult; for some reason, the high gears were extremely tight and I nearly threw my back out trying to get the blasted thing to move at all. I had only just finished raising the legs when someone answered; I gave the information, provided directions for the facility... then got called back five minutes later by the local business that does tire repair to get asked for directions once again. They initially quoted an ETA of two hours, though after I complained they lowered that estimate to one hour. Sure enough, the guy arrived here in a little under 45 minutes, which is just about the only thing that has gone well today. He sounds like he's nearly done mounting the new tire right now.

Once I'm out of here, I'm going to head down to the Charlotte OC for the night. Unless I've seriously done my math wrong, I can afford to stop there tonight, drive only about 400 miles or so tomorrow to get to Birmingham, AL, then finish the run Monday morning in time to make the delivery in southern Mississippi. I'll probably take this trailer to the shop to get the landing gear fixed while I'm in Charlotte since I really don't want to hurt myself trying to drop this trailer later on.

They're finally done with the tire replacement, so now I can finally get on the road again. Joy.