I'm a little less than halfway between Denver and Indianapolis, but this was as far as I could get today. And, in reality, I went slightly over my 14 (and well over my 11) just getting this far. This leaves me 666 miles to drive tomorrow. It's a tall order, for sure, but I think I can make something work.
So why did i end up shutting down here, some 30 miles earlier than I intended? The weather. This morning, I had to drive through the Rockies. This would have been bad enough on a clear day, but I was going through at night, in intermittent snow showers, on an ice-covered road, with a 45,000 pound load. I was smoking the brakes on at least two occasions (plus probably one more, in which I smelled burning but it was too dark to see smoke), including as I came into Denver in the morning. I was seriously worried about throwing myself off the mountain; in both cases where the brakes faded to nearly nothing, I was lucky enough to be at the bottom of a downgrade. When I stopped for fuel, I parked for about an extra hour just to let the brakes cool off. Even now, eight hours later, I still smell something funny back there, so I'll have to get the shop at Indy to check it out.
When I resumed, the weather in eastern Colorado was just fine. As I got into Kansas, though, clouds started rolling in. At first I wasn't very worried - it was 45 degrees and driving in the rain is nothing to me - but as it started to precipitate the temperature plunged back to 30 degrees. And, on top of that, it started getting foggy. Freezing fog. It sounds innocuous enough, but as everything started icing up, the road became incredibly slick. So, to recap, it's raining on and off, visibility is a quarter mile (or less), and there's ice everywhere, including on my mirrors. Fantastic, hm? It got even worse after dark, since high beams just reflect all that back; visibility was just enough that I could see the road and, if I squinted, the tail lights of cars a thousand feet ahead. Thankfully, that all started to clear up before I shut down here. Apparently this kind of crap is going to continue most of the night, though, and I'll be catching up to the storm when I get moving first thing in the morning.
At least, once I get to Indianapolis, I'll have enough reasons to put the truck and trailer in the shop that, hopefully, I'll get a day (or at least a few extra hours) off. I still need to do all the math on my logbook but I believe I'll be running out of hours anyway.
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