Grapevine, CA - In which my truck takes a leak all over the road

I was hoping I'd have something nice and exciting to post for my four hundredth entry in this blog. I was right, mostly, but it's not the kind of excitement that I would have hoped for. Specifically, as I was coming down I-5, approaching a rather large hill, I felt the truck starting to lose power. Thinking that it was my turbo, as I'd previously suspected it acting up, I turned down the radio but didn't hear anything out of the ordrinary. As I started up the hill, though, the truck barely had power at all. I was shifting gears nearly as fast as I could take them, losing nearly five mph just in the time it took to get from 10 to 9, which forced me to shift to 8th nearly immediately, and in turn to 7... at which point the engine protect light came on, accompanied by a low coolant warning.

So I pulled off the road immediately, thinking that I might have lost a hose, since I'd already had to gone one replaced on this truck. But, no, nothing nearly that benign...

From Truckin' Around

Yep, that's my radiator. Leaking vast quantities of coolant all over the five freeway. It's stopped now, but that's because there's nothing left to leak out. So I called maintenance and explained the situation to them. They want to repair this at an operating center, so I found out another little gem: we have an OC in downtown Los Angeles, about 80 miles away. They're sending a tow truck up from there, then taking me down, so we're looking at four to six hours according to maintenance. I fear it might be closer to eight, given that traffic in LA - especially downtown - is lengendarily bad. I'm going to have to relay this load as well, since I won't have the hours to deliver it even if they wanted to give me a loaner truck. As such, I'll be in the general area for the foreseeable future, likely at least two days.

I've been told to simply call in when the truck is repaired and I'm ready to return to work, because there's really no way anyone can tell when I'll be able to hit the road again. It just depends on how backed up things are in the shop. I should at least get a 34-hour break in (simply because I may as well get that taken care of if I'm out of service), but I wouldn't be surprised if I'm down for two to three days. The only good thing is that this still counts as a layover, so I'll get paid for the downtime. I'll also get to see a few people down there, if all goes well. This is just hardly the circumstances in which I'd want to meet folks. :)