Monee, IL

Well, with all the news about bad weather in the northeast, I was prepared for the worst. I figured that I'd be late making this delivery and piss off both dispatch and the customer in the process. I already had warned management that I might be late due to weather, which they understood, but I still wanted to try. For all my worrying and planning, though, there was one possibility that I failed to account for: that the weather would cooperate. Aside from about 20 or 30 miles of fairly heavy snow in Pennsylvania and one rather close call with the truck, I had nothing to deal with but rain and even that stopped shortly after I made it into Ohio. The only problem I had left was Chicago traffic, since I cross into the state right around 6PM, but even that proved to be a non-issue. Thus, I went from worrying about being half a day late to arriving half an hour early.

Just about everything else went well, too. I was able to stop for food pretty much as I wanted. Traffic was never a problem all day. I never drove through a construction zone that had a reduced speed limit. I even found a parking space on my first try at the truck stop; someone was just pulling out of a space when I arrived. Overall, a very good day indeed.

That's not to say there aren't a few things I still have to worry about. For one thing, I had to take toll roads to make up time and the roads I took are ones they don't normally reimburse drivers for. If they decide they're not going to pay me back, I'm out $49.50 for the Ohio and Indiana turnpikes. I also still had a hard time backing in at the customer, which led to some rather unnerving looks from other drivers.

I still don't know where I'm going next, but I really hope that it's somewhere warmer. It's currently 26 degrees here and only forecast to get to 32. Worse, there's a huge storm coming in over the weekend and I'd love to get out of the way before that hits. So if they could route me down to Charlotte (which is currently experiencing record highs), I'd be very, very happy. :)