After my long, grueling, all uphill 20 mile hike home-I meant to say 2 mile flat as a board walk,hit the wrong key-I went to Carter Cat the next morning and picked the truck up.Ran great. Went on to Petersburg and loaded a load of steel going to Nazareth,Pa. After I unloaded Wednesday morning I had to go to Sparrows Point to load coils back to Lynchburg.I was outside tarping when I heard the phone ringing-it was Jeff. He just wanted to let me know they had a load of kyanite going to Fremont,Oh. and he was going to save it for me. Perhaps to make up for going to Nazareth. Nazareth is a good load,but since I had to go to Baltimore,and everybody knows how I hate running northeast,and I do like going to Fremont...except I listen to WLW in Cincinnati on XM a lot and I already knew they were calling for the biggest snowfall this winter,starting Friday morning. And all day Friday...and Friday night...and Saturday. They said they were expecting a foot or more,and I figured it might be worse up around Fremont,which is a little bit east of Toledo. So when I got to the shop Thursday morning I asked my usual question-"is this for Friday delivery,or Monday delivery?" The usual answer is "it's for whenever you get there delivery",but Todd said "we never put off 'til Monday what we can do on Friday". Yeah,right...but since they had already held the load for me for a day we thought they might be getting low in material,so I was off like a herd of turtles (Old Bill).

When I unloaded and left there about 8:30 yesterday morning it wasn't snowing and I had to go all the way to Pittsburgh to reload,so I thought I might get lucky and miss it altogether-the Pittsburgh weather channel called for snow and rain with a high of 38 degrees. It was 26 in Fremont. I took 20 east to Monroeville,got some fuel,then to Norwalk and back down 250 to 224,turned to the east and still no sn-what's that up ahead? Oh...snow. And more snow. Couple of miles and the road was covered. It was covered all the way to Lodi,where I got on the interstate. Which was covered except for two tracks in the right lane. I was going to go down 14 to 51 into Pa. then take 60 down to Pittsburgh but I stayed on I-76 to Youngstown and went rt. 11 to 14,thinking the big road would be better. 14 probably wasn't much worse because all this way I only saw 2 salt trucks and one of them was parked on a ramp on 76. The trailer was completely covered in snow and ice,I couldn't even see the marker lights,but traffic was proceding fairly well,just slowly. The only accidents I saw were on the westbound side. A little bit after I crossed into Pa. there was some rain in the snow and about halfway down rt. 60 the snow just quit like you turned a switch off and the road was just wet the rest of the way-all rain and 38 degrees when I got to Galv-tech,most of the snow gone off the truck and trailer and what wasn't melted and fell off in the floor when I was loading.I chained and tarped inside,but there were no more trucks there anyway. Left there around 3 o'clock and got to Lynchburg about 11 last night,and the temperature never got below freezing again all the way home.

Now i'm glad I went of course because I'll have Sunday off. You shouldn't have to work on Sunday anyway,but it's a truckdriver's life to have to do it I guess. Always was one of the worst parts of the job. Especially in summer when you're going up the road on Sunday afternoon and at every house you pass everybody's in the back yard cooking on the grill and drinking a cold beer and listening to the race and enjoying their weekend. And you're going to Cleveland or somewhere....