Fri, Dec 12 .... What's Been Going On??

I know it's been a few days since I updated the blog... well, we've been on a company paid vacation! ... I think the story left off when we were headed to Florence, SC...


Since then... we were dispatched to pick a load up on Rock Hill, SC on Saturday 12-6. We made the little trip to Rock Hill, SC and headed to Hialeah, FL with our hazmat load. We're suppose to deliver in Hialeah on Monday morning at 8:00 a.m., but the paperwork states the load can be delivered early. That's always good because we are always early.

The trick about going to Florida is that everything goes in to the state, but nothing comes out... we know we'll be there for a couple of days. We also need our mandatory 34 hour reset, so it we were hoping it will work out for us. The other trick to delivering in Florida is the total lack of truck stops! I looked on the map and the last "real" truck stop on I-95 going south is at exit 129... which means there are 129 more miles south that there are 0 truck stops. We will have to find a wide sandy spot in the road!

We arrived in Hialeah on Sunday and tried to deliver our load early... they were closed... (so much for delivering early!) As we drive straight by the place.... with our hazmat load... all we see is the municipal airport dead straight ahead of us. I'm trying to find us a way out of this cramped little town with these small roads and prevent us from being on the 11:00 o'clock news... I can see the headlines... "Hazmat load detained at airport! Suspects apprehended!" After all, we have the word "DANGEROUS" plaqued all over us!


Finding a safe route out of there (which is harder than you would think... the streets have 2 names each) and back to the interstate, we drove 25 miles out of route to a truck stop... across the street from Miccosukee Casino... on the very edge of the Everglades... in the middle of Nowhere, FL! Luckily, Trapper remembered being there before. Hazmat loads must be parked in secure truck stops, so we had no choice but to drive to this truck stop.

"Cool... a casino... across the street", I thought. But then again walking was out of the question... we "ride" for a living... us walk? No way... it looked to be at least a mile away! So the night was spent at this $15 a night parking lot of a convenience store turned small truck stop.


Monday morning we drove back to our delivery spot and dropped our trailer. Since we knew we'd be waiting on our reset and a load... we decided to drive back to the little "nowhere" truck stop, but this time we can park at the casino! No more hazmat following us around. The trip was getting better by the moment. 34 hours, casino, 80 degrees.... RESET = VACATION!


We signed in at the players counter and received our $20 cash vouchers... their money... that's cool too! A few minutes later and $18 to our good... Trapper finds the Poker Room and I was wandering from slot machine to slot machine.

A few hours later.... we were up a few bucks and treated ourselves to dinner, on the casino's dime, of course! After our dinner break and still feeling a little lucky... I returned to the gambling floor... my signs must have been aligned with my moons and stars. Everytime I hit the button the machines sounded off! The sound of cha-ching was ringing in my ears!

A couple of hours later, the planets must have interrupted my alignment because the cha-ching sound went silent. I decided it was time to get out of the casino and make my way to the truck....

Tuesday morning Trapper and I both wandered back into the casino... we're still sitting here in Florida, we're still using "their" money.... why not, right?

The moons and planets were all out of wack today... my luck had ended. Luckily, a quick trip to the truck showed me that we had been preplanned to go to Patalka, FL on Wednesday. Naturally, the qualcomm doesn't go off until you have out of the truck having fun!

Vacation coming to and end, we made the short drive to Paltaka, FL for our 2:00 p.m. pick up on Wednesday.

Our little vacation was a very nice one! Back to work now!