Christmas in Dallas -- Pictures of Montana

Christmas Day (and then some) in Dallas. It is the day after Christmas as I write this, sitting in the dining area of the Schneider OC in Dallas. We got here yesterday morning about 5:00 with our load, and then went right to the OC.

Terry loaded all his things he'd need into my car, and he drove on up toward Little Rock. He is supposed to come back to Dallas on January 3.

I decided to take the rest of the day off yesterday because I was exhausted (I didn't sleep well Monday night, and then drove from midnight until we got here to Dallas). I slept a few hours in the truck before the phone woke me up. It was time to wake up anyway and call all the people in my world who love me and whom I love, mostly my family and a few friends. Everyone with whom I spoke said they had a great Christmas. Some are glad that it's going to be over.

I sent Schneider a message using the satellite link in our truck (we call it the “Qualcomm”) around noon to make sure that they were showing that Terry was taking time off and that I was running solo until after the first of the year. I was only a little surprised when they told me that they showed both Terry and me being off until January 2 ^nd . They told me in order to change that, I'd need to call our dispatcher this morning.

I got a great night's sleep last night with the truck not moving. When I woke up I called our dispatcher and asked him to show me running solo until January 3 ^rd when I'll come back to Dallas to pick Terry up. Of course, we are both still on waiting lists for trucks. And I don't know quite what's going to happen while Terry's gone on his end that could alter his own plans somewhat. So our ultimate plans are still quite up in the air.

When I talked to our dispatcher I told him to just go ahead and push my availability out to tomorrow (Thursday) morning about 8:00 and that will let me get a full 34-hour restart and I can begin with a full slate of available hours to run the next week or so.

So I spent Christmas day here at the OC and am spending another one also. Yesterday I put our truck in the shop for some routine maintenance. They couldn't repair anything that we were hoping to get fixed before we turn in the truck because there is a wait of several days to even get a truck into the shop for anything that can't be done in just a few minutes in what they call the Express Bay.

I cleaned the truck out – it was really dirty from all the snow, ice, mud and rain we've been in the past couple of weeks.

I spent a good amount of time in the afternoon in the laundry room washing clothes and talking to some other drivers who were here on Christmas day also. I always like talking to other drivers because I always learn something new. And I'm usually entertained on some level. The people in there yesterday all had interesting stories to tell and were very nice people.

Schneider provided Christmas meals for everyone here, and it was actually quite good. Enjoyable.

I spent a good part of the rest of the day and evening on the computer catching up on blogs I read and doing some reading and posting in a couple of driver forums on the web. Also doing some research, asking some questions about Prime and their lease program in case Schneider doesn't have a truck for me in a couple of weeks.

Pictures from Montana. Last week I took some pictures while we were going through Montana. We had stopped at a rest area on I-90 eastbound just before Lookout Pass and the Idaho state line. I took some pictures there (a couple of black and whites look really cool I think) and I thought I'd try to post them to the blog. This is experimental since I haven't done this before on Blogger, so I may have to work with it a little bit. Enjoy!

Until next time, keep the wheels rollin' . . .

Allan