Violins. Poor me.

Oh, boy.

First of all, I had a terrible weekend. I can't believe how difficult it has been. Let me start from the top and just bear with me. Also get your tissues out, this is a doozy.

My first plane ride ever was a frustrating one for all of the other passengers, but I was excited to get the full flying experience in one gulp. Not sure if you heard about it but it was on the news that ALL of Southwest was grounded because they had a computer failure. This was for hours, man. I was supposed to leave Salt Lake City at 7:55pm, didn't end up leaving until like midnight. I know in the scheme of flight delays that's not the worst thing in the world but people on the flight were freaking the fuck out! I was just happy that I was on the ground when computers were on the fritz. I met this old couple who apparently used to drive trucks and they bought me dinner after I told them that it was my first flight. They could also tell how nervous I was about the flight and were OVER nurturing about it. When we finally got on the plane (for the second time since the computers went down when we were already on the plane and they let us get off of it) the woman was telling the stewardess how it was my first flight and that made the cute girls in front of me giggle, I felt like I was being dropped off at school and my mom made me look uncool. The entire take off she was like "okay, Kenney, here we go. Are you okay?" and I didn't wanna' be rude because she was legitimately concerned so I just rolled with it. It's not like I would ever see these people again. I was SO stoked when I was in the air. It was dark and the lights from the city just looked outstanding. I posted a picture of it on my IG, but it didn't come out very well. I felt bad because when I landed a local driver for Central was supposed to pick me up, take me to the truck and give me the keys. Since we got delayed I didn't get there until 1:30am-ish and for a local driver that is pretty much hell. Luckily it was a Friday and he didn't work the next day. Phoenix was SO goddamn hot. I couldn't stand it. It was sticky and I just know I was rancid. And not the Tim Armstrong version... Well... Maybe. Anway. He shows, I say goodbye to my uncool, white airplane grandparents and he takes me to the truck. It's a beauty. Although it's white and I wanted black, it is such a step up from the Peterbilt I was in. It's HUGE on the inside in comparison, incredibly clean and is lacking one Columbian taking up room. I will post pictures later. Central will charge you if you idle your engine for too long, wasting fuel, which would suck in the heat but this truck has an idle opimizer, pretty much you set a temperature and it turns on/off to keep it at that temp. I'm trying not to abuse it. Trying. But seriously, if they want me driving that much then they need to give me some rest. Also had a brand new bed in it. The mattress had the plastic on it still. So stoked. Bad part is that I don't have a working car charger, I had been using this rad self powered inverter that David had in his truck, so I had to take the hit and buy one too. Fifty bucks, but at least I can charge my computer too. That will come in useful when I get stranded in Dallas (you'll see).

That's the end of the good stuff. So I sleep in the truck on Friday night and am stoked to start heading West in the morning. I get up Saturday to a call from the weekend driver manager telling me I have a load and it is headed to Lousiana. That ain't West dawg. I tell him, his name is Tony (Tony is an asshole, you'll see) "Tony, that's not gonna' work. I was supposed to be home ten days ago and I know there are loads coming out of Phoenix back West" he tells me that there are none and that I can either take this load or sit in the yard until Monday when my actual Driver Manager, Mike, is going to be in. I tell him I'll sit. I don't care. Not going to Lousiana. He then calls Mike (1) and tells him, Mike gets pissed apparently and tells me that as a company driver I am not allowed to refuse loads (2) and that if I take this load my chances of getting a California bound load will be much better (3). I might as well take it because it's good money too, so I very angrily accepted to load. Before I did though, I see that the load was supposed to be started about thirty hours prior and that there is not enough time to get there by the scheduled drop off time. He tells me that it's fine and that they are aware of it (4) and that if I just drive ten hours a day it will be close enough. Fine. I pick it up and start heading East. Drive all day and I stop about one hundred miles East of El Paso, not entirely sure where I was. At this point it was like three in the morning and the truck stop was COMPLETELY full but I was out of driving time and needed to stop, so I parked in a spot that I wasn't supposed to, but drivers park there all of the time, and get down to get a shower. Surprise. Locked my keys in the truck. First day out and I lock the fucking keys in the truck. I couldn't believe it. The truck I was in before would not let you lock the truck with the door open, preventing this stuff from happening and I just got used to that. What sucks is that since I just got the truck, I still had the spare with the actual key. Smart move, jack. I go inside and waste twenty bucks on this stupid lockout kit that is useless and did not work at all. Had to bite the bullet and call the company to get a locksmith to open the stupid truck. Turns out that the company will pay for the locksmith, which was rad (and made me even more pissed about the dumb lockout kit seeing as how I should have called them to begin with). Dude comes out, opens the truck and I pay the man. This took two hours, it is now five in the morning and I am going to bed. I wake up to an angry phone call from a different driver manager saying why I haven't sent them any of the required daily messages, I tell him I have and that they're in my outbox, I was seriously looking right at them, he says no and HANGS UP ON ME. I couldn't believe it. He calls back a few minutes later and just says "truck number?" I tell him and he says he is going to do them for me and that he couldn't believe I hung up on him. I told him I thought he hung up on me. Apparently something messed up somewhere and both of us were pissed for the same reason. Point of that story is that my Qualcomm is not sending messages. Great. I wake up Sunday morning, after only sleeping like five hours because I was super paranoid about the truck being towed or getting a ticket for where I was parked, take a shower and keep moving East.

I call Tony and tell him that as I already said, this load is going to be late and he FREAKS out. He asked why I slept in and all sorts of other garbage (Federal law is that you have to have ten hours of rest between driving, by the way). I tell him that I didn't and that I drove the ten hours, actually a little more, like he told me and he just keeps saying that I fucked up. I can't stand Tony by the way. He finds another driver to complete my load and gets me a different one that delivers later, before I can check my driving hours he accepts the load for me, which is a BIG no-no in the trucking business, especially without looking at hours. He asked me if I could get THAT load on time (prick) and I tell him since he already accepted it for me that it doesn't seem like I have choice. My friend Tony has me going to Alabama and then Illinois. That's not West. I call him back immediately and am furious. He tells me that my odds of getting a load to California from Illinois was much better than from Texas (5, you seeing a pattern here??). I start going and about an hour later I pull over to check my hours, nope, I don't have the hours to complete the load. I called him and he FREAKS out again because I called, he said he has too many drivers to be talking to me. I tried to tell him that my Qualcomm wasn't sending messages and he says to just send them and he will respond then hangs up. I send a message saying that I didn't have the hours, he never responds. At the very least I need to get this load to the next driver so that he can finish it so I keep going. I get there and at this point I only have one hour of drive time left, I still need to go get loaded (the other driver was supposed to get the trailer loaded before I got there, but didn't) and that is like thirty miles away, I can't shut down and sleep at the shipper so I call Tony again and tell him. He FREAKS out and says that I should have told him, I say I called to tell him and he told me to just send a message that he never got. He says something along the line of "here come the violins, poor you" and blah blah blah. I REALLY hate Tony. He tells me that I have to go get the load anyway and that I need to just take the violation. I don't, that's stupid. I tell him that I am going to shut down and talk to my actual DM in the morning. I shut down in the yard (which was stupid because I have no food and there is no bathroom but I didn't know what else to do with such little driving time left). That's the end of it. I lost all of my loads and have nowhere to go. I try to get some sleep but the check engine light turns on and that makes the idle optimizer not work. So I go to sleep with no air condition, pissed off and ready to get yelled at by Mike in the morning.

First thing this morning, my truck is 95 degrees inside by the way (I only slept like five or six hours because of this) I call Mike and yep, he mad. I tell him everything that happened and he realizes that this is all Tony's bad. Not mine. Thank God. He tells me that I should never accept loads I don't have the hours for and I tell him that Tony accepted them for me and the rest of the story and he is furious. Turns out Tony is new and that he has been lying to me for two goddamn days. He says that I should not have left Phoenix and that he needs to get me home. He is obviously annoyed with me too for not refusing them but I tell he is the one that told me I had to take the load at least that's what TONY SAID. Turns out, Tony was lying about that too and that he never even talked to Mike. I flip out. I should have never been to Texas, I probably should have been home right now. So now I am in Texas, at a yard, with ONE driving hour left because Tony wasted all of them telling me to drive ten hours a day. Mike gets me the address to the nearest truck stop and tells me I need to shut down there and reset my hours (this is a thirty four process, essentially a day off).

So here I am. In Dallas, Texas at a truck stop. The check engine light turned off again and hasn't come back on (not sure what that is about) and my optimizer is working again. I just got off of the phone with Mike again and he already has a plan to get me back home after I reset. So I am going to be stuck here until Wednesday morning, but at least I am with an actual DM who understands what's going on instead of giving me impossible loads and wasting my time. He's not nearly as annoyed with me as he was before and our last talk was actually a good one. I feel like such a little kid out here, just like with any new job, but it makes it worse that I am on my own. I got lost once on my way to the yard, which is terrifying in Texas because there are a lot of low clearances and construction zones. I was going like forty on the freeway but it was two in the morning so there wasn't anyone behind me. I'm just glad to be in a cool truck, with a plan to get home and honestly even though it is going to take me some time to get home, at least my DM is dead set on making it happen and isn't going to mess with me or reroute me anymore. And honestly, I am so tired from the bad sleep and the long driving days, I can use a day off. Just washed my clothes and once it's not so hot outside I am going to take another shower. Huge ups for Mike. Fuck you, Tony.

In case you didn't catch it, I was numbering the lies Tony told me. Five. Five lies that completely ruined my weekend and made it so that I will not get home for even longer. Thanks, Tony. I hope you fall down in public in front a girl you like, you prick.

I can't think of a David quote right now. I am failure. I need sleep.

I sincerely miss everybody and could really use some people to talk to. Text me because pretty much for two days I am going to be lounging around being a truck stop fly. Nobody likes that guy. 559-346-9903.

Bear out.