It's another mile gone by,: 02/11 Vcr-Cgy

CLICK ON 02/11 VCR – CGY TO OPEN

Last time got hung up with all the roads closed due to avalanches.

25 days 11000 miles

Dropping movies off at the rental place...Messenger is .

BC>*

Grocery store has onsite OB/GYN...

Yes, moar Me-N-Ed's for me .

Back at the truck, found my camera bag that I had forgot .

I don’t go anywhere w/o my laptop bag, so I attached the camera bag to the laptop bag to solve being w/o it .

Made sure I picked up some baking soda for the fridge smell and kitchen catchers so I can take shits .

Of course I stopped at Me N Ed’s for pizza , bagging it up so it fits in the fridge...all the times I got just pepperoni, I’d just leave it in the box and eat it for the next couple days...but the last time I got the BBQ chicken one, after a couple of days I was wondering if it was such a good idea to leave chicken out of the fridge for a couple of days, and aboot that time I got violent shits , dunno if it was suggestion or mild food poisoning, but playing it safe from now on.

My survival bag for the truck that I carry with me to and from the house as well, many days of food and water, jetboil stove and fuel, flashlight, candles, etc...

Bed freshly made, top sheet upside down so that it displays properly when untucked .

I wasn’t given a trl # over the satellite, so I ph’d to find out which was mine, the person at HQ had a heavy accent, I muddled thru it best I could and thought I understood it...then I found these 2 trls...see, 99% of our trls start with 823, so I don’t listen to that part, and like .01% of our trls end with OMT, so I just pretended to hear what he said on the ph and went to look for _______OMT....these 2 trls are too close in numbers and letters to remember what he said, so I had to call back and get clarification .

Up on the Coq, in the normal spot for accidents, truck in the ditch.

Roads aren’t that good, but better than the speed this guy is goin, but can’t get around him .

That opening to the left is the brake check for oncoming traffic...the jackknife to the right is a result of trying to slow down to enter the brake check .

Stopped at the top to clean my tailights.

Dunno why the scale let this guy thru with his taillights 100% covered in snow .

Got to Cgy, quick turn and burn, couple H+R trucks spunout on the hill .

Super B is spunout on the hill as well.

Cops have closed the hill off until all the spinouts are cleared up.

Stopped for avalanche control, the cute flagger gurl said it wouldn’t be much longer.

Hour later, rolling.

Dropped the trl in Vcr and hook onto my load to Edm and while doing my pretrip...

Those 3 holes are for rivets...pretty sure tying the light with pallet wrap (industrial saran wrap) to the trl wouldn’t eggsactly pass inspection ...how the fuck does the previous driver that loaded this not notice it, Oh wait, of course he noticed, he just didn’t give a fuck...

Wrecker guarding lumber tossed from an accident.

Stoppin for a pee, geezer's prostate must be givin him grief.

Thats where my clutch went out last week.

The trl they want me to take has a boo-boo...another driver that didn't do a post trip...

Rolling south to Calgary, lotsa cars in the ditch .

If only they were as talented and handsome as moi .

Dude is stuck on a jersey barrier....he backed up too far, backed over it, and now can’t get it out .

Elk gathering up to cross the highway .

Roads are in general winter condition.

Didn’t stop this from happening though...

Bullrack went pretty far up the hill....dude in the grand cherokee was killed .

Pulled off to clear off my tail lights...clutch didn’t give out .

4hrs later, roads in much better shape.

Wild turkey crossing the road.

Delivered in Trail, and now dropping into Castlegar...I spent many a summer and Xmas here as a kid, divorce and all...

Straight ahead you can see the airport...its a shitty airport...the pilots would train here to practice for Arctic landings...the place had no radar either, so if it was cloudy, no landie...so lotsa my plane tickets ended up being bus tix.

Due to the mountainous terrain impinging on both runway approaches, there is no possibility of a straight-in approach. The airport is therefore certified for day operations only, and the glideslope on approach is set to a steep 5% rather than the standard 2.5%. The instrument approaches to Castlegar are considered among the most challenging of any in use at a commercial airport in North America. This leads to frequent flight cancellations when meteorological conditions are unsuitable, and frequent travelers to this airport have given it the sobriquet "Cancelgar".

People parking in areas they're not sposed to and snowbanks piled up makes it hard to get into the Walmart dock...normally, you'd follow the yellow then back in, but now there's no room to do that, so gotta go red then back from there which is 50% moar difficult

Climbing out of the Okanogan.

Dude taking a leak at the brake check ~15’ from the outhouse....pissing on the ground that we have to lay on to work on our brakes

Snowblower at the summit.

Get to the yard to pickup a preloaded trailer, and I can’t leave as the faggot that loaded it didn’t close the doors properly

...they aren’t secure enough to drive down the road, and if its raining, the cargo will get wet.

I guess he couldn’t read

...had to call HQ and get permission to open the doors thus breaking the seal, close the doors properly and reseal with new seal...

Banff is pretty.

Warm outside

Headed south out of Calgary, these roads were legitimately slippery, it was work to keep straight, but nowhere to pull off safely, so just kept goin

Droppin into Osoyoos, BC.

20# of Ambrosia apples for $8 in Keremeos, BC.....Ambrosia apples are the only apples worth eating...and these are direct from orchards, no wax...

Road is closed cuz a logging truck lost it in the hairpin.

Thankfully the truck wasn’t loaded, made cleanup easy.

Satellite view.

Half hour later, there’s another set of hairpin turns, another truck lost it

, this time a coal truck.

Because of those two road closures, I was late getting to Vcr and getting the trl to the barge for Vcr Island, so they had to come out to where I parked for the nite to grab the trl to get it to the barge....when I got up in the am, bobtailed to the yard grabbed a load and headed to Cgy, and am stopped in Sicamous cuz of avalanches ahead.

Next day, road is still closed, it opened for a couple hrs while I was asleep but has reclosed, I’ve moved to a different spot in the truck stop, this way no one is blocking me in when I want to leave....sweet and unique setup for this floral truck, only one of its kind.

How I keep track of what Stern and Ron and Fez shows Ive got and what I need.

Some commotion woke me up...that’s a trailer that has fallen off the back of a truck...he was parked beside me yesterday, he dropped the trl and drove off somewhere....so it looks like he came back, hooked up to it and tried to drive off, but forgot to check his connection...made it 60’ and the trl fell off the back of the truck

...its fully loaded and dolly legs retracted, so tow truck is here to lift it up to get the weight off the legs so they can be extended and the truck can rehook to it properly and take off.

6hrs later, the same tow truck is back

...this time for moi....truck won’t start, have full voltage, nothing happens when you turn the key....so tow truck is hooking up a chain to my front bumper and I’ll be in 4th gear and he’s gonna pull start me.

Pulled me ~30’ and got the engine fired up...just can’t turn the engine off for the next 400 miles and I’ll make it....I told the tow truck driver I saw him earlier that am with the dropped trl, he said that driver told him that someone must've pulled his fifth wheel causing the drop, I told him he had dropped the trl and drove off earlier, tow truck driver laughed.

Let HQ know what’s up with this truck and axe them what the plan is

So, got to Cgy, there were 3 trucks empty...one had 7 days left on its lease, so drive it for 4 days, then take it to HQ in Wpg and get in a newer one, all the new ones are delivered to HQ for licensing/decaling, etc...a freightliner that had 6mos left or a '11 freightliner...couldn't find the '11, the one with 7 days left needed some repairs and wasn't legal to drive, so figured Id take the freightliner with 6mos left...then HQ said the '11 showed at a truckstop ~10 miles from the yard, and had been there for 3wks....I have no keys, shop has no keys, HQ still wanted me to taxi over to get the truck

, so I did...it wasn't there...I brainstormed and wondered if it was at the dealer ~2miles away...HQ said to cab over there, so I did...it was there...sitting for 3wks, went in for heater core repair which they fixed the next day, and they called Cgy yard everyday for the 3 wks and nobody came and picked it up, truck was 3mos old and sat for 3/4s of a month, yeah, just throw $2000 in a fire

The fridge in the new truck is a drawer under the bed....this shit has been in here 3wks.

Got my stuff in it now.

The fridge takes up a shitload of room under the bed.

I like the cruise, jake brake and marker light light controls on the steering wheel

Taking a load to Boeing in Washington, $1.3 million is actually one of the lower valued loads.

Stopped in road closure in Golden, BC...accidents up ahead, sposed to be cleaned up soon.

One of the participants.

Long backup because of the closure.

Snowbanks pretty high up on Roger’s Pass.

Snowbanks higher than the truck

Couple other wrecks.

He hit the brakes too hard and slid into the ditch.

Someone lost their shit.

Snowplow getting towed.

So en route a trl tire blewout...its driveable to the tire shop, just not legally and I have to cross the scale to get to the tire shop and its on the side that the scale officer will see it from his chair...so I cant cross the scale, so I call HQ to get a mobile tire guy, and the shop tells me that the scale will let me cross as Ive reported it and they know the tire shop is just past it...Cool. Except when I get to the brake check/scale, there is a logging truck getting tire work BEFORE he crosses the scale...so Im WTF....so I call HQ and they still sell my the same story and Im not comfortable with it, so I walk to the scale and explain the situation, and sure enough, had I cross I would've been in shit but now that I HAVE informed the officer, I can cross the scale and park in the back and have the mobile tire truck come out....the stupid thing is if I got a ticket, the company gets a ticket too, so that they didn't know this shit bothers me...

Sweet shitter at the brake check.

Another wreck at the bottom of Roger's Pass.

This guy passed me 5 minutes ago, now he’s headfirst into the snowbank

Theyre putting in a new bridge that's curved to stop the 5 vehicles a year coming down the hill too fast for the corner and go off the bridge and into the river.

Satellite trucks enroute to Cgy for the Heritage Classic outdoor hockey game.

Cdn army prepping the avalanche gun placements.

If you look closely you can see an orange moon

I need to be rich.

is inside the fuel stop waiting for a fax, but meanwhile is blocking fuel islands.

Waiting at the USDA....HQ took too long to get me rolling out of Cgy and it took longer than usual to slide the axles of the load at the killplant, hard to find traction in an icy parking lot, so upon leaving the killplant, I had little confidence of making the border before USDA closed for the night, and then when HQ hadnt faxed the ppwrk they needed to me to the korean store just before the border, that sealed me not making the border...they didnt want to pay OT for the inspector to stay, as I'd get inspected at noon the next day...

, dummies, USDA don't open til 4pm tmmw, fucking Presidents Day...then at 3pm, they ask what time I'll get to the drop in SLC, I tell them, they ask why so late, Im like...ummm, 20hrs sitting at USDA cuz you didn't want to spend $100 in OT for the inspector's 15mins, that's why...I'll get inspected at 4pm, drive 4hrs down the road, sleep, get up in the am and continue on, make a new appt

Low on DEF and empty light for fuel...

when I left Cgy, I left with enough fuel to get to the truckstop 30 miles across the border, that way, I'm not too heavy for the load as I dont know how heavy the load is until I get it, then I fill up as much as weight allows...so because I was low on fuel, Im even lower on fuel as this truck's tanks are smaller than previous trucks, and some trucks you get 3hr on lowfuel light, others maybe 1 hr, no idea aboot this one..

16oz Mountain Dew...I’m used to holding things this big in my hand

I said something aboot being rich?

This shit can stop anytime now, please.

My sandal needs some moar shoe-goo

Salt Lake City is pretty.

Off to Arizona....trick is, this reefer isn't allowed into California...recent emission lols need certain aged reefers to be retrofitted and registered... so I'm taking a route that avoids Cali...mostly

Leaving Boulder City on US95.

That shiny thing in the distance is Solar One, a 400 acre solar collector to make steam to make electricity.

Instead of building bridges or using culverts under the road, they just make the road have dips in it so that during heavy rains the water just runs over the road

Awww roadside jerky and honey awww.

How you roll your vehicle on a dry flat paved road is beyond me

10 miles down the road, help is on its way.

Supposedly stranded, so selling off their shit for gas monies.

Closing in on Yuma, Az.

My staph infection in my nose is flaring up again

They loaded me kinda late last night, so knew the truckstops would be full, so just parked on a sidestreet for sleep.

Rolling out.

Forklift doing 55mph.

Blimp, over the Yuma Proving Grounds.

This area is popular for RV'ers...sure its sunny and dry, but its a fucking gravel pit

I forgot to stop at this guy's bookstore

Moment of truth...dispatch wasn't positive they wouldn't check the reefer for compliance, but then they also didn't even know this inspection site was here...it IS just an agriculture/border patrol checkpoint but sometimes they have DOT peeps at them.

Crop duster.

I like clouds

Arizona/Nevada border.

Sweet mural.

Appropriatly, the town is named Searchlight.

Highway is dedicated to various wars.

They missed the war on drugs.

Utah brought winter back to me.

4wd is awesome for winter

Poor guy couldn't handle his snowmobile trailer and went in the ditch.

Running low on DEF

Adding DEF...30 gallon tank lasts ~3000 miles, this a 2.5g jug, aboot $20.

I like this feature of the truck too...lit stairs.

Montana.

I pulled over cuz there was some strange noise, I didnt know what it was, then realized it was my tire pressure gauge that was wobbling in the dash cubby