5:30.   Alarm goes off.  Hit snooze.  Office doesn’t open until 6.  

5:45  Alarm goes off again.   Go ahead and try office.   They say come on in.   Greg comes back to the truck and says this is a drop and hook not a live load.  That’s great but confusing.  We were told by KLLM and the guy at the desk here last night that they would work us in today since we are early.   Our original appointment isn’t until 2 pm.   Love the communication!  Anyway, we are getting an empty trailer and hopefully a trip soon.  

DG:  Amazing.  Government regulations. Give me a break. Arrived ConAgra Foods warehouse in Frankfort, IN last night around 10:15.  By the way, where did they get the name for this town?  That’s another issue altogether.  So I’m here, out of time, 16 hours early for my appointment, but 10 minutes late for getting here before the evening receiving crew left for the night. If the security guard would have looked a little further he would have seen that this was a drop and hook and I would be ready to go at end of my 10 hour break instead of having to check back with security.  Doesn’t matter though, I needed a place to park for 10 hours and all of the truck stops and rest areas were full that time of night. And they have a nice driver’s lounge and bathroom facilities, so all is good. Except for the aforementioned government regulation.  It always comes back to that doesn’t it?  You can be having the best day, the best week, month, year, years and eventually you are going to run into the government and they are going to ruin it for you. I mean look at taxes. Specifically the income tax. Whatever you are doing in between April 15s, that day is going to come around and require that you pay it some attention.  And if you are meticulous about your record keeping this is going to be a part of your life year round. And it shouldn’t be. Life isn’t about walking the line of government regulations. Life is about liberty and the pursuit of happiness. My God, we fought wars over it. And now it is so much a part of our lives we just glibly accept it as such. WRONG!  That’s not what life is about. 

Back to my previous complaint. As stated, we arrived early, but too late, according to security, to unload, more correctly, to drop and hook. As I said, didn’t matter as I was out of time and needed 10 hours to reset my clock.  However, if I were able to take care of this last night I would not have had the hours of service violation slapped on me this morning by my electronic watch dog. That’s right. Apparently this lot is big enough for one to drive around it a couple of times, which is what I did going back to the guard house, which they call the welcome center by the way, sounds nicer than guard shack, then backing my trailer into a dock and next driving around to find the empty trailer to hook on to. Apparently there is a time limit as to how long one my do all of this in an “off duty” status mode.  So now I have to have the log audit department correct my driving/duty status so I don’t have to fill out paperwork stating, “yes, I was a bad boy and I’ll never do it again”, and then sitting here for 10 more hours. 

No wonder people are starting to wake up. Took way to long in my estimation. All my life people have complained about the government but done very little to change it, me included. But thank God for Donald Trump. Like him or hate him and whether or not he gets elected and does the things he says he is going to do or not, at least he got the conversation started and I believe, or I hope, those in government are going to realize how mad we are and change their ways and get out of our lives. Government of, by and for the people, not over the people. 

So here we are.  For a couple of more hours anyway. 

8:30 am.   Logs are all adjusted and we are ready to go.   Got a new trip.  Pick up in Indianapolis and take it to Victorville, California!’   Yeah!  Get to go through Arizona this trip.  One more off the list!   Greg was excited about California since its 32 degrees here in Indiana so I pulled up Victorville’s temp and it’s only 36.  Hopefully it will warm up by the time we get there.  Odds are its not snowing like here. 

DG:  Odds are. 

DG:  Guy next to me at the dock here has cats. At least two that we can see. 

  
Smelly cats. Smelly cats, what are they feeding you?

Annie – I can’t even begin to think what his truck must smell like.  At least we can only see two.   We saw a lady once with 4.  She had her windows open and the vents over the bed.   I can’t even imagine! 

Well, we have been sitting at the shipper for two hours already.   Not even started loading us yet. 

1:30. Took 3 hours to get us loaded.  Only about 45 minutes once they actually got started though.   Now we are on our way west.   

8 pm.   Stopped for fuel in Rolla, Missouri and decided to go ahead and stop for the night.  Starting to get filled up so we better grab a parking spot while we can.   

DG:  I have a story to tell but it will have to wait until tomorrow. 

God bless.