A rude awakening in St. George, Utah...

It was 03:15 and I was having a great sleep, when the truck started shaking like an earthquake was occurring... I sat up to watch the truck beside me dragging his trailer over my left fender - wow - blow the air horn -  get my pants and shoes on - get him stopped!!! And as quick as I was, he still backed up a little and took another run at it - same result, more damage.

It's a very tight parking lot at the Pilot Truck Stop in St. George, but still possible to maneuver safely, if you pay attention to surroundings. There was nobody parked on his left, so if he had tried to exit that way, there was plenty of room, and room at the end of the lot to make a U turn and leave, without even waking anybody up.

Major damage to my truck...

His first comment when he got out of his truck was, "This will go on my record". Not, "I'm sorry", or anything to say he screwed up.

His name is Frank Deyoung from CO, and he drives for Andrus out of St. George. His truck # is 72935, or at least was that day, so watch out if you see him in the lot where you're at, and park far away :)

So, we did the "exchange of information" thing and I reported the incident to the cops. We waited for almost an hour and no cop showed up, so we assumed and were told, that they don't come to an incident on private property.

But I'm not going anywhere. My bumper is torn off, both hood mounts are broken, the headlight assembly is totaled, but the truck is drivable because nothing behind the grill was damaged, except I'm not about to head down the highway with this mess. DOT would have a heyday with this one.

Minor damage to his trailer...

Since his truck wasn't damaged much, and he had a delivery to make in Vegas, I released him and carried on with the reporting to my company.

 Now, the cop shows up, and put me thru the grill. That took about an hour with him, and I was almost sorry I had called it in...

But that was just the start of what turned out to be "another trip from Hell".

It took about 3 hrs after the decision was made, to bring me a rental truck from Las Vegas - about 120 miles south, and another 2 hrs to switch my stuff over in 100+ heat - sweat or what? Penske, our leasing company, sent a truck up on a tow truck, so they could tow mine back to Vegas for repair. Disappointment or what - the truck they sent is a real cheapie. There's no TriPak or inverter, so I don't have power for a fridge or microwave, or anything else needing power. I bought a small 300 Watt inverter, so at least I have my computer, but that's all it will run.

All the "nice" little options I'm accustomed to in my regular truck are not in this one, and it's also a 10 speed, which I just hate more than any other transmission :( but I'm getting on to it. It' been a lot of years since I had to shift a gear, and I keep forgetting to push the clutch in at stop signs :). But it sure move on a long flat road (71 mph on cruise) and completely chokes on a hill - lots of legs, but no balls...

I was pretty pleased with Fri., because I went 610 miles in less than 9 driving hrs. - pretty good day :)

So now, everything seems to be going OK again with this new truck (only 23,000 miles on it). That was until Sat. morning. I knew I had reefer problems, because the sensor error light was on, and I found out the alternator was shot, so I'm just running on battery. But being a diesel, it will run on battery for quite some time, or so my dispatcher claimed. He said to just keep going and get it fixed when I got back to Calgary.

Well, when the battery gets too low, like under 10 volts, nothing works because of the computer controlling the reefer, so when I woke up Sat. morning, the reefer had shut down. The temperature was still OK because it had been a cool night, but it was predicted to go into the 80's that afternoon, so I had to do something.

Our On-Road-Repair dept. tried to find someone in Butte or Great Falls who worked on reefers, but no such luck - nobody. This is when my old farm ingenuity kicked in. If I ran a wire from the batteries on the truck to the battery on the reefer, it might not know the difference. So, a length of wire, a couple of connectors, and voila - it worked. The warning light was still on because the diagnostic computer was trying to read the alternator on the reefer, but the battery was charging from the truck so I knew my load of bananas was going to be OK, and that's what counts.

I had to stop at Shelby, MT for fuel - low fuel light on - but I knew I still had enough.  Just before Shelby, there was a DOT cop picking up some remnants of a tire blowout. I moved over and was not speeding, but I saw him take a close look at me as I went by. The next thing I saw was him coming up behind me with the lights flashing. Now what? I guess he was curious about the TX license plate pulling a Canadian H & R trailer, or something. Anyway, he did a "paper inspection" on me, and everything passed - cudos for me, eh?

On my way again, stopped for fuel, went to Duty Free for cigarettes, and they're closed. I miss by 30 minutes - the time the cop took to do the inspection :(

So now I'm at the border - with a tractor that was not on the paperwork and a TX license plate. Well, the female officer didn't know what to do. I thought she was going to charge me duty on the truck. But luckily for me, a senior officer was in the booth with her, and told her this happens all the time with breakdowns, and that it was OK for me to go. Whew...

Well, not a lot more could go wrong now. I was in Canada and made it to Calgary by 02:00 PDT, which was the absolute limit of how much I could log that day - 16 hrs - Canadian rules.

But Monday, I came home and am taking 6 days off. After all that, I need them....

And Patches missed me too. When I got out of my pickup, he was on the steps and just vibrating. He's the coolest dog I ever knew.

A very patient bear...

It's been awhile, but there's so much going on, I just don't ever seem to find time to post in here...

I just had to put this up, though.

I was rollin' along Highway 1 just down the East side of the Rogers Pass in B.C. when a westbound truck told me there were cars parked on the side of the road watching a bear about 7 miles ahead of me.

Oh sure, I thought. As if they will be there by the time I get there.

But the cars were, and so was the bear. He could care less about who was watching him route out plants and eat the grubs and bugs that came with them.

Wow, how many grubs does a critter this size need a day to live?

As we all took pictures, he just kept wandering up and down the ditch and clawing up plants, mostly dandelions, and licking up the spoils.

Eventually, all the cars left and it was just me and the bear, and he was totally unconcerned about me being there, even with the diesel running. He just kept on "lunch".

I was there about 15 minutes before he headed across the road and disappeared into the bush. But I got a good shot of him crossing the road, and I don't think I've ever seen a bigger grizzly than this one. At least I've never been this close...

More coming soon, and just keep on keepin' on...

My Guardian Angel Is Working Overtime...

This past Monday, I was heading for Laredo, TX via US 83 that runs down from Childress, SE of Amarillo. Just North of Uvalde, there was a violent thunder storm. The wipers on high, couldn't keep the windshield clear, and I thought of finding a safe spot and pulling over. There was water running across the highway in places, deep enough to "grab the tires" and pull me over.

But, it did seem like a good situation for a tornado to develop. There was so much lightning that I probably have driven without my headlights - just one flash after another - what a light show... and the temperature dropped from 25 to 14 real fast,.

Because of the possibility of a tornado, I thought it best to keep going and get out of it. By the time I got to Uvalde, it was over, and became just another quiet night, and back up to 25 C.

Tuesday, I was talking to a driver who mentioned that there had been a tornado touch down near San Antonio, which is just a bit East of where I had been, but I really didn't give it another thought.

Wednesday morning, I got going North to Canada. Because of where I spent the night, my GPS routed me a different way from coming South, but that was OK, because I always like a "new road".

I'm not even sure which highway I was on, but just a few miles from the Interstate, all traffic came to a halt, and a couple of locals (Deputy Sheriffs) were directing traffic as it was one lane only at a time. I thought it was probably just construction, as it's that time of year again.

Wow, did I get my eyes opened when it was my turn to go.

The tornado was 2 days ago, and people are cleaning all the debris laying around. There is more tin on the ground than on the roofs of the mobile homes. I didn't see any tipped over, but exterior damage was mega...













Trees were splintered like cornstalks.


You can click on the pictures to enlarge them, and then just hit ESC to return to this page...

I could have been a lot worse, and I've seen the aftermath of worse tornadoes, but it came in the night and I don't know if there was any warning.

Tornadoes aren't like hurricanes, where there is several days warning to evacuate. They form so fast that a published "tornado watch" or "tornado warning" is the best that can be done.

This one covered a fairly narrow path of about 1/2 mile, and past that, everything was as it had always been.