Well, I'm back.
Heading out to Syracuse, I was as nervous as I have ever been. Before I headed out there and while I was there for the first day or so I felt like I was getting the flu. I'm still not entirely relaxed, but I'm only a small percentage as tense as I was tuesday and wednesday. I probably wouldn't be tense at all If I knew exactly when I was going to hook up with my trainer and hit the road. I'm going to phone the terminal on monday and they'll let me know if I have a trainer then, if not call again on wednesday. So I don't know how much time I have off. I'm nervous about it. Whatever, being nervous is probably 90% of the problem with any problem anyway.
When I arrived at the Comfort Inn in syracuse I was cautiously psyched thinking that I didn't have a roomate, but there were two beds and about half an hour after I got there a big black guy showed up in my room. Not a bad fellow, but he snored. To understand his snoring, lie flat on your back and place a large steak over you face and attempt to breathe through it. He also would let out these vast deep farts that sounded initially like he was turning in bed and making the springs creak. The flow of gasses through overfed human flesh. . .
I was actually laughing silently, listening to him, it was my nerved keeping me awake.
Most of the guys there apparently took the bus ride option, which baffles me, since they reimburse you for your gas and tolls if you drive. I looked up where the local barnes & noble was before I headed up there and hung out there in the evenings. I came across a collection of Courtney Love's journals called Dirty Blond. I had never had any idea how brilliant she was until I read some of the poetry she was writing when she was nine.
One page was a hasselblad proof sheet of pics of her and curt cobain, and every single one of them was excellent. Some people just have complete mastery of looking good and looking interesting. I got to feeling kind of badly about myself, surprise surprise, when I was reading about when she was in england in the early eighties. Certainly courtney was/is far from an untroubled person, but she is brilliant, extroverted and charismatic, and that sort of person is going to have an infinitely more interesting life than someone like me. Its just the drugs that are the colossal mistake that can fuck up you life when you're that sort of person.
I also looked through a book called Klee in america. I saw some of his paintings at the Met in NYC last time I was there. I didn't really like them live but I really like his pics in book form. ??? couldn't say why. One the other hand, I never got why Modiglinani was so great until I saw his paintings in person. Anyway, in the Klee book I found two paintings, Orpheus and The Gaze of Silence which really arrested my attention. The latter has a sort of inaudible vibration coming off of it. I did a Klee-inspired drawing and had an amusing Idea for another one which I shall add to this entry later if I shall have motivated to actually create it.
Thing about B&N is that it is a good place for girl watching, it draws in the local college age women with long legs, glasses and brains. I just wish I had ever had any ability to talk to such as that. Or could have believed in myself, or whatever the critial mix of intangibles would be. My old girlfriend Erica had had another bf before me who was a truck driver, but was also equally at home as a northampton bohemian artistic type. Most truck drivers talk about big truks, the mustangs that they've rebuilt, but this guy had rebuilt a vespa.And had jumped the fence at junkyards at night to steal parts for his two volkwagen rabbits. So it's not impossible to be a truck driver and comfortably transition over to being a cultured boheminan type, but I'm just completely unsmooth socially.
Jormagund has advised me to be very wary of biting when Swift offers me the opportunity to become and owner operator. There are certainly ways to get fucked when you do that. It's not sposta happen any more, but one thing that uscrupulous companies have been know to do is to sell a driver a truck, and then not give him any loads, so that he cannot pay for it, and they they take it back and sell it to someone else, selling it to multiple drivers this way. The drivers end up paying for the truck that the company owns. There is also the factor of the company paying for all the fuel and repairs to the truck when they own it. I suffer from anxiety and a tendency to neglect problems, and that abolutely and totally will not cut it when and If I'm driving a rig that I own.
On the other side of the equation, when you own your own truck you enjoy higher degree of independence. You fuel up where when you want, and you have more choice of what loads you can accept, and how much time off you can have. Right now the way I look at it, is if I can get my anxiety under control and deal with the shit that you have to deal with when you're an owner/operator, and I can avoid the ways that drivers can get fucked up the ass on purchase deals; even if you don't make any more money it would probably still be preferable to be an o/o for the extra independence. Your truck, your decisions. One thing I'm going to need to look into is whether or not you can go to work for another company if the one you work for and are buying the truck from isn't doing well for you.
Some of the guys at orientation got on my nerves, but I didn't hate all of them. One guy was a 65 year old hippie who wore a lot of heavy necklaces. He had gotten his cdl in the 70's but his wife hand never let him use it, and only recently he had finally started and he did a year at Schneider. They gave him work but were giving him the home time he'd wanted. He was cool, and his "hey man" was authentic. I was sititng next to a guy from persia who needed me to help him with various elements of vocabulary. Likeable fellow and I gave him a ride back to the Comfort inn one evening. When it was over and I was hanging about waiting for the secretary to get around to me so I could give her my gas and toll receipst to get reimbursed, I over heard this black guy talking about Oneida lake, telling another guy "there's some bass in that Motherfucker, yo." He used "motherfucker, yo" a lot and it struck me me that in the interest of multiculturalism I should be using that phrase with you motherfuckers, yo.
So. I have to get my laundry done and the cat care arrangements nailed down. I could be heading out at any time and it looks like I'll most likely have to to the full 42 days straight on the road, unless my trainer happens to live right around here and it gets a little slow. I'm really not keen on 42 days straight. I shall miss being on here with you motherfuckers, yo, but I spose I might be able to drop in for a bit now and then if I'm at a truck stop that has an interned cafe and a little privacy. I know some have them but I don't know how common they are.
It's also possible my account might expire if the checking account it feeds off of isn't the one I'm using and doesn't have any money in it, but never fear, I shall return. I'd like to change my occupation next to my profile pic to "delivers the goods" but when I hit the edit the only things I have access to to change are my primary and secondary profile pics.
Last night I drove home from Syracuse to Springfield without stopping. To practice. A rock or something dropped off some asshole's truck from in front of me when I was going through albany and it made a loud bang under my car and went flying off to my left. I gess I'd better have a look to see if there's any damage. But what I was going to say Is that I realized that I'll be abusing myself if I start thinking "get home". It has to become the case that I'll be home everywhere. Perhaps another good reason to have my own truck. It will be easier when I pick up a laptop with a wireless card in it and can then stay in touch with the rest of the world, but this is a good opportunity to be turned outward. which is something I have always deeply wanted but been deeply afraid of.
Peace; Motherfucker, yo.
Heading out to Syracuse, I was as nervous as I have ever been. Before I headed out there and while I was there for the first day or so I felt like I was getting the flu. I'm still not entirely relaxed, but I'm only a small percentage as tense as I was tuesday and wednesday. I probably wouldn't be tense at all If I knew exactly when I was going to hook up with my trainer and hit the road. I'm going to phone the terminal on monday and they'll let me know if I have a trainer then, if not call again on wednesday. So I don't know how much time I have off. I'm nervous about it. Whatever, being nervous is probably 90% of the problem with any problem anyway.
When I arrived at the Comfort Inn in syracuse I was cautiously psyched thinking that I didn't have a roomate, but there were two beds and about half an hour after I got there a big black guy showed up in my room. Not a bad fellow, but he snored. To understand his snoring, lie flat on your back and place a large steak over you face and attempt to breathe through it. He also would let out these vast deep farts that sounded initially like he was turning in bed and making the springs creak. The flow of gasses through overfed human flesh. . .
I was actually laughing silently, listening to him, it was my nerved keeping me awake.
Most of the guys there apparently took the bus ride option, which baffles me, since they reimburse you for your gas and tolls if you drive. I looked up where the local barnes & noble was before I headed up there and hung out there in the evenings. I came across a collection of Courtney Love's journals called Dirty Blond. I had never had any idea how brilliant she was until I read some of the poetry she was writing when she was nine.
One page was a hasselblad proof sheet of pics of her and curt cobain, and every single one of them was excellent. Some people just have complete mastery of looking good and looking interesting. I got to feeling kind of badly about myself, surprise surprise, when I was reading about when she was in england in the early eighties. Certainly courtney was/is far from an untroubled person, but she is brilliant, extroverted and charismatic, and that sort of person is going to have an infinitely more interesting life than someone like me. Its just the drugs that are the colossal mistake that can fuck up you life when you're that sort of person.
I also looked through a book called Klee in america. I saw some of his paintings at the Met in NYC last time I was there. I didn't really like them live but I really like his pics in book form. ??? couldn't say why. One the other hand, I never got why Modiglinani was so great until I saw his paintings in person. Anyway, in the Klee book I found two paintings, Orpheus and The Gaze of Silence which really arrested my attention. The latter has a sort of inaudible vibration coming off of it. I did a Klee-inspired drawing and had an amusing Idea for another one which I shall add to this entry later if I shall have motivated to actually create it.
Thing about B&N is that it is a good place for girl watching, it draws in the local college age women with long legs, glasses and brains. I just wish I had ever had any ability to talk to such as that. Or could have believed in myself, or whatever the critial mix of intangibles would be. My old girlfriend Erica had had another bf before me who was a truck driver, but was also equally at home as a northampton bohemian artistic type. Most truck drivers talk about big truks, the mustangs that they've rebuilt, but this guy had rebuilt a vespa.And had jumped the fence at junkyards at night to steal parts for his two volkwagen rabbits. So it's not impossible to be a truck driver and comfortably transition over to being a cultured boheminan type, but I'm just completely unsmooth socially.
Jormagund has advised me to be very wary of biting when Swift offers me the opportunity to become and owner operator. There are certainly ways to get fucked when you do that. It's not sposta happen any more, but one thing that uscrupulous companies have been know to do is to sell a driver a truck, and then not give him any loads, so that he cannot pay for it, and they they take it back and sell it to someone else, selling it to multiple drivers this way. The drivers end up paying for the truck that the company owns. There is also the factor of the company paying for all the fuel and repairs to the truck when they own it. I suffer from anxiety and a tendency to neglect problems, and that abolutely and totally will not cut it when and If I'm driving a rig that I own.
On the other side of the equation, when you own your own truck you enjoy higher degree of independence. You fuel up where when you want, and you have more choice of what loads you can accept, and how much time off you can have. Right now the way I look at it, is if I can get my anxiety under control and deal with the shit that you have to deal with when you're an owner/operator, and I can avoid the ways that drivers can get fucked up the ass on purchase deals; even if you don't make any more money it would probably still be preferable to be an o/o for the extra independence. Your truck, your decisions. One thing I'm going to need to look into is whether or not you can go to work for another company if the one you work for and are buying the truck from isn't doing well for you.
Some of the guys at orientation got on my nerves, but I didn't hate all of them. One guy was a 65 year old hippie who wore a lot of heavy necklaces. He had gotten his cdl in the 70's but his wife hand never let him use it, and only recently he had finally started and he did a year at Schneider. They gave him work but were giving him the home time he'd wanted. He was cool, and his "hey man" was authentic. I was sititng next to a guy from persia who needed me to help him with various elements of vocabulary. Likeable fellow and I gave him a ride back to the Comfort inn one evening. When it was over and I was hanging about waiting for the secretary to get around to me so I could give her my gas and toll receipst to get reimbursed, I over heard this black guy talking about Oneida lake, telling another guy "there's some bass in that Motherfucker, yo." He used "motherfucker, yo" a lot and it struck me me that in the interest of multiculturalism I should be using that phrase with you motherfuckers, yo.
So. I have to get my laundry done and the cat care arrangements nailed down. I could be heading out at any time and it looks like I'll most likely have to to the full 42 days straight on the road, unless my trainer happens to live right around here and it gets a little slow. I'm really not keen on 42 days straight. I shall miss being on here with you motherfuckers, yo, but I spose I might be able to drop in for a bit now and then if I'm at a truck stop that has an interned cafe and a little privacy. I know some have them but I don't know how common they are.
It's also possible my account might expire if the checking account it feeds off of isn't the one I'm using and doesn't have any money in it, but never fear, I shall return. I'd like to change my occupation next to my profile pic to "delivers the goods" but when I hit the edit the only things I have access to to change are my primary and secondary profile pics.
Last night I drove home from Syracuse to Springfield without stopping. To practice. A rock or something dropped off some asshole's truck from in front of me when I was going through albany and it made a loud bang under my car and went flying off to my left. I gess I'd better have a look to see if there's any damage. But what I was going to say Is that I realized that I'll be abusing myself if I start thinking "get home". It has to become the case that I'll be home everywhere. Perhaps another good reason to have my own truck. It will be easier when I pick up a laptop with a wireless card in it and can then stay in touch with the rest of the world, but this is a good opportunity to be turned outward. which is something I have always deeply wanted but been deeply afraid of.
Peace; Motherfucker, yo.
VIEW 8 of 8 COMMENTS
lizzi:
How did the "me" shopping go?
lizzi:
Wireless is one of the greatest inventions of ALL TIME! I highly recommend! 