Painted Canyon, North Dakota - November 4, 2009 - Daybreak

As you've probably figured out by now, dawn is my favorite time of day out here on the road. 

At the risk of being trite, dawn is a wonderful time for a sense of renewal, and yet it can also be a time of tremendous foreboding and devastation. On one hand, dawn is a time of increasing daylight, dew, birds and animals coming to life again - a new beginning. And, on the other hand, most of the great military battles throughout history have been waged at dawn, including D-Day and day three at Gettysburg. Dawn is also the perfect time to experience the game of golf in its purest form (just ask the Dawn Patrol*), yet firing squads like to pull the trigger as dawn as well. Some might say, in many instances, there isn't much difference between the two activities. Take your pick, both situations inspire great awe. 

Sunsets have a grandeur all their own, but they are a time of winding down, a time of peace and reflection, a door closing so that another may open the next day. As for me over the past fourteen plus months, I've seen some amazing sunrises - from L.A. to Auburn, Maine. I've tried to write about some of them; others defy description that would do them justice. I've said it before, but it is worth repeating - every state has its own personality, and so does every sunrise - even if you're in the same place two or three days in a row.

Another one of my favorite sunrises was the day I happened to be in western North Dakota at exactly the right time. Painted Canyon is one of those magical places that exist in this country, and very few people even know it's there. The canyon sits astride I-94 and is largely in North Dakota - it leaks slightly into Montana, but only for a few miles. I took a bunch of photos at daybreak that morning, but only the two on the left were clear enough to be worth showing here (and even they are not all that great). The other three were taken earlier in the year on the day that we actually discovered the place. 

Beth was driving that day; early in the day but not dawn. I was sleeping at the time. We were heading east across Montana and into North Dakota when she started looking for a place to make a pit stop. Then, all of a sudden, there it was - Painted Canyon - in all of its glory on a sunny morning in June. And, to make things even better, there was a rest area/viewing area right in the middle of the canyon, so she pulled off the road. When she stopped the truck, she said to me, "K.C., wake up. You gotta see this."

Geologically, the Canyon is a remarkable place. The terrain is actually comprised of relatively soft materials, so it is subject to somewhat more rapid erosion by the wind and the extraordinarily severe weather patterns that exist in that part of the country. Think about it, in the summer western North Dakota can be warm, sunny and altogether pleasant. In the winter, severe and lingering ice and snow storms come through on short notice and temperatures can go for days without ever rising to zero. The vegetation that dares to exist there is low, generally ugly and very determined.

What all of this has created is a vast canyon of colored layers, mounds and nodules and valleys that go off in all directions with no seeming pattern; low ridges and slopes scarred with gullies carved by rainwater and melting ice and snow. And, as I said, the whole area is very soft by geological standards, so in a few hundred or maybe a thousand years, the whole place will look very different. My guess is that it will still be a visual feast, but what you can see today will be gone forever. It really gives you a sense of "just passing through..."

Now, add to that visual the sun breaking the horizon at a far distant eastern point, and the canyon below gradually coming into focus. In the span of 15 minutes, it goes from completely dark down below you to one of the most inspiring vistas anywhere in the country. So, if you ever get the chance to drive across I-80 in North Dakota, time it so that it's daylight when you get to the western edge, and check out the rest area just before you get to Montana. Better yet, time it so that it's daybreak, and bring a camera.

* For those of you who are unaware, the Dawn Patrol is a group of four individuals (and, sometimes an occasional fill-in) who, after nearly 50 years of playing early morning golf together, still believe that the best thing one can do on a day off is to get up before the sun and be standing on tee number one at the very moment when there is just enough light to see where the first shot lands.

Talkin' Truck - Part II - Good Ole Number 6

On January 16th, we were seated in our sixth truck in just over 14 months. You'd think by now our company would have realized we're hard on these things, but they keep giving us more.

Our move from the first to the second truck doesn't really count. Number One was an '07 Volvo that Beth had been driving with her partner for six months and then by herself for another three months before I joined her. It had nearly 300,000 miles on it when I arrived, so in November 2008, after our first week together, they gave us a brand new vehicle. They like teams to drive the newer equipment because we can literally run the truck 22 hours a day when we're very busy, and they want us in the trucks that are still under warranty. (Hmmmm, maybe there's more to it than that.)

Truck Number Two was an '09 Freightliner Cascadia (Condo Class), and had eight miles on it when we got it. It didn't have quite as much room in it as the Volvo, but it was brand new, had some cool new bells and whistles, and a bit more power. We were pretty comfortable in it and in just over three months we put 45,000 miles on it. Then, in late February of '09, in southern Virginia in the middle of the night, Beth smacked a deer - maybe two - we're not entirely sure. The hit caved in the radiator, and by the time we got out to look at the damage, all of the fluids had run out onto the ground. Fortunately we were only a couple of miles from a major truck stop, so we limped in. They put us up in a motel in Kingsville, TN, for two days before deciding it was going to take a couple of weeks to fix the truck. So, instead of making us wait for the repair, they gave us truck Number Three.

Number Three was an '09 "Pete," as Peterbilts are known in the industry. The Pete already had 47,000 miles on it and it was one noisy truck - very powerful, but very noisy. Between the engine noise filtering into the cab, and the shrill whistle that was produced from the driver's side mirror at speeds above about 50mph, the machine was not nearly as much fun to drive, and it was also a step down in terms of interior room and storage space. It took me almost a week before I figured out where the whistle was coming from, and another couple of days to figure out that putting a strip of Scotch Tape all the way around the outside of the mirror would solve the problem. If I hadn't found and cured the whistle, it surely would have rendered us mentally unstable. 

We had that truck for about three and a half months when the company decided it was going to use the '09 Petes for their lease program - which was fine with us because two days before we moved into a new truck the air conditioning went out in the Pete in southern Georgia, and we were already looking for a place to get it fixed. Timing is everything. So they took it away from us in mid-June after about 55,000 miles, and gave us Number Four.

Number Four was an '09 International with 28 miles on it when we started. It too was another step down in interior space and storage, but it was a nice compromise on the engine. It wasn't quite as powerful as the Pete, but had more guts than the others. I liked the truck a lot; it was perhaps my favorite so far. Beth, however, perfers the trucks with more space. It was pretty user-friendly, like the Cascadias, and it also had curtains that went around the inside front of the tractor (see photo above) by the side windows and windshield, which provided a great deal more private room when they were closed. And, it had a driver's seat that swiveled to face the passenger seat. So, when we would get stuck overnight somewhere, we could get pretty comfortable.


Unfortunately for the International, one night in June last year, while Beth was backing into a parking spot at a truck stop in upstate NY, we were viciously and deliberately attacked by a four foot high yellow cement pole. It was merciless; no pity, no heart, no soul. And, once again, they decided it was going to take a couple of weeks to fix the truck. Soooo, we rented a car and drove home.  At the end of home time, we were sent to pick up Number Five in New Jersey.

Number Five was another '09 Cascadia. It already had just over 150,000 miles, and was something of a mis-adventure from the very beginning. We picked it up at a Freightliner service place in New Jersey, drove it over to where our old truck was and moved from Number Four into Number five in the body shop of a Mack/Frieghtliner/Volvo repair place. Then, they asked us to do a "truck recovery." That happens when somebody leaves a truck out in the middle of nowhere and just quits (or maybe dies or wins the lottery or something), and they ask a team to split up for a couple of days to bring the truck back to a terminal. So, I jumped into good ole Number Five and Beth drove the recovered truck (an '08 Pete that had seen better days) for two days until we connected again at Springfield, Ohio.


My first night in Number Five was also my first night solo - a weird experience onto itself. They sent me to a suburb of Baltimore to a Seagrams facility. So far so good. I picked up a trailer loaded with over forty-thousand pounds of Captain Morgan Spiced Rum, which is something like 5,000 gallons. I figured if I hijacked my own truck, I (along with several dozen of my closest friends) could stay stupid drunk for the next 62 years. However, as I was getting ready to leave the place, I realized I had locked the only key to my new tractor inside - on a Friday night at 11 o'clock. My guess is that I cost the company about $150 dollars that night just to get back into my vehicle. 

It went downhill from there. That truck never seem to fit us very well, and it had some issues. The steering wheel was crooked, and the windshield had been replaced badly at some point. The cupboard doors didn't work right, the gas gauge worked when it felt like it, and it too managed to find a deer in its headlights in southern Oregon, only this time with me driving. There were three deer on the road; two of them got away. The hit took a chunk out of the grill, badly damage the whole right side of the bumper and snapped the right side hood lock. After we picked up a crack in the windshield in a completely unrelated incident, the tractor was looking pretty "ghetto." When we finally got out of the truck for the last time two weeks ago, I think both Beth and I and the truck breathed a sigh of relief.


You know, I never really bonded with that truck. 

So, now we are into Good Ole Number 6. An '09 Cascadia (again), with only a couple of minor issues. So far we like this truck a lot - much like the first Cascadia we had. We've had it now just over a week, and it's in the shop getting a few minor things done while we have a couple of days off. Six trucks in just over 14 months, that's a little over 2 months per truck. The guy that trained me had been with the company just over 5 years and he was on his second truck.

There's a pattern here somewhere - I'm just not quite sure how to read it. One of these days we'll actually get to keep a truck long enough for it to get old. It's bound to happen - I just keep thinking about what that great philosopher, Yogi Berra, had to say ...  "Things that can't possibly go on forever usually don't."

2009

I've actually started some sort of retrospective of 2009 several times already. After all, it was my first full year on the truck with Beth, and my plan was to list a bunch of the crazy things that I saw and grumble about the "off year" I had health-wise, and basically bitch about '09 being a good year to put behind us all. And, I may still do that at some point this month.

Then, I got to thinking that really isn't what 2009 was all about. 2009 was the year that the forty-eight Continental United States became my office (actually forty-seven states - I still haven't been to South Dakota), and despite a few health issues, what I'll really remember are things like:

• Driving through the middle of downtown Milford, Massachusetts when the Christmas/New Year lights were still up, several inches of snow still blanketing everything, and feeling like I had driven into a Currier & Ives painting
• Crossing the George Washington Bridge from New Jersey into upper Manhattan at three o'clock in the morning and looking off to the right to see The City under full moonlight
• Driving along and listening to an African-American being sworn in as President of the United States
• Having a death-grip on the steering wheel as I drove between Laramie and Cheyenne, Wyoming, above the 8,000-ft. level in a blowing snowstorm, and still thinking it was strikingly beautiful in dangerous sort of way
  
• Sitting on a clear Sunday morning at a rest area on I-5 in Northern California and watching the sun rise above Mount Shasta
• Watching rain fall on the Mojave Desert
• Sitting at a truck stop in El Paso and looking out across the Rio Grande River at Mountains in Mexico
• Crossing the Mississippi River at a dozen or more different locations - from St. Paul to Southern Louisiana - and being awed by its power each time
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  

• Blowing a few dollars at a casino in Miami and one in Tacoma
• Driving through Manchester, NH, less than 24-hours after a 14-in snowfall, and begin amazed at how smoothly traffic was moving
• Looking down at the thermometer on the truck while passing through Rockford, IL, and seeing the readout at -24 degrees
• Pulling a 70-ft. long tractor-trailer rig right out onto the pier at the Hampton Naval Yard, and feeling very small sitting within 50 yards of the USS George H. W. Bush Aircraft Carrier
• Driving through eastern Missouri and Arkansas and seeing mile after mile of an extraordinarily beautiful and incredibly destructive ice storm
  
• Stumbling onto Painted Canyon in North Dakota - I never knew it was there and I can't wait to see it again 
• Once again sitting at waters' edge on Sugden Lake on the 4th of July watching fireworks with family and friends I've had for life
  

• Listening to the Tigers play important baseball games late in September
• Tracking alongside the Columbia River Gorge for over 75 miles as it forms a spectacular border between Washington and Oregon

• Traveling east on I-70 through the canyons of Utah thinking it may well be the most awe-inspiring stretch of road in America 
  
• Waking up most every morning wondering what I was going to get to see or do that day for the very first time
  

All things considered, 2009 was a good year now that I think about it.  If 2010 even comes close, I'll be a pretty lucky guy.