Team Work and Danger - I love this job.

There’s a scene in the movie “The Matrix” where Neo, Trinity and Link are walking away from the Nebuchadnezzar with their duffle bags, back from a successful mission. I think there’s something in (just?) men that leads us to seek out team efforts heading out on short dangerous missions. It must have started with our ancestors roaming the savannah in small teams hunting for dinner. Put any two men together with a clearly defined mission to accomplish and we’ll quietly and (hopefully) competently bring home dinner.

Strangely, that’s how this trucking gig feels. Every day we’re assigned a new ‘mission’ taking us off on a new life or death adventure – which is only a little exaggerated with the very slick and low-visibility driving conditions over the past few days. Thursday I got to experience the anti-locking braking system (ABS) on the rig – three times. Once as two four-wheelers had spun out on the highway about a quarter mile ahead of me, but at the bottom of a hill. Fortunately I was traveling at only 45mph and I got the rig stopped with about 20 feet to spare – feeling the wheels locking up and repeatedly releasing. But still, I wasn’t sure I’d get it stopped in time. I hate that feeling in the pit of my stomach. Keeping an adequate following-distance, driving conditions dependent, is critical to survival in this business.

Wednesday morning, I-25 between Albuquerque and Los Cruces, New Mexico was closed – after I’d driven those same 200-odd miles just hours before, albeit in pretty scary conditions. We parked in a truck stop with a hundred other trucks waiting for the road to open. By 2pm it was opened and I got to drive and see New Mexico in the daylight – spectacular (but I’ll use that word often describing deserts and mountains).

I crossed the Rio Grande river a few times, got to see Williamsburg, NM – “America’s Spaceport” (http://www.spaceportamerica.com/) and saw very interesting ancient lava flows solidified into basalt and buckled and split like giant sidewalks with tree roots beneath them.

Victor took over at 1am Thursday morning just outside Monticello, Utah and got us back to Spanish Fork just before sunrise. I woke about 11am in the rest area in Glenwood canyon in Colorado and couldn’t stop smiling.

Incredible. I finally got to drive in the daylight the curvy mountain section of I-70 I’d driven almost a dozen times in the other direction but always in the dark. Spectacular!

By the time we got to Denver and had refueled - see the photo - we burn a lot of fuel -

the weather had changed back to snowing and it took us more than an hour to go just eight miles on I-25 with everyone else trying to go south. After the ABS braking excitement described above, I finally pulled us in to the JCPenney parking lot in Pueblo at about 10pm to wait for our 4:30am unloading. I got a cheap steak (I believe my first since July) and a beer at an Applebees about a half mile walk away through five inches of fresh snow. Another high-intensity day, but well worth the effort to see western Colorado in such excellent weather conditions.

It’s now Friday night and I’m back in Salt Lake after waking this morning to yet another glorious day near Loveland pass. For the first time in more than a decade and the first time in my life from ten feet above the road, I got to see in the daylight the entire drive back to Salt Lake from central Colorado. Incredible. Too big for photos. The Colorado River, the Manti La Sal mountains near Moab, the Henries south of the San Rafael Swell, the Price valley, the drive up Price Canyon and over the top of Soldier’s Summit and down Spanish Fork Canyon. Absolutely incredibly spectacular. I was grinning like a crazy person the entire day and it hasn’t worn off yet. And I get paid to do this. I laugh every time I think of it.