In the belly of the beast

I got on the new (only 40k miles) truck of Robert Moser in Salt Lake City on Feb 26th and we headed up to southeastern Washington with a load of frozen food for delivery to a giant Walmart distribution facility in the middle of nowhere.

Robert had a baseball scholarship to college, pitched a season with a team in the minors, but then had a motorcycle accident that stopped his big league ambitions.
Robert's claim to fame is that he was responsible for delaying by four months, the release of the movie "City Slickers II". Apparently his manager at Skywalker Sound told him to erase the wrong audio tapes. As a result of that accident he was blacklisted in Hollywood in his early twenties. He ended up spending the next decade or so working at a Frito Lay factory in southwestern Washington running the machines that made Bugles, Fritos, and other corn based snacks (his area of expertise).
His previous apprentice drivers included a guy who needed to be told to take showers, and an alcoholic ex-gang member from East LA who was trying to secretly drink tall-boys while in the sleeper. Less than an hour out of Salt Lake he said "thank God you know how to drive. Looks like I'll finally be able to get some sleep." And sleep he did - through blizzards, weigh stations, truck stops, and thousands of miles. And fortunately for me, he too was a very good driver so I also got plenty of sleep.

From eastern Washington we headed over the mountains (which allowed me a short visit with my sister in Cle Elum during a snowstorm) to the Tacoma area for a quick drop and pickup, then back to eastern Washington where we picked up 40 thousand pounds of apples and pears for delivery to another Walmart distribution center in eastern Pennsylvania.

These forklift guys drive around like little bugs. I was laughing my head off and they gave me a bag of the best, freshest apples I've ever had.

A day and 1500 miles later we swapped trailers and got a different delivery to Binghampton NY. Then to Rochester, then Laredo Texas after spending 24 hours in Memphis (where I spent a few hours with an old friend), toured Beale street

- the tourist-oriented center of Blues in the city (next time I'll find out where the locals play the Blues) and walked six miles over the Mississippi at two in the morning to get back to the truck parked in an Arkansas Flying-J.

In Laredo we picked up a load for delivery to Denver but while up in the panhandle got swapped out for a load going back to Laredo.

Yesterday I left Robert who needed to get back to California and caught a ride with a father/son driving team, Buddy and Taylor, originally from Georgia.

I'm now sitting in an England facility near Chicago waiting and hoping for a ride to New Hampshire so I can convert my new but temporary Utah commercial driver license which will expire on the fifteenth.

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