34 hours . . . where?

I received notice a few days ago that I had completed my apprenticeship and was ready to 'upgrade' (get my own truck) as soon as I could get back to Salt Lake City. So we let Manni's "driver manager" (DM) know about this and after a couple of days we got a load scheduled for pick up in Chicago and delivery to Salt Lake. Unfortunately, we discovered we didn't have enough legal driving hours to make it back to Salt Lake in time to deliver the load on time. Also unfortunately, we didn't grok this fact until we were 500 miles away from Chicago in the middle of nowhere Nebraska. We then let the night DM know this and his solution was to find another truck with hours available to get to Salt Lake with which we could swap trailers. A common practice that I've been part of before.

So after driving seven hours until about 5am, I arrived this morning at a truck stop in Sidney Nebraska, about a hundred miles from the Wyoming border (and only 500 miles from Salt Lake). I found the truck and driver to swap with, unhooked my trailer and connected to his. He did the same with mine, we swapped paperwork, entered all these transactions into the satellite comm system and he was on his way to Salt Lake with our trailer by 6am for a 3pm delivery.

We, unfortunately, were out of hours until we completed a 34 hour reset (take 34 hours off which will give us a 'fresh' 70 hours of drive time for another week). So we are now effectively trapped in southwest-nowhere Nebraska for a day and a half. We're both bummed. We both had plans of things to do in Salt Lake and I'm eager to get my upgrade done and start out on my own truck. Damn.

After a four hour nap I got onto MapQuest and checked out Sidney Nebraska and found this little wheat town has a golf course only a two mile walk from our truck. When I ask him, Manni says he's played a bit of golf before so about noon, after much needed showers, we walk over to the golf course, rent some clubs, pay the very reasonable green fees, hop in our golf cart and hit the links. It turns out Manni has swung some clubs before but never really played. But Goddamn, this boy can hit the ball when he doesn't try to destroy the ball.

I'm far from a golf expert having played a total of less than a dozen rounds in my entire life. But it must be something about turning 50 'cause for the first time ever, the ball is actually going straight down the fairway and it's a beautiful sight.

On one hole I actually scored just one over par. We don't keep score other than adding up how many balls we lost out of the eighteen we purchased (eleven lost, but we found a few along the way too ending up with a total of eight balls). It was so much fun that on the last few holes, both of played two balls at a time (and lost half of them into the rough). But on the last hole we found three abandoned balls which we also played!

A couple of sandwiches and cervezas in the club house afterwards

and this has ended up being a pretty good 34 hours off-duty.

It turns out Sidney Nebraska is also the home of Cabella's Sporting Goods. The Cabella family started the business in their cellar, tying fishing flies. Over the last decade they've expanded all over the US and saved this little town by employing everyone they can find at Cabella's corporate headquarters.

With any luck, our DM will have found us a swap to do tonight (No such luck I've now found out) and we'll be off to Salt Lake after midnight, since by then, we will have accrued enough hours to get there. If not, we'll be taking this trailer we now have back to Indiana in the morning (sixteen hours of driving to get back there), then hoping for another load back to Salt Lake immediately after. (Yup. That's what we're doing.)