An exercise in fear control

So I'm sitting in the parking lot of a meat packing plant in west Texas. I drove by the cattle holding pens a few miles down the road which I was going to take a photo of on my way back, but the sun has now set. (UPDATE: I spent 22 hours waiting for the load and on my way out the following day got that photo.) The first photo shows the size of this feedlot. The dark areas are cows.

The second photo is a blow-up of a small section of the lot.

Click on either photo to blow it up big.
That part of the American food distribution system doesn't look (or smell) too pretty. Interestingly, just across the street from the crowded bare dirt and manure pens, a couple dozen apparent escapees (I saw no fences on that side of the road) were happily grazing in a lush irrigated field of alfalfa. Quit a contrast.

This is the part of the job that kinda sucks. No, it completely sucks. We drivers get a company name, an address, and a pickup time or range of pickup times. In this case I was to drop my empty trailer and pickup a fully loaded trailer sometime between 6 and midnight. I arrived just after six. Usually the "drop and hook" is the best kind of run to have because the wait times are minimized. Just drop and hook and run. Occasionally there's a delay, as I'm experiencing now.

Since this load of beef is going into Mexico, apparently an additional FDA Export inspection must occur. Consequently, my trailer is lost somewhere in the system, under the control of the FDA, who is providing no ETA. Unfortunately, I won't collect any "detention pay" (after years of "detention" being a negative it's funny to find it a positive) until after 2am. (UPDATE: I earned $160 sitting there for 22 hours. I still struggle to no longer judge my self-worth by the size of my paycheck.)

So here I sit in the parking lot literally 30 feet from a very busy railroad freight line - a 50+ car train every 30 minutes or so. The first time one went by, I was lying in the bunk and got the same feeling I get when standing too close to the edge of a high drop - tingling in the feet and jelly legs.
Even though I KNEW I wasn't going to die, my body was telling me otherwise. I hope I don't have to stay here all night. (UPDATE: I DID have to stay there all night but with earplugs in, it wasn't nearly that bad and I actually had a very good night of sleep.)