long awaited update...

Friday 27th july:
This week has been so busy its not funny. Darting around from place to place so quickly and often that most days i'm not sure what day it is and where we woke up that morning hehe.

We've been sitting at on of the yards in texas for the past day and a half, chatting with a bunch of new drivers and some veteran drivers, even a couple of trainers turned up for a chat. They were really awesome people, one of them actually looked like Willie Nelson! He asked me last night If i knew how to french braid because he wanted his hair put that way (his hair was freaken long too). Unfortunately I didnt know how to and neither did the other lady staying there. Hopefully he'll find someone to help him out with that. We had some pretty interesting conversations with the people there - everything from experiences driving truck (most of the new to the company drivers had been driving truck for awhile), to them asking about new zealand and aussie.

Right now (litterally) we're sitting at a customers yard picking up a load that's going to wisconsin! so thats cool. We wont be getting any home time this time, but we've asked for home time about the 13th wooohooo so that'll give me a couple of days to catch up on things.

Friday 9th august:
oops its been a couple of weeks since i remembered to write and upload this oops! sorry bout that guys. There wasn't really much to tell about the past week or so - it was very hectic and because of our early morning start times to get the deliveries done on time i wasn't all that functional. We ended up going through 12 states in 7 days (might not sound like much but keep in mind thats driving for 11hours a day roughly and you'll get an idea of how big this country is). There were a couple of interesting thing that happend like blowing a tire at 7am on the interstate which scared all the cars around us (all you heard was this sound like a gunshot and people started swerving).

We caught up with a couple friends from the texas yard when we were there last whic was nice, and met a few new people. The we went to another yard they have in texas (its a damn big state i'll tell ya that much) where we met some interesting people with very funny stories to tell. We spent a good 4 hours chatting with them about their truck driving experiences - both of them had been driving all their lives so have experienced things like ABS introduced to trucks, and no power stearing those kinds of things. It was fun. One of the guys has been to new zealand actually, him and his wife looked at moving there a long time ago but they decided to move back to america. SO he was talking to me about how beautiful it was and how I was enjoying traveling in the US.

I've taken some more photos and I will upload them ASAP, you'll have to excuse the bugs on the window though - its hard to stop a semi in rush hour traffic to get a gorgeous picture.

I'm sure you all heard about the bridge disaster in minnesota. We had a few calls and emails from concerned pepople checking that we weren't in the area when it happened, which was sweet. We were thankfully over in Tennessee when it happened (or around there anyway), so we were well away from the action but the whole situation hit truck drivers hard especially those who used to drive that bridge regularly. Every time we crossed a bridge in the following few days people on the CB were talking about how horrible it was that the bridge collapsed and that the people who maintain/repair the bridges should've done something before now to fix it (though i don't personally think they knew quite how bad the problem with the bridge was - hindsight is always 20/20). They were saying on the news that inspectors knew in 1990 or 1996 that the bridge was in need of repair which I hope that if they did know way back then, had they known how bad it was or that it might one day come crashing into the Mississippi River with people on it I would hope that they had gotten a crew working on it or at least done something to limit the weight/volume of traffic until such time as it could b fixed and deemed safe again. That bridge had an estimated 141,000 cars/trucks and busses going accross it on a daily basis. Major structures like that need to be looked after and maintained especially with so many people putting their life in the hands of the the people who build/maintain the bridges.

Anyway onto something a little more happier we are on our way to chicago, where we hope that we'll get sent to the yard (the AC still isn't fixed) and hopefully head back for some home time.