March 23, 1990, 2010

FIRST 5 YEARS:(Friday-Altoona, Iowa)
I got up at 6 AM CST as I have a good way to drive today. I wanted to eat the breakfast buffet but I decided to wait and stop in Lake Station. Indiana to eat a formal meal. Did my vehicle inspection and paperwork and was on my way to Michigan on I-80 around 6:30 AM CST. It wasn't long a convoy (a line of trucks running together)catch up with me. I was doing 65 miles/hr and just enjoying day's drive, listening to my tapes with the CB radio on. Wasn't really listening to the CB radio but heard someone come over it with, “Hey, $^%*#&*,if you can't keep up with us big dogs(trucks moving faster then the general flow of traffic)then get out of our way..” I came back with the request to have a couple big dogs pass me and then I will get in with the group. That's what happened; I moved into the fast lane as the third truck in the convoy of about 12. We were doing around 70 miles per hour and doing it in the fast lane. I was somewhat surprised as many convoys don't stay together very long but this one never moved into the slow lane and before long we were going past Iowa City, Iowa with no slowing down. I didn't have a bird dog(radar detector) but I am sure several of the other trucks did. Didn't see any bears(highway patrol), county mounties(sheriffs) or cities kitties(city police). After Iowa city, and before the quad cities(Davenport, Bettendorf, Rock Island and Moline), we find several nice truckstops and I believe that is why the convoy started to fall apart; the trucks broke off the convoy to use the truckstops. By the time we went into Illinois around the east side of the quad cities, we were down to 3 trucks. What slowed us down was the Illinois weigh station; it was open and they pulled the first truck around back to check something. I was the second truck when entering the weigh station and the first truck when I came out. The truck behind me had a bird dog so he took the lead and we started moving again. His bird dog never said anything so we kept up our forward motion until we stopped at the rest area near Princeton, Illinois. When we got stopped, I got to meet the other driver(handle-nickname-was “Painted Wolf”). We weren't stopped long when we got back on the road heading east on I-80. We slowed down after we passed I-55 to the speed limit as the traffic was picking up. We came to the next state weigh station and it was closed. The traffic got real heavy past I-57 and I lost Painted Wolf. I could not pick him up on the CB radio as their was too much “hash and trash”(noise) on it. I got to exit 16 around 1 pm EST in Indiana(Lake Station) where I wanted to stop to eat and take a good break. I stayed at the “Just a Truckstop”.until 2:30 PM EST. Took I-94 east up into Michigan and continued to the Taylor(Detroit suburb) terminal. Didn't have any problems the last half of the trip. Got to the terminal at 6:30 PM EST and dispatch told me to drop the trailer in the yard, which I did. I was pretty tired so I just parked my tractor and went to bed and watched my TV until I fell asleep. I did not get on the trucker's ready board...