The Open Road

After a few days at home, its back to the open road. Ahhh....the smell of diesel, the feel of asphalt, the bumps and jolts....its all part of the package!
We had a nice few days at home. Got things packed up and set up for a long absence. Even got some play time in. And yesterday while Malcolm took a nap (he's just exhausted from the stress of change. Change really does a number on us both sometimes) I went outside into the beautiful sunshine and fairly warm temperatures. I was just going out for a minute to look and listen to the birds, but I ended up, on impulse, pulling a few weeds out of the flowerbeds next to the porch. Forty-five minutes later I had lugged three buckets of weeds out to the manure pile. There's nothing like the feel of the sun on your back, dirt stains on your hands, grime under your nails, and clean flower beds to make you feel like you've accomplished something. I actually enjoyed it! And imagine, I used to loath weeding! Granted I have no flowers in my flower beds. But bare naked dirt looks so much better than akle high grass clumps and random weeds.

Stopped at Pryor Creek Bar and Grill for breakfast this morning with Brandon before leaving for Iowa. The resteraunt, all 10 tables, was full, so we went and sat in the bar. We were the only ones over there, and it was dark, but nice and quiet and private, and the waitress used us for an excuse to escap from the rush and pressing work in the cafe (she was serving the whole thing herself). She even took her smoke break with us. We were also joined momentarily by the resident cat, who happily hopped up on the barstool next to me and curled up for a visit. I was getting Malcolm's phone to take a picture, but apparently he's opposed to having his portrait made. He left with a slightly insulted withering glance in my direction.

Now we're on the open road, cruising down I-90 towards Crow Agency, where we'll hop off on US 212 and cut over to South Dakota, then east to Iowa. We'll pick up our trailer in the morning, and then probably load Monday morning. Its a beautiful day, Ella's curled up in my lap (she's in a clingy stage, they all go through it), and we're feeling optimistic and enthused about our new "old" adventure. After a rainy week, I'm glad we're starting this new leg of our journey with such a beautiful day!

Life Takes a Turn

I'm borrowing a title from one of my Mom's last posts on her blog, because its an appropriate title, and as you all know, I'm rotten at titles.


Life takes a turn. I think life takes lots of turns on its journey. For us, its taken many in our short 7 years together. It will have been 7 years since we married, 7 years on July 6. Hard to believe.


OK, here's the scoop.


After several weeks of frustratingly slow freight, and it not picking up enough to make a significant difference, we started looking at the big picture.


Under the micro-scope what we're doing didn't make sense any more. We're over here at Steve's for two reasons, because we get home frequently and because we like hauling cattle in the fall and spring. In the in-between times we haul a reefer for him, and we don't mind doing that. That's when we get the home time every week, a day or two here and there. But when you get down to the naked facts, they are these:

1. his rates are down, not keeping up, and not high enough for the limited miles. We're only making $1.22 a mile right now.

2. cattle aren't moving this year. It's so bad that even the cow haulers who refuse to pull a reefer....they're pulling reefers out of desperation for work.


We got to considering our options, and came down to three.

1. stay put, grit our teeth, cinch our change purse strings and bare with it

2. change to another company that a friend works with

3. buy another hopper and go back to doing that


We pretty much ruled out option two. Brandon gets good home time and a better rate, but Malcolm just didn't get a good feeling about it, and I told him to go with his gut feeling.


So it was stay or go with the hopper. And he's been pulling his hair out over it for days and days. We talked about it allot, trying to decide, because they both had their sacrifices. In a list of pros and cons though, the hopper was the clear choice.


If we go pull our hopper we loose:
1. a repetitive, redundant route that gets boring quick

2. frequent home time


we gain:
1. working with a broker we really enjoyed working with

2. going somewhere different every trip

3. traveling all over the country

4. being able to stop in Tennessee to see family more than once a year

5. doing what has turned out to be our favorite form of trucking so far. We've missed it since we left it last September.

6. less frequent home time, but when we get it its at a predicted time and for a set length. We take a week off, instead of having a day and a half during which you don't feel like you can start anything because they might call at any moment and want you to leave on a trip.

7. working with people in small towns, who are friendly, happy to see you, unlike these corporate warehouse personnel where your just the 300th truck they've had to unload that day.

And mostly, like I mentioned, we really really really liked hauling our hopper last summer.
Its been my favorite type of trucking, Malcolm's too, and to be honest, we've regretted leaving it since last fall.


So, last week while we were home we made a decision on several trailers we've been looking at, and bought a 2007 Wilson. Its in Iowa. When we get home we have a few days to get things together, do some things to the truck, and then we'll leave Saturday to go get our trailer. And Malcolm's already talked to our broker, Mark, and we've got a load lined up already. We'll get our trailer on Sunday and I think on Monday morning we're loading just north of there and going to western Washington to a pet food plant we delivered too several times.


You know how it feels to make a decision and then wonder if you did the right thing? It eats us up.

I find it rather ironic that our first load is going to the very place that we have mentioned "remember going to" the most in the past weeks as we tried to decide what to do. How weird is that?


And then here we are on our last trip to California with Steve, expecting to unload and then spend a day or so in Salinas reloading. Malcolm was stressing over only having a couple days at most to get things together at home before leaving. Then this afternoon, while we waited to get unloaded, one of the guys at the office called and wanted us to switch trailers with another driver that's already loaded in Salinas and head back. So, here we are, rolling back east towards Billings after less than 24 hours in California. We'll be there Monday evening instead of Wednesday as expected, and now we have practically the whole week to get ready to go.

The post office said they'll hold our mail a month, Mark said he'd get us home every 4 weeks, our neighbors always offer to watch the house for us, and I now use a cordless clipper so I can cut Ella's hair outside in the grass and the fur can fly without getting the truck a mess. Every things falling into place.


Things aren't moving as fast in the hopper business as they were, but Mark said he can get us more work than we're doing now, and that's enough. We're both excited about going back to it. So we're setting our sights on new horizons, literally. If your going to miss hearing about yet another trip to Yuma, AZ to load produce, I'm sorry. Personally, I'm looking forward to having different places to write about!

Our new hopper waiting for us in Iowa.

Still Alice

I finished reading Still Alice today. Meagan said she was excited that I was reading it. Her book group read it last month. I'm curious what she experienced during her reading. I wonder how much she remembers about Granny.

Have you read this book? I think its fairly new. Maybe not, but I'd not heard of it till Meagan had it on her blog. I chose to read it because she recommended it. And then I read what it was about and I wanted to read it. Still Alice is the story of a woman who finds out at the age of 50 that she has Early Onset Alzheimer's disease. It is the story of her struggle and losses with the disease. And it is told from her perspective. Reading Still Alice, I was touched and terrified.

I was touched because the story was touching. It reached into me and touched emotions. I laughed a little, teared up a number of times, and got angry.

Deep down in my gut it terrified me. I feel disturbed. It re-awakened questions I haven't thought of for a long time, primarily, what if I have those genes? I can't remember how old I was, or what was going on in my life at the time that Granny started loosing herself. And I refer to it in that manner now because Alice in the book referred to it as loosing herself, and it truly was like that. I don't have distinct memories of when Granny first got sick. And when she was really bad, I wonder if we didn't go around much, because I don't remember details about that either. I was in high school when she didn't know who I was anymore, and I was in college when her body died. In reality, I don't even remember mourning much when she died. Honestly, she had died years before. The funeral I went to was for the body of a person I didn't know, a person who didn't know any of us. She was a stranger. I was sad of course, but the raw emotion of loosing a close relative wasn't there. I had lost her years before.

How much do you remember Meagan? Until recently I didn't realize that you had such different memories than I did. I didn't know 4 1/2 years could make that much difference in perspective. Do you remember her before she was sick, when she was sick?

Of the person with Alzheimer's, what I mostly remember is not her, but what her disease did to those around her, mostly my Dad and aunt and uncle, and my Papaw. They made the choice not to put Granny in a home. They took care of her themselves and hired a nurse when it was time. The disease that stole their mother from them one memory at a time drained their energy and youth. They always looked tired to me. And Papaw, who for the longest time seemed in denial, who insisted to Granny that she did remember. He was slower to accept things for how they were, and I think a little resentful at first of having the nurse coming to their house, and then later oh so grateful and relieved when she showed up, when he could escape for a little while to go sit in the kitchen of Dad's restaurant and get away.

I remember mostly stories I think, stories told of what happened, like my saint of a grandmother cussing. She never cussed. And when she still worked at the restaurant, or at least tried to help out, one of the ladies that worked there told me that Granny had seen me in the parking lot and told her "That girl out there sure is pretty" and the lady told Granny "That's your grand-daughter." Looking back, I wonder at the ladies intelligence in telling me that. I didn't need to know that my granny didn't recognize me. But at the same time, I'm glad she did. Its nice to know my Granny thought I was pretty, even when she didn't know me.
I guess my actual memories of her are of when she first started loosing herself, and then it skips everything in the middle and goes to when she was bed ridden, couldn't communicate, and wouldn't eat. I was old enough to remember. Maybe the disease stole my memories of that time as well as hers.

Why the book terrified me...
...because of the what ifs.

What if I have the genes?
What if I wake up one day and turn over and there's a stranger laying in bed next to me?
What if I sit down with a book, and find that I can't follow the story and have to re-read pages and passages and still can't finish the book?
What if one day I go to the grocery store and can't find my way home?
What if....

I know I shouldn't' be worried about it. My approach used to be that the family suffered more than the patient. That though they were loosing themselves, at least once the disease was well on its path of destruction the person didn't know it. At least I would be oblivious that something was wrong. But I was wrong.
I didn't consider that it can take years before your so far lost that you don't know anyone, and in the mean time you have these nagging thoughts in the back of your head reminding you that you've just made a mistake, that you've lost another piece of information. You might live with that for years. And I never considered the terror of living in a world of people you don't know, how frightening it must be to have people in your home, asking you things, requiring you to do things, and insisting on things, and you don't even know who they are.

And then I think, maybe it would be even worse to not have those strangers, the ones that you don't know, but that are there everyday, and that even though you don't know who they are, you can tell they care about you and that they are kind. What happens to people who don't have children. What happens to me if I get this disease, and Malcolm is ill too or already gone. Who takes care of me? Do I get tied down in a chair in some government funded nursing home somewhere? I know that's a totally depressing, self-absorbed, morbid thought. But I think about that sometimes.

That's why the book terrified me. Because there are a lot of real fears and threats in it for me. I agree with Alice. I'd rather have cancer, something that I could fight, something that I had a chance of winning against, even if it is slim. If I have to get something, I'd rather have something that's not a garunteed loosing battle.

I don't know if I'll get Alzheimer's or not. I hope not. I don't know what my chances are, but I seem to have always felt that they were high, considering Granny having it. I think I've had this niggling thought in the back of my head for years that I'll have it one day. I'm not going to sit around worrying over it, planning for it, thinking about that day. I guess if I get it, I'll deal with it then. But reading Still Alice was an opening of my eyes, a reminder that each day is to be used to its fullest. And though I may not remember what I do with them, who I knew, or even who I was, others will.

If I loose myself one day, I want others to have me still in their memories. And I want those memories to be worth holding on to for them.

I don't remember Granny much during the years she was sick with Alzheimer's. I remember my Granny fixing me bowls of frozen strawberries and peaches with sugar, Sunday dinner at her house after church, how she loved red, Christmas, and me. I remember climbing the apple tree in her yard, even though Papaw didn't like it, and her telling him to let us do it. I remember her gigantic pink rose bush, jumping on the bed in the guest room, spending the night at her house, riding in the car with her to the store, watching Wheel of Fortune and Dallas with them at night, and sitting on the porch with her watching cars go by swinging on the metal glider. My mind is full of memories of her, my Granny. She was a saint and one of my hero's. She still is.

Another Week

Another week has come and gone. After arriving home Sunday afternoon, we were left to sit there till this evening with no work, nothing to do. Well, I found things to do, and so did Malcolm. I'm referring to work...nothing to do for work. How very frustrating. We will have ran a whopping two whole trips this month! Yikes!

In a nut shell it was a great week. Take out the worry over work, which ate up a lot of energy, it really was a great week. We worked on some projects, got a few things done, and enjoyed being home.

It was sunny, bright, and WARM all week! We had temperatures in the 70's for three days! It was majic!

Wednesday we ran to Missoula on an errand with a friend. Not that we got excited about a road trip (cause you know we never go on road trips) but we don't go to western Montana that often, and it was fun having the visiting time on the trip over and back. We left at 5:00 in the morning, laughed and talked all the way there, and then got home around 6:00 or so, spending the trip back napping, reading, and looking out the window.

Thursday we knew ahead of time we were leaving on Friday so we got some things done. It was cloudy and chilly.

This morning we woke up to temps in the 20's and two inches of SNOW! Great! Ok, so it was a little dissappointing, but it melted by noon and dryed out quickly, and as of 6:00 this evening it was in the low 50's and sunny. I can live with that. Talk about a weird day! Snow and ice this morning, and this afternoon the people down the road from us were mowing their grass.
It was nice while we were home, and even though its supposed to be cold all weekend, we'll be gone anyway. At least it was warm and sunny for our time at home.

Change is in the air, and I don't mean the weather. I'll keep you in suspense till later.

Glitz and no Glamor

Hollywood, California, Tinsel Town, home of glitz and glamor, at least for some. It's always interesting to drive this section of US 101 through the Hollywood area. I think maybe what interests me most is that though I've never been really into celebrities, I catch myself craning my neck every time to see what I can see. I'd have thought I wouldn't be interested, but apparently I didn't know myself that well. Or maybe its just that its a curiosity thing. I always wonder if anyone "special" is passing us on the highway as we cruise along at 55mph, not that I'd recognize anyone!

A few miles north, actually about 45 or so miles north, is Oxnard where we spent the evening Friday reloading. Then Saturday morning we drove another 115 miles or so north to Santa Maria. The drive between Oxnard and Santa Maria drives right on the coast part of the way. So at 7:00 Saturday morning I was cruising along with the window's cracked admiring the Pacific Ocean and the lack of cars, and the DOT set up doing random inspections on the side of the road. Hmm...too bad they were preoccupied with another truck. I sure wanted to visit with them first thing on a Saturday morning! Felt bad for the sucker they had pulled in.

We loaded at Dole in Santa Maria. While Malcolm was waiting on his paperwork, he watched the workers in the field harvesting strawberries. There were acres and acres and acres of strawberry fields all the way from Oxnard to Santa Maria and the same can be said for up around Salinas too. In Oxnard the air even smelled like strawberries.
All hand picked. For some reason I hadn't realized they were still picking berries by hand, but when you stop and think about it, which I did, it makes sense. After all, the berries ripen at intervals, so you couldn't just run a machine over them and have the green ones plucked with the red.
Talk about back breaking work! Can you imagine picking all those acres and acres of berries by hand? But there they are, spread out among the rows with their boxes, filling them as quickly as they can. They fill a box and then run, literally, to the truck to drop it off and grab another. Then run back to the field to pick some more.

So, Malcolm, having watched this running back and forth, and thinking about the work involved, asked the guy at the counter, "How much do they get payed for picking?" And the answer is, &1.50 a box. No wonder they run! They have to fill a lot of boxes in a day! The guy behind the counter told Malcolm an average picker can do $80 to $120 a day, and a good picker can make about $200.
Ok, maybe your not the fruit type. These people are harvesting some type of lettuce. Slashed with a big knife from the plant, placed in boxes, and sealed up right there in the field. Then its trucked to a cooler where they cool it to an appropriate temperature and stick it on a truck. We've had to wait before for it to come from the field. They'd have nearly all our product on except for one pallet of something, and we'd have to wait for the truck to come in from the field and then for it to cool.

I'd like to think its washed at some point too, but maybe that really doesn't happen till it gets to my kitchen. I've seen with my own eyes the heads of lettuce and cabbage being sealed in boxes there in the field. Just look at the picture and you'll see too. There are conveyors off both sides of the truck. People walk along with the truck down the rows, slashing lettuce, tossing it on the conveyor, and then the boxes come off the back I think. So organized and it seems to work like a well oiled machine. But still so labor intensive for these modern times. In a way I'm glad its still hand picked that way. It gives someone a job if for no other reason. On the other hand....no wonder its so expensive to eat fruits and fresh veggies. I bought a flat of strawberries at a roadside stand before we left Santa Maria. Maybe I'll freeze them all, but I'm thinking I might like to make some jam too when I get home.

Box Elder Creek

Add torrential rain to four feet of melting snow, and you can pretty much figure out what's going to happen to Box Elder Creek.

The creek winds its way peacefully through the section of the ranch where Malcolm and I lived, the place where Rachelle still lives. At the crossings its pretty much ankle deep. Rachelle, Justine and I went "swimming" in it last summer. You had to lay down on your belly to be "submerged" and even then our backs were exposed to the air a good part of the time. Even after normal amounts of rain, we drive the four-wheelers and tractors across it at will.

Box Elder has a violent history though. Last May when we had that late snowstorm and it melted off in a day and half, the water level came up fast, just past the fence line in the picture below. Even though the water had receded in this picture, it's still pretty swollen compared to its normal state.
And in years past, before Malcolm's family owned this land, the creek came up so high that if flooded the barns and houses. That's high when you consider that it is at least 400 yards away from the buildings. This is the old ranch house. It sits in Rachelle's back yard. There are water stains on the old wallpaper that are nearly shoulder high. And during one flood, the water was half way up the living room windows in Rachelle's house. So the risk is known. But its only happened a couple times in the last half century.



Rachelle sent these pictures to us last night. This is the Box Elder as of yesterday. Its lapping the edge of the road, less than 150 yards from her house and the other buildings. They uploaded really small, so I've enlarged them, which made them a bit fuzzy. But you can still get the effect. In this picture, the green garage and Rachelle's house can be seen just beyond the rising creek. Under the creek is a hayfield, fence, and several large brush piles, all of which are no where to be seen.

And should you have stood in our front yard when we lived at the ranch, you would have seen this. The dirt road, a pretty hay field, a bluff on the other side of the creek, and the hills beyond. Notice you can't see the creek. You could have heard it, but not seen it looking this direction.

In the next picture, its hard to see, but the house we lived in is that white blob at the base of the hill, and the field you see in the picture above, is under water. In the ranch's history, our house has never flooded. I guess that's the planned retreat for Rachelle and the Darling Poodles, should the need arise!

And in this picture it doesn't look too dramatic, but let me fill in the details for you. This is another creek crossing. You have to drive down a pretty steep hill to get to the creek. At this creek crossing, the precious owners had installed a trolley on a cable so they could cross the creek when it flooded in order to feed cattle, etc. When crossing the creek on the trolley, your normally suspended several feet above the water. If you were to cross now, you'd be in the water. I'm not good at estimating measurement, but I feel safe in saying that its at least 9-10 feet deep, easily more. I know for sure its well over my head, and normally its little more than knee deep.
Don't know what's to come in the days ahead. They're still calving, still knee deep in mud, still have snow left to melt off...there are a lot of "stills." This is just one more head ache to add to the others. I'm desperately hoping that the water stops where its at, and comes no further. At least then the worst damage will be some fences needing repaired, and maybe the creek crossings needing cleaned up and leveled again. That sounds a lot less tiring than cleaning up a flooded house. I've done that, on a small scale. But even on a small scale, it is not a fun job, and it's kind of traumatic for the resident. I was the resident...I should know!

Favorites on Friday

Sitting in traffic on our way out of LA and towards Oxnard to pick up another part of our load. We have 9 (NINE) pickups this time! This is NOT the time to be driving north on US 101 out of LA, just for the record. On a Friday afternoon, I think the enture population of Los Angelas and surrounding areas are trying to go north on US 101, or east on I-15 to Las Vegas. No one stays in LA for the weekend, I'm convinced.

So sitting in traffic, watching people in their cars, checking out buildings, Hollywood, the Scientology Celebrity Center (ok...whatever), and Universal City and lots of other stuff go by, I'm snacking on one of my favorite snacks.



I can't find it at Wal-Mart, but I did finally find it at Albertson's a couple weeks ago. Look for these - Sunmaid Vanilla Yogurt Cranberries. Its like eating candy!