Safety and Anniv. Weekend

We had a great visit with family and friends in SLC, then went on the board Tuesday morning. We were parked at Sage (our driving school) and just hung around and visited all day. About 1pm we finally got notified of a load to pick up at the local ConWay yard about 5 mi away. The only thing about it was it did not have a pick up time until 10am the next morning. That evening we decided to go over and fuel up and just sleep at the Conway yard till morning. I checked in about 7:30 and the load was ready. We were headed to the Chicago area(Aurora). It was a fairly uneventful run tho we were a little tired during the overnite portion. We got used to sleeping again real fast!
From Aurora, we were sent to Indianpolis to pick up a load headed for Dallas. We were beginning to think we weren't going to make it to Joplin for the weekend. We dropped that load, got an empty and started to head over to the Lancaster yard, when the Qualcomm chirped. We had a load to pick up at the place we JUST delivered to, and head to Joplin for a relay. This load and the last from Indy to Dallas was John Deere equipment. We turned around and headed back, loaded up, and headed for Joplin.
Got in to HQ about 9:30pm Friday nite and had a good rest. During the 3 days out (Wed-Fri) we covered a little over 3000mi. The loads were back to back, so we didn't get much chance to rest with the truck parked.
Saturday morning we attended the monthly safety meeting. We ran into my trainer, Jim (Fist of Five) and sat thru some discussions on the new 07 engines and the way they burn off the particles that a new filter traps, keeping the exhaust clean. Kinda like a self cleaning oven, the system just gets real hot, and has a tail pipe temp in the 900degree range while it cleans itself. This will be down the road for us, we have an 06 engine, and they are running 350,000mi before trade in now. We have about 24000 on ours.
They awarded a group of new million mile drivers and the drivers/teams of the month also then had some drawings. I won a $40 gift card to Chile's/Macaroni Grill resturaunts.
That afternoon we took the shuttle to the mall and just hung out for awhile, kinda nice. Then we went back to the Holiday Inn and got a room for the weekend. It's our 15yr anniversary on Thurs, so we are enjoying this weekend since we will probably be running our tails off after we leave here. The weekend included a nice dinner at the Outback.
Back to work this morning. We had to get new ConWay ID cards and a new access card for me. (lost my orig). Took the shuttle to Wal-Mart, stocked up on food, and back on the board.
We are now waiting on a local driver bringing a load from La-Z-Boy in Neosho for us to take to Lancaster (Dallas), then we are pre-planned a load to go to Kettleman City, Ca. It looks like it will be a hazmat load. That will be a first for us, so we'll have see how this goes. They do pay us a little more to drive a hazardous materials (hazmat) load.
During our time at the terminal here, we did have a chance to meet with Ed (Gadabout) from our forum (cfidrivers.com). Kinda nice to meet and put a face to people we get to know over the road.
Till next time, keep it safe out there.