G.G. Trucker

When I was young - about 8 or 9 years old - there appeared on TV ads for a school, Debbie Dootson's School of Truck Driving.  When I saw this woman driving her own big rig, I knew I wanted to enroll.  The thrill of driving wherever one wanted in a gigantic vehicle seemed liberating from my strict Catholic, immigrant upbringing.  My conservative parents immediately dashed my dreams of hitting the open road.  No way was their daughter going to drive vehicles for a living.  If anything, she would engineer vehicles. In an office.  Confined to a chair with minimum lombard support.  Oblivious to the outside until she endured traffic to commute to her bedroom community tract home.  Just like everyone else. 

I had long forgotten about this old fantasy of mine until it became apparent to Michael and me that, in order to transfer the bus and our household goods to our new duty station, I would have to commandeer a large, diesel, rental truck while following Michael who would drive our precious bus.  My fantasy became a bit of a nightmare for a short second when I remembered that I easily fall asleep on the road.  I have severe Highway Hypnosis.  The monotony of a two lane, even a 12-lane highway, weighs on my soul and eyelids and induces my consciousness  to shut down for slumber.  Now put me behind the wheel of a 22' long truck and what do we have?  Disasterrr.  But with time to plan our route and with no rush to get to DC, we chopped up the drive into 3 days with 2 legs of 2 1/2 hours each day.

My dad was a great help in taking care of the kids before we left.  He had arrived on a Wednesday and flew to LA with the kids on a Saturday, the same day that Michael and I rented the big truck.

It took us soooooooooooooo long to clear out the house of our goods and load it onto the truck.  We had planned on leaving on Sunday, but ran out of time and energy.  We thought we would leave early Monday morning but cleaning the house took so much longer that we left at about 1pm.  I had no time really to fret about driving the truck because I was just eager to get away from Tampa!  As Michael and I finally left our street, he radioed me on the walkie talkie and asked how I was doing.  I replied, "I actually feel giddy as if I'm going on a first date!  I am so excited to leave Tampa!"

Our first stop before we left Central Florida was to get our truck weighed.  We didn't pass 20 minutes out of town before we had to stop again.  I tried to back the truck into a big rig spot, but I kept messing up because I had our white car attached on a trailer.  When you have a trailer behind you, going in reverse is not intuitive.  A trucker approached me on my 5th try and gave me some pointers.  I was embarrassed thinking that he had probably been watching me with his buddy and laughing their heads off, but I was more grateful that the confusion was about to end and laughed at myself too.

Our next stop that first day was at a friends' house to check in on their summer property.  I was able to take in what I was handling out there on the freeway!

From my cab, I sit so high above the little people in their cars and SUVs.   

Our first night's stop was in St. Augustine.  We had always wanted to visit the oldest city in America, but were always working on the bus.  It was too bad we waited until we were leaving to see it because when we drove around it the next day, I found it so fascinating that I would love to visit again with the kids!  

This is a lovely picture of St. Augustine ...

I was a bit too tired to take something noteworthy.  Instead, as we sat at a restaurant for brunch, I took one photo of our view.  There is unfortunately a gas truck marring the scene.  

But we didn't care.  We were glad to not be working and to be enjoying ourselves, having food on dishes that would be cleaned up by someone other than us.  

The second day went smoothly and we reached Florence, South Carolina, just fine.  I ate a lot of snacks so I became even chubbier than what you see in the picture above.  Our last stop before ending up in DC was in a town 1 hour away from where we would store our household goods.  Why so close, you ask?  Well that last day was going to be filled with unpacking the truck and packing into a storage unit and setting up the bus at the campground.  A very tiring day lay ahead of us that we did not want to add a long drive in traffic to get start it off.

C O N V O Y ! ! !

We picked the hottest day to offload the contents of our truck.  We were also forgetful and didn't realize we had a gallon of water in the trunk of the white car so, on top of being tired, we were sweating, thirsty and had to pee really badly.  What kept us going was the vision of ourselves guzzling beer and munching on chips while we rest in front of our settled bus.  

We finally got to that fantasy at about 4pm, when our vacation from life and the kids began.