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April 1, 2005

Just Like The Roadie Days...

Oh yeah there's nothing like sleeping in the cab of a truck in a parking lot. Here's how today went...

Five weeks ago I ordered the lumber for the deer fence. The company I ordered the lumber from, Kencove in Blairsville, PA, doesn't own their own trucks so they contract out shipping to freight companies. And as I've come to find out, the size of my order (a paltry 130 posts) is quite small compared to some of the large farms getting posts. Thus the small shipping orders always get bumped for the larger ones. So we waited and waited and finally I got pissed off enough to rent my own truck and drive up and get the lumber myself.

So Shannon and I got up early today and drove up to Rentals Unlimited in Frederick, MD to rent an 18' flatbed. We dropped the truck off at the house, showered and went to our day jobs. After work I headed home and loaded up the truck with some clothes, pillows, and a blanket. And my Glock. Hit the road about 7:30 pm and arrived in Blairsville about 11:20 pm. Found the lumber yard, then decided to have a late night snack (Big Mac) and picked up a few red flags for the lumber from Wal-Mart. And two bibs. Hey I was lonely and thinking about baby! :)

Then back over to the lumber yard, parked the truck right next to the piles of posts. Wanted to make sure I was first in line Saturday morning, but oddly enough I didn't see any other dipshits lining their trucks up in the lot...? Hmmm, must've scared 'em off with my big flatbed...

So I set the alarm and got to sleep around 12:30 am. Then the wind and rain began around 2:30 am and that was kinda freaky. Pretty violent storm actually, but I got back to sleep anyway until about 6 am.

The whole night brought back a lot of memories from my days as an audio engineer. I've spent quite a few nights sleeping in Penske 24' trucks, because many festival rock shows require you to load-in prior to opening the gates in the morning. So you would do a show Friday night, load-out, then hit the road at midnight. Drive 4-6 hours to the site of the next show, pull up to the loading dock and sleep a few hours in the cab, get up at 7 am and start load-in. So the whole silly experience kind of gets ingrained in your psyche, and although you feel like shit after sleeping on a seat belt buckle all night, there is a certain sense of adventure associated with the whole thing.

"It's better to burn out than to fade away..."

Next entry please...

Posted by Stephen at April 1, 2005 11:53 PM