TRUCKSTOPS

Sheridan, Wyoming: 6:00 a.m. and I wake up maybe a minute before the alarm on my smart phone jingles its  “Wake Up!” How do I do that? Did it the day before yesterday too. But then sleeping in the truck cab is a lot about waking up, often. You scootch around like a puppy, making a nest on your dirty clothes and then you sleep for a while. After a while, you need to straighten out or stretch and collide with the steering wheel or the brake pedal and you wake up. It’s a closed loop that keeps repeating, until your alarm goes off and the sun tells you, “It’s a new day.” In between wake-ups, you get some sleep. I don’t recommend it but sometimes it’s the best option. I feel better when I think about the five or six dollars a shower costs and the six or seven hundred dollars I didn’t spend on motels between Soldotna, Alaska and Wyoming this morning. 

I pulled in at 10:30 p.m. last night; took an hour to decompress, do house keeping and get to sleep. In the morning, when you walk, bleary eyed, into the truck-side desk, you are just another driver who needs a little TLC, a shower and coffee. I’ve never been poorly treated or found a dirty shower at a busy truck stop. So here I am, a couple of days out of Kansas City, sitting in with professional drivers, doing correspondence and journal before looking for that coffee and moving on down the road. 

Today I’ll make Denver and go visit with a guy I haven’t seen since high school. Martin was a quiet, unassuming kid who always had his homework done and didn’t hang out much with the cool clique. We graduated and you know how that goes: scattergram all over the world and by the time your 10 yr. reunion comes around, some of the players have dropped off the radar. Martin was out there somewhere but none of us knew just where. By the time the 50 yr. reunion rolls around, somebody with persistence and desire keeps looking, checking old sources and finds most of those rolling stones. Martin had spent the past 40 years as a Trauma Surgeon in Emergency Rooms in California and Colorado. He didn’t attend the reunion but we did locate him and continue to keep in touch via our class news letter and e-mail. He is a seasoned traveler and we have many common interests. Now that the sun’s high enough that I won’t have to deal with it in my eyes, it’s that time.