Sunday, July 12, 2009

Day Off in Palo Alto

Got in my bunk last night about 3:30am. Woke up at 7, but couldn't go back to sleep. Got up about 20 minutes later and went down front to sit with Charlie, my driver.

Saw a deer jump across the road a couple of hours later. Charlie said he saw 6 – 8 of 'em overnight. Pretty much had the bus to ourselves until a couple of people woke up around 11:30.

We eventually stopped for a Code Brown - some folks on the other buses needed to poo. All 4 buses pulled over at a little store out in the middle of nowhere. Once you stop the buses like this, everyone sorta wakes up, and then EVERYBODY wants to go poo. The store wasn't very big, and the men's room only had one toilet – that's what someone told me, I didn't go in it – so we wound up being there for 40 minutes. Too bad the poo people couldn't wait for a multi-toilet truckstop out on the 101.

As all roadies do when the bus has pulled in somewhere, I wandered the aisles of the store, doing my best Retail Zombie routine. I stumbled across some Mexican Coca-Cola in the cooler and bought one. I normally don't drink soda pop, but the Mexican Cokes don't have high-fructose corn syrup in them. I won't drink anything with that crap in it. So now that I had a bottle of Coke, I had to buy some salted peanuts to dump in it. That kinda freaked out some of the folks on my bus, which I got a kick out of.

Sitting on the bus drinking my Coke with peanuts in it, I grabbed the camera again. Had to get a shot of this view. Note the mileage sign – it's 40 miles to Weed, CA…Click on the photo to enlarge it.

The view heading to Weed, CA:

Saw a few billboards for a store in Weed that sold t-shirts that said "I (heart) Weed." Ha-ha!!!

Saw this badass truck a little later. In the second photo, check out the 3-D naked girls mounted on the mudflaps.


I should have gotten a shot of the cab of the truck, but I didn't. It was chopped and lowered and looked really cool.

We finally got to the hotel at 6:15. Dang, that ride took forever. I dashed to my room, showered and ran back downstairs just in time to be picked up by Sherry (my ex) and Ed (her husband). They took me to dinner at a place called Nola in downtown Palo Alto, which was only a few blocks away. The food was good, the company was better.

They dropped me off back at the hotel just after 10pm and I putzed around the room for another 90 minutes before going to bed…

4 comments:

Greg said...

Zilla,
Here's the cab of that truck...

http://image.trucktrend.com/f/22709262+w750+st0/163_0906_2009_gwts_01z+Kriss_trucking_1998_379_pererbilt+front_view.jpg

Bobzilla said...

Thanks for sending the link, G. They either have a twin rig, or they've modified the front end since the photo was taken. No chrome bumper on the truck I saw. It was blue, like the rest of the cab...

DreamerM said...

Are the beds above the steering wheel, like in RVs? Where does the driver sleep?

Bobzilla said...

The bus drivers get hotel rooms every day. They usually sleep between, say, 4pm and midnight, while we're working and the show's going on. Then, we sleep overnight while they drive us to the next city. No bunk on the bus for the driver.

In Europe, the drivers sleep on the bus, where they generally have a sleeping compartment, but not a proper bunk.