You have to follow two parallel developments here.
Development one is that thanks to global warming, I've lost my nice cushy job supervising snow plows. We never get a decent amount of snow in Southern Ontario any more, and last few years my job has mainly consisted of watching the radar for snow that never comes, while playing Conquer Club in another window. I knew it would end one day, and sure enough it has. The company finally caught on to the fact that there's no snow (last year our yard logged 14,600 supervisor hours for only 13,500 operational driver hours) and 3/4 of us are out the door.
So, just when I was expecting the call telling me to be ready to return to work October 15th, I got a call saying to be ready to return to work, never. So I needed a job in a hurry.
Anyway, on to the second development. I'm a drug-crazed hippie, and in 1991 the American government decided that it would be too dangerous to have me roaming about in the U.S. spreading hedonism and LSD and god-knows what else, so they barred me from entering these virgin shores and corrupting the youth.
About a year ago I won my appeal. It seems that in my absence, the youth of America has gotten so corrupt that there's no longer anything I can teach them, and I'm welcome to return.
I've already had a couple quick vacations in the U.S. this year, but until now nothing professional. But, last week I got that ugly phone call, needed a new job, and and since I now could go Stateside, sure enough the two ends met and delivered unto me a job hauling mixed freight south.
So here I am America! On the road again...
Today I delivered transformer coolant to a transformer station less than a mile from the White House. From persona not grata to saviour of your nation's capitol's power grid in only a few short days! After that I had a pickup in Virginia, so I rolled south on 14th Street across the National Mall where the late great Abbie Hoffman gave such great speeches, and across the bridge and around the Pentagon. You'd almost think I'm on a sightseeing tour and not work! Tomorrow morning I have a pickup in some one-horse town near Waynesboro, so the route took me past the Gettysburg battlefield. Didn't have time to stop, of course, but even from the road you can see cool stuff.
I'm going to overnight here in Greencastle. Speaking of which, where's the alleged free wifi? Everyone is always saying the U.S. truck stops have free wifi, but so far every truck stop I've been to demanded payment. Is this free wifi thing just some joke you like to play on foreign drivers, or are there actually some stops that give it away for free? Not only do they want money for it, but it's unreliable as hell. What a joke, two buck an hour and it logs you out for three of every five minutes. Of course it's supplied "as is" with no warranty express or implied. It's taken me almost two hours now to take half a dozen turns in my games, answer a couple PMs, read two or three discussion threads, and post this.
Anyway, it's fun to be back! I can overlook a bit of technological angst...
I notice the good ol' double nickle has pretty much bit the bullet. Speed limits of 65 a lot of places! When did that happen?
