On the Road Again

Mike picked me up from the King Oscar around 11:30 PM on Thursday. We had a pick-up in Kent, WA (fairly close to where I was staying), which we ran down to a suburb of Portland, OR. After dropping our load there, we ran back across the Columbia River and picked up a load in Washougal, WA which was headed for Paris, TX.

I drove us from there as far as a rest area at mile marker 18 on I-84 between Burley and Pocatello, ID. Mike took over from there while I slept.

I woke up just as we came into Laramie, WY. Mike drove till we were just south of Ft. Collins, CO, at which point I took over. I headed along US 287 through Denver and then south through towns with fun names like Kit Carson.

The weather was awful along this stretch of road, however. I passed a semi that was rolled over on the side of the road. A clean-up crew was on the scene taking care of it, but rolled over rigs are a very sobering sight.

A little further on, through the fog ahead I saw four-way flashers blinking at me, and I got ready to slow down to pass the vehicle. This stretch of road is undivided two-way highway (meaning one lane in each direction with only a yellow dotted line separating us). As I got closer I could see that the hazard lights were on a vehicle parked in the middle of my lane, not the side of the road, so I applied the breaks a little harder. Suddenly I could make out another vehicle on the other side of the truck in my lane, and I thought “Oh crap, a head-on collision!”

My truck started fish-tailing a little, and I realized I was sliding on black-ice… I could feel my trailer trying to jackknife around on me. I let off the brakes and clutch and let the truck fix this potentially catastrophic situation, and then braked again, coming to a complete stop.

Now I had a clear view of what was going on in the road ahead of me. There was no head-on collision. Rather the truck stopped in my lane was rendering assistance to the other vehicle I had spotted, which was an upside-down SUV which had been towing a U-Haul trailer (which was still upside-right – or right-side up, depending on your preference). There were a number of people standing around the inverted vehicle, though it was impossible to tell which ones were rendering aid and which were from the wreck. The things that did stand out in my mind: A man holding a very young child, both in apparently good condition, the baby wasn’t even crying; a woman with blood covering her face, but she was up, walking around and looked like she was trying to make sense of things; steam rising from the chassis of the SUV, and the remarkable sense that this accident just barely happened; I even have a very vague impression of somebody climbing out of a window of the vehicle, though whether it was somebody making their way out for the first time, or somebody who had already been out and climbed back in to retrieve something I couldn’t say… there wasn’t anybody helping him out, so I presume the latter.

I woke Mike up, to find out what, if anything, he thought we should do. He pointed out that there wasn’t anything we could do, so I needed to make my way slowly around the accident and move along. I said a prayer in my heart that somebody rendering aid would have a cell phone and had already called 911.

Another rig had come to a stop behind me, and another was stopping on the other side of the wreck as I passed around. Just as the mess disappeared behind me in the fog, a train of about 6 more rigs (following each other far too closely for good weather, let-alone icy roads) passed me, heading towards the accident. I flashed my lights at them, hoping to give them a heads-up about the mess they were coming up on.

If I’d known how to work Mike’s CB, I would have used it, too. As it is, Mike never has his CB turned on, and rarely ever uses it at all, so I hadn’t a clue.

The rest of the drive was far less eventful. As I passed into Oklahoma, the weather cleared up considerably for about 10 minutes, then fogged back up again, though the temperature continued to increase steadily over time. There is a city in the western portion of the Oklahoma panhandle called Boise City which is bisected by US 287. The interesting thing about Boise City is that the highway comes into the town from the north, runs right to the center of town, where there is a courthouse, and then it runs counter-clockwise around the courthouse and spits you back out, heading east. Anyway, that was the most exciting part of Oklahoma.

Side-note: Friday I drove through Boise, Idaho. Saturday I drove through Boise City, Oklahoma.

I continued south/south-east into Texas, getting on I-40 in Amarillo, and heading east, till the 287 split off again, and made it as far as the Wal-Mart in Childress. Switched places with Mike again, and woke up the next morning in Dallas (Mike made the delivery in Paris while I was out). He had already picked up our next load there. We switched again in Fort Worth, and I drove us as far as Las Cruces, New Mexico. I woke up in Phoenix, and right now Mike is driving us towards our next destination.

Good times. Weather is nicer, too.