I PASSED

Shortly after 8 AM, I get a call to come in to the clinic and get my blood pressure checked again and pick up my DOT card.

When I get there things are a little confused, a failure to communicate.

When checking my BP on our machine I have been legal every day for the last three weeks. We get three tries each day, I have only had to use two at the most.

But once I got to the clinic I was way high again. I was legal by the 3rd try but not as low as two weeks ago. So I am going to have to talk to my Dr to get my BP low enough so that when it goes up at the clinic it is still OK.

Next stop was the DMV, a line there but no issues. No charge either, the info just needs to be entered into their computer.

Actually we stopped at Q Cumbers, a buffet we haven't eaten at before. It was Wednesday so Mystic Buffet was closed so we tried this one. Someone had mentioned this on to me maybe a year ago and we hadn't made it down here before. Very small hot food but lots of salad, four soups and a fair number of deserts, mostly fresh fruit.

Maybe it's the section of town this place is in but it is not your usual buffet staff or clientele. Very upscale. The two hot foods I had were chicken lasagna and a gluten free pizza. Very, very good. Never go away hungry.

Then we headed to company #1. They looked at my DOT med card in detail and for a while I thought maybe I would have to be off work until my BP came down but they finally said OK.

BP is the same as last year but the way the Dr recorded it is different.

We had faxed my DOT info to company #2 and last year it took a couple of days. This year it was a couple of hours.

When I called company #2 dispatch about going to their safety meeting tomorrow my info still wasn't in the system but a couple hours later I could see that I was cleared.

We went home and re-packed. We have been off the road for two weeks so we had to check and double check that we had everything.

We left out about 5 PM and at one point we thought we would get to Albert Lea and have our usual buffet. But later we realized that we still weren't hungry and it would be after 7 PM before we started eating so we stopped in Owatonna at Jimmy Johns and each had a Slim Jim.

A few more loads on the board today but nothing we wanted. Until after they closed at 5 PM. Then they put a bunch more out including 5 for Sacramento and 5 for down by LA. Both with work for us so we will be on the phone at 8 AM tomorrow from our safety meeting to get something.

Because we are going to the safety meeting first, we won't get going until about noon. IF we get going at noon we should be able to make it to Omaha and then be on the same timeline as last trip, delivering Monday.

The day ended with 73 on the board.