1 bus to Santa Clarita (delivered)

... spending the night at Santa Nella CA

Alarm was set for 6 AM, we were both up before that. Breakfast was from your 'emergency' bag so neither of us went down for breakfast.

I have the bus inspected and ready to go at 7 AM. The sun is just turning the sky red. BB will be following in the rental car and stops to fuel at Loves before leaving town.

A few miles down the road I realize that my licence plate has fallen down so I do a quick stop to tape it back up. Off and on the road in a minute or so.

From there it is a no-stop trip. Four hours to the drop, and we want to be back in time to pick up the next bus at 5 PM.

Last night I had looked at the route and written the last three turns down. And I had to looked at the areal photo but had not looked at the street view.

Street view. When I can see the building I can also see the CNG pumps along the highway. They look familiar. Then I see that I can not make a left turn into their driveway. Now I am sure I was here ... <> 10 years ago. I can't turn so I head down the street. I get to a cross street but decide not to make a U-turn in the center of the city street with a 40 foot bus.

I turn left and then see a sign for 'maintenance entrance' so I turn in there. Opps. It is the employee parking lot. I wind around through the cars. Someone gets out of their car and explains how to get where I need to go. Then asks for a phone number for my work so they can apply. When I start moving again, there is someone ahead standing, waiting for me. To direct me out. They want me to go through the parking lot instead of around the end. To do that I need to back up half way through my turn to get a better angle. They are on one side directing me back. Opps. So I was only watching that side where they were. When I glanced at the other side I was almost up against a car.

Instead of moving away from the car, I try to go forward. Slowly, very slowly. They are waving for me to stop, as I am too close to that car. I can still see between the bus and the car. So I keep moving. I make it. I should have given myself more room. I'm guessing I was only a couple of inches from the car. Any bump of the bus could have been enough to make it rub. But I made it.

What I should have done was as soon as I came into the lot, I had to go right or left. I should have gone right ... and backed up right there and left.

Once I am where I should be back on the road it is easy to follow where I was to go. I just get parked a BB pulls up near me. And then a shop truck pulls up, that was quick I thought. But they were not looking for me, they were looking for BB. 'The speed limit in this lot is 5 MPH !!'

So I had to call my contact, no answer. No answer the 2nd time either. I've done this enough to know not to leave a message. I call the operator and get someone else. My contact is gone for the day.

The guy does a quick walk around and signs off. I am 3 of 3 buses this time. In March there will be four more. When I mentioned maybe being here 10 years ago, he said they did get that brand of buses 10-12 years ago so I was close. Now I need to look it up :)

11 AM local and we are delivered. We head to Wendy's. We can't agree on anything else that we want to eat in the car.

First stop heading back is a few miles down the road at a rest area. When we are stopped BB scans in the paperwork so I can get paid.

Within a couple of hours I have gotten paid. paid well. It's only a one day trip but it has paid twice as good per day than any other trip we have done, ever.

The next rest area we want to stop at is closed so it is almost three hours before we stop again near Firebaugh. It is now near 3 PM so I call dispatch. -0- Nothing again. Unless we want to take 5 days to get to Denver. I pass for the day and we head back to Santa Nella for the night.

Dispatch does have two TRUCKS in Livermore heading down to San Diego. But he doesn't mention it to me. If I / we do take it, it would mean that we pick up Thursday and deliver on Friday. Then we would have been in CA for a week and have another weekend off. Not sure on that one yet.

More likely we will end up taking the Denver tomorrow and drive slow. Deliver on Monday and ...

That would still give us almost two weeks for something else. I don't think we would head back to CA.

Before we get to the hotel, we stop for gas at Loves, again. And BB goes in to buy fruit. And fresh veggies.

We check in to the Quality Inn and get the same room as last night. Then we walk around the building five times for exercise.

Without a chicken salad sandwich at Anderson's Split Pea Soup, I am not interested. We end up walking back to the same food truck as last night.

Load board

US - 268

IA - 139

MN - 3

WI - 5

Another day to kill tomorrow until 3 PM when I can call about work. Weekends can be fun. Week days we don't have enough time to do much of anything and don't want to be too far away when we make the call.

From IA, 6 to CA, 11 to OR, 11 to WA and still 2 to Reno.

62, or just about half are no-tows. The small RV's.