1 Pickup to Fresno CA

... spending the night at Santa Nella CA

:(

Woke up to a dead phone that won't charge. I had this issue a few months ago and at that time a new charger fixed the issue. I'm guessing it is not the charger. So far, after two hours I still have no charge.

Plan for today is to get this pickup dropped before/around noon. And then call dispatch. I did hear from the only bus driver I keep in contact with that they are heading to RI. So at least one person got a bus last night.

Breakfast was good this AM. The juice was actually good today. Plus bacon and eggs. Eggs were OK, bacon was good. They also had 'real, local yogurt' you could add your toppings too, plus the packaged stuff.

We head out about 9 AM local. An hour and a half later we are at the drop. Today I do see two 70 mph signs. BB see's three, yesterday I did not see any. It doesn't really seem to make much difference. People drive the speed they want to, or can, based on traffic. Didn't see anyone passing on the shoulders today.

I didn't mention this yesterday, but while we were at the hotel I saw someone 'brake checking' another driver. The hotel is one building away from the stop light and I heard something that made me look as two pickups went down our side street. The 2nd past the 1st in oncoming traffic and then got in front of them and hit the brakes, and again, until they were almost stopped before speeding off.

1st stop was the drop in Fresno. I was here yesterday so I know the routine. And it is the same one check in guy. Today I parked behind two other pickups that are owned by the same rental company. I didn't see anything else on our board so we must not get access to them all.

As BB is waiting for me, she sees two pickups from MN to WV. We are not there but I mention them to dispatch when I call. Those ended up getting flat bedded.

We are optimistic and head back in the direction of the buses instead of taking more work.

2nd stop is in Madera at the EZ Trip, they are part of the Pilot/Flying J network so we get a discount on the gas. We only put in four gallons as we thought that was all we would need to get to Livermore and return the car. We did end up using more than that, I may have been driving faster? Or we mis-guessed.

3rd stop was in Livermore at a cheese steak place, The Cheese Steak Shop. It was now 2 PM. Good food, a little messy. We ate in the car, we are doing that most places again.

From there we drove past the bus factory. Still lots of buses, a lot of them lined up by the drop location now.

I called over a half dozen times to the dispatcher, to the office number. No answer, it kept going to voicemail. Finally I called his cell and he answered right away. Only one bus again today and still lots of people in the hotel. :(

Instead of looking at all the options while we were sitting there, we made a reservation in a town an hour away for half the price. There actually was one hotel in town we have stayed at once that was close in price but we rarely stay at that chain so it didn't come to mind right away. It did after we had a reservation and were on the road.

4th and final stop is the Quality Inn in Santa Nella. Usually their little dead end street is packed with trucks, or buses, or homeless RV's. Today it was almost empty.

After we checked in we went down to Anderson's Split Pea Soup. BB got the soup and I got Swedish Meatballs over noodles. The special was over rice but I did a sub. I only ate half of it and I was still stuffed. So we/I now have breakfast. This place doesn't have any thing special usually. Eggs, biscuits and gravy.

Load board

US - 172

IA - 2/1

CA - 4

Lots of talk about the 'what if's.' I mentioned that it might be a parts issue with the buses, (and in that case it could be weeks before things are back to normal) So BB wanted to look at all the options. We likely will head home Friday night if there is no work tomorrow. We could stay but between a car and a hotel every day the money won't last long. And if most days they are only shipping one bus, and there were 15 drivers ahead of me plus ones that may be coming back from a prior trip ... it could be two weeks before I get a bus.

Or if the resolve their issue, the could release 20 buses tomorrow.

The rental dispatcher does have two more from southwestern MN back to the cities, but we are in CA.

... my cell phone. We played with it all morning trying to get it to charge. Finally BB found something on the web that we tried and we got it to start charging. We got it up to 20% before we had to leave the hotel. Then once in the rental car after the drop it would not charge again and it was down to 13%.

Just about back to Livermore it started charging. It was back up to 20% when we stopped to eat and then wouldn't start charging again. But when we got to the hotel it charged right away so I'm letting it get a full charge before unplugging it. No idea what the issue is.

And I have a setting issue on my phone where I can't shut it down/off. But today it not only shut off, it reset the time on my phone by about six weeks and six hours. Which means all phone calls and pictures today were dated with that old date ...