1 bus to Salem OR (delivered)

... spending the night at Salem OR

Beep, beep, beep ... hotels that have a large area for truck parking are nice. Kind of. Listening to the trucks back up alarms at 4 AM is not so nice.

BB is up before the alarm and ready to go. The storm warning in OR still starts at 10 AM and we are still four hours away. We decide we will head out as soon as we can be ready.

5:30 I head out with the first bags of luggage and to start the bus. ))) light bulb ((( By the time I am putting things in the bus, BB calls ... before she can say anything, I say "Houston, we have a problem." We are ready to go, but as drivers, we are required to take 10 hours off. My 10 hours will be at 6 AM. So back to the hotel room I go.

Sometime before 6 AM, I realize that I could call a 24 hour permit service and request my OR permit instead of using the company suggested one where I will have to call sometime after they open.

I call and someone picks up right away. That was about the only good thing of this call. For the next eight minutes I was repeating the same information over and over again in a different way until they repeated it back to me correctly. Finally they said they would call me back with a 'better connection. I waited five minutes and they never called back.

I also called the OR scale to find out if they could sell me a permit, no. I would have to call a main number and they do not open until 8 AM. BUT I did find out that I do not have to have a printed copy so that will save us time and money.

A few minutes after 6 AM we are rolling, no breakfast. Not often that we only take 10 hours off. Usually it is 12-14, so short night for us. Still dark for ...

1st stop is in Corning at a former Flying J, now a Loves. Plenty of room in the car area to park the bus. BB runs in to use the restroom while I call for an OR permit from 'our company.' This call took less than three minutes. The earlier one took 8 minutes and we were maybe half done. They never did call back. I'm guessing that took down both my phone and email wrong.

2nd stop was a rest area near Weed. BB is watching the weather every few minutes. Taking this trip heading to where a major storm is forecast is really stressing her out. It's not a trip I would normally have picked and usually am more set in my ways to say no. But there were other issues going on and I had finally said "We'll take it and get as far as we can."

In Yreka (I think) is where the signs say if chains are required. Those signs are not flashing so ... so far ... it looks like we may be able to make delivery today. The storm was supposed to have moved in around 10 AM but BB has been watching the highway cams and the roads are just wet, so far.

We do hit some snow on the pass in CA but not on the higher passes in OR. There is is just raining.

BEEP ... BEEP ... BEEP .... but it stops before I can see why an alarm in the bus is going off. Then it happens again. Finally on the third time we see that it is a door alarm and it does not go off for a while. At first we thought it was the elevation but after going off a dozen times I think it has to do with inclines as the alarm would go off once we reached the top. Alarm never went off on the down hill side.

We pass the OR chain signs and they are not flashing either... whew.

BB was watching and my permit has come in so I am legal to enter OR. No issue at the scale. But I did notice that my weight was only 200# less than legal. Good thing I did not add more fuel before crossing the scale. I have been looking at the gauge every stop. I am using about 300# pressure for every 100 miles.

3rd stop is in Medford at the Pilot for CNG fuel. Two pumps are down, one still working. We had decided that we would eat here and that would save us stopping for a full half hour break later. Here we can combine it with a fuel stop. I am just done fueling when BB comes back with the food, that leaves us about 10 minutes to eat. Eat and throw/eat and go.

4th stop is in Oakland OR at a rest area.

5th stop is in Halsey for the bus wash. Here it is one guy with a hose on the side of the building. We weren't sure we were at the correct place. I walked in and asked before pulling up. Someone else was just leaving so no waiting. Three trucks waiting when I was done. This guy has been doing it for a while. He knew which company I was working for and used to do a lot of RV's for us. We haven't washed RV's for 2-3 years.

NOW we change our car reservation from tomorrow to today. Yesterday and most of day, BB couldn't see a scenario where things would actually work out where we could be delivering before Monday. I knew there was a chance that it may be Monday, but I am always ready to push forward until we can't.

Before picked up this bus, BB was ready to just get a hotel near the shipper and 'see how things looked in the morning.'

We had talked about how to make sure we didn't end up with all of our luggage inside a bus garage again. BB was going to take part of her luggage with her when I dropped her off ... or I would find a place to park and call and BB could meet me.

6th stop - Salem Airport - But when we got to the airport we saw how small it was. One flat parking lot with Budget using part of the lot for their rental trucks. There was enough room there to park the bus and wait and no one would care. So that is what we did.

Glad this was not a test, I ended up going over the curb twice in the last hour of this trip.

7th stop is the drop. I get there about a half hour before close. I find the office and the find some one to pull the bus inside and inspect ... and I wait. The moving and inspection took about 10 minutes. Then I stood around for 20 minutes waiting for someone to sign. No idea what the hold up was. I finally found the person I talked to originally and asked who could sign. He could. He had been within 40 feet of my bus the whole time. It's like they had no idea what was going on.

The other bus from last night was already here when we got here. Front plastic was never taken off. I thought about doing it but these people were not doing me any favors.

We had thought about heading south an hour or so, IF we had gotten in and out quickly. It was now after 5 PM and fully dark.

We head to a hotel, but first food. BB is beyond tired and doesn't what she wants, just what she doesn't want. I finally pull into a DQ and we go through the drive thru.

Final stop is the Comfort Inn. First room doesn't get warm so we get a 2nd room which doesn't get warm. It does eventually.

Now chains are required on I-5. Hopefully they will not be required when we get there tomorrow. We have a narrow window between two storms to get out of here. We also have about 10 hours back to the buses. Most likely we will not pick one up tomorrow but wait until Saturday morning.

One of the drivers I track :) just came across Donners Pass today and by the time they were over, chains were required. And now will be required until Sunday or Monday so whatever we take, we will go the southern route. We would have had to have left last night to make it over. Today chains were required before buses were assigned.

Load board

US - 217

IA - 7/6