Atlanta, GA

Hello from Atlanta again!  Let me try to catch you up on the last few days. We were here last Thursday doing a re-start and waiting on a load.  We finally got a load out Thursday night.  Well, kinda.  Our load was in Charlotte, NC and it picked up at 0500 on Friday morning.  Around midnight on Thursday night, J hooked up to an empty trailer and headed to Charlotte.  When we got there, we dropped the empty and only had to wait about 20 minutes until our load was ready.  This load was going to Dallas.  Since it was 0500 in the morning, J woke me up and I took off driving.  I drove through NC, SC, GA, AL and into MS.  About 1600 hrs I woke J up and he took over driving and got us into Dallas where we dropped that load.

When we got to Dallas they had another load ready for us to take to Chicago.  J picked it up and got us out of the DFW area and woke me up and I took off driving.  I got him into Troy, IL where he took over and got us the rest of the way into Chicago on Saturday night.  Things were going good because when we got there, they had another load for us ready and it was coming back to Atlanta.  J got that load hooked up and got us almost to the TN border where he woke me up and I got us the rest of the way to Atlanta.  I pulled into Atlanta around 1300 hrs on Sunday.

I should have known coming to Atlanta would not be a good idea.  Right now it is about 1030 hrs Monday morning and we are still sitting.  I was in the drivers lounge talking to a couple of drivers and they said that on Mondays about the only thing that goes out of this terminal is dedicated freight.  That means that we are probably going to be here until tomorrow sometime.  They do pay us layover pay, which is $150 (each I believe) when we sit for over 24 hours without a load.  That helps, but when we can cover over 1200 miles a day at $1.12 a mile, that $150 really isn't much.  But I guess it is better than nothing.

Another bad thing is that we are supposed to be home on Wednesday.  So it looks like when we leave here that we will probably have to get a load to Dallas so we can take our time off.  With weekly payments on this truck, I have a feeling that we will come out in the hole when we come back from our time off.  We need about 2000-2500 miles to break even and I don't see that happening this week.  We are taking time off because J's 30th Class Reunion is over the July 4th weekend in Pagosa Springs, Colorado and we are not going to miss that!  It is a small town where we grew up and we know so many people there, so we are really looking forward to getting back and seeing everyone.

Another thing I am looking forward to on this time off is seeing our house.  We have done a lot of remodeling to it but haven't been able to get some things finished.  My mom has hired a contractor and is getting some stuff finished.  I know she said he taped and mudded the sheetrock that we put up, scraped the ceiling (to get the popcorn off of it) and then painted.  The walls are a gray color and the ceiling an trim are white.  I am so excited to see what it looks like.  We still have to get the windows cased in and painted but it is going to be a great surprise to see what he has gotten done.  Also, we still have to get the flooring installed.  When we put the new flooring in the new kitchen, we bought extra for the living room and the hallway.  If we can't find anyone that can install it for a decent price, then we will probably have to spend a full day getting the flooring done.  But it will be worth it to see the final result!  There are so many little things that still need to be done but we have managed to get most of the bigger stuff done ourselves.  Now that we are on the road again, we will just have to pay someone to come in and get it finished up.

Sorry I don't have any pictures to post today.  It is hard to take pictures while you are driving.  There is some beautiful scenery out here.  I need to take pictures when we switch and I am in the passenger seat.  We are also looking at getting a dash cam.  I bet if we did that then I would be able to upload some of it on here so you can see some of the awesome things that I see.  That is something to think about!