Well, this is probably the way most blogs start... It's an experiement. I'll introduce myself, and explain what the name means. My husband and I are Professional Driver's. We travel the hiways and byways of the United States. In our spare time (haha), we live the rest of our lives. We are in the truck and away from home more than we are home. Our imediate family travels with us. Our little girl, Jesse, is almost 12 years old, and she is a Schnauser/Irish setter mix. She looks like a 30 lb. red Schnauser. Our little boy, Rusty, is almost 3, and he is a very small Dachsund (he's less than 10 lbs, so he still looks like a puppy). He is the most active boy we've ever seen. His Daddy's registered name was "All Wired Up", and he is a chip off the ole block. He knows his name, but refuses to answer when you call him. We can't take him out of the truck or out of the house without the leash. I learned than when he pulled his collar off along the highway, and started out towards the traffic. Does "headstrong" come to mind?
Okay, the trucking explains the 5th wheel. In case you don't know the physical parts of a truck, a 5th Wheel is the part that the trailer hooks to so that you can pull it down the road (like a hitch, only bigger). I take a lot of pictures of the landscape. I have some wonderful Sunsets, and Sunrises, beautiful fall trees, and we sat through the really big snowstorm in Virginia, last winter, and I got some pictures of the snow depth on the trucks around us. I have some small videos of a crazy thunderstorm in California, a few weeks ago. The only bad part of taking my pictures... Sometimes I have to take them through the windsheild, and the bugs mess up the focus of the pictures. We have to travel too fast to be able to stop when I want to take pictures. I guess the best ones will be taken when we retire, and travel for fun, and leasure. If it gives you an idea of how fast we cross the country... An example of a typical week is; We leave Arkansas late on a Saturday night, and deliver our load in California on early Monday morning. Sometimes we have to wait til the next day for our next load, and it might deliver in GA on early morning Friday, and if they have something for us, we can be back home in Arkansas by midnight Friday night or early morning Saturday morning, and ready to do it again. We used to stay out on the truck for sometimes as long as 2 months at a time, but now we are usually home at least for a few hours every couple of weeks, and will usually take a few days off every 2 or 3 weeks. We are capable of doing about 7000 miles a week when it is busy, but it's not been that busy since the economy took a "digger". But if we can hang in there, and do what we can, things will get better, and we'll be really busy again.
Now... where do the knitting needles come in? Well, I knit on the truck. At either end of a trip, when we are unloading or loading, I don't have to drive very much, so I fill my time with knitting. Our typical schedule is He starts us out, and does a 10 or 11 hour shift, and I sleep, and then he goes to bed, and I drive for a 10 or 11 hour shift. We trade back and forth until we get to our unloading point, and He does all of the hard stuff (I'm only an assistant driver, haha). After I finish my shift getting us close to the delivery, I go to bed and sleep my shift, and he does the delivery. After I sleep, and the truck has set during unloading, and then we usually have to set while our company finds a load for us to move to another part of the country, and we're also setting during the loading. Sometimes the whole unloading, and loading process may take as little as 6 hours, and as much as 36 hours, depending on how plentiful freight is, and sometimes we set at a shipper for many hours while they collect all the stuff that is suppose to go on the truck. In order to preserve the system that has developed on the trip out (it really is helpful if I can stay on the same time schedule, rather than bouncing on sleep schedules and stuff). My husband calls it a "rhythm" that we get into, and that's when we are really efficient. So, when we are in "setting mode", I stay up through the night, and allow my husband to have the bed and get a good nights sleep, and I stay on the same schedule as when I'm driving. It works out fairly naturally that I drive at night, deliveries and pickups are usually during the day, and my husband needs to be on duty during those hours, so I do the "fill in" driving... point to point. Well, I suppose it doesn't have to be said, I knit during my setting up through the night shift. So if you ever go to a truck stop at night, if you see a single truck out there that is "glowing"... it's just me with the light on so I can see to knit. I'm afraid I'm new enough at knitting, that I can't knit without looking, and I enjoy lace, and I definitely can't do lace without looking. Now, I have to explain my statement about being a "new" knitter. I've actually knitted for about 30 years... but it was mostly just flat, square things. I think I made some vests for my boys when they were small, but they were two square flat peices that were stitched together with arm holes, and a place for their head. They were cute, but pretty simple. Anyway, the knitting bug hit me last December, and since then I've made a few pair of socks, and a few pair of fingerless gloves. A really pretty lace shawl for my mother in law's birthday. I'm working on a pair of socks for my husband (my first pair on two circular's), have a pair of socks started for me (my first toe up pair, that I'll put on the circulars when I finish hubby's). I decided that I needed to learn how to make more things that are useful. Scarves are useful, but I am guilty of getting bored with them. I used to think knitting was slower than crochet, but I find that I actually knit faster than I crochet. My style of knitting is not very stylish. I'm one of those that learned from a book years ago, and never developed any finess with it. Oddly enough, as a crocheter, I can't "pick" with the yarn in my left hand, and I drop and pick up when I "throw" my yarn in my right hand. I learned to crochet from my mom when I was about 10 or 12, and she used to hate to watch me do it, cause I didn't hold the hook the way she wanted me to, so I guess I'm just a rebel with my style.
Well, I don't know how regularly I'll be able to post, but my intention is to write about the things that I see while we travel (sometimes there isn't much interesting, but we'll see what we find). Also, to talk about things I'm working on, or some of the 1001 things I want to make. There might be family stuff, too. There are 3 boys (men, now), and wives and grandbabies that blame me for their existence.
Happy Trails.... to you....
