I am a Truck Driver

So I can add Truck driver to my list of odd jobs. last week I got back from a 10 day trip driving the biggest rental truck I could get my hands on accross the country (a 26ft International diesel box truck with a motorized lift gate, that got about 9 mpg and couldn't go faster than 65 mph). The Collegiate Triathlon National Championships were being held in Birmingham Alabama some 2200 miles from Santa Barbara. It would have been very expensive to ship each of our team members bikes across the country ($150-$200 a piece). So as a way to save money on a trip that was going to be really expensive anyway, I drove all 42 of UCSB's bikes, 40 from Cal Poly, 9 from UCLA, and 13 from USC. By charging each of the other schools about $100 per bike, our team was able to offset the entire cost of shiping our bikes and then some (I am a really good deal finder and an underpaid truck driver).

I got a late start leaving Santa Barbara. I took a long time to build the three level rack for all of the bikes and get all the bikes loaded and secure. As a result I didn't leave Santa Barbara until 4:00am Wendsday morning. I thought about crashing in Santa Barbara for a few hours, but I didn't want to get stuck in LA comuter trafic. I hate driving through LA enough as it is, but doing so in a huge truck that I had no experience with was more a a chalenge than even I wanted to undertake.

By 6:00am I hade made just past Covina on the 210 freeway, and figured this would be a good point to check the bikes and take a little rest. The bikes had shifted a lot and so I spent 30-45 minutes rearangeing the bikes and making sure they were secure. I was so worried about the condition of the bikes so much that nearly every time I stopped I would go check on their condition. (I was carring over $100,000 worth of bikes in the back of this truck). After the bike check I was able to hunker down in the cab and get about an hour of sleep.

Rising alert if not rested I continued on my Journey. The Drive to Alabama followed much of the same as the drive through LA. The drive Back However was much easier, as my dad decided to fky to Little rock and join me.

You know what I am tired of writing this entry as i could go on for pages and my mind is on other things

cheers