Very poor net service here, so I will watch a DVD and get some rest. Good night.

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Man plans, God laughs. And then kicks you when you turn around to see who's laughing.

So EEB and I were having a conversation about Show Low, Arizona, and he mentioned that someone had once told him that it was impossible, insane, or all three to drive US 60 between Phoenix and Show Low. '

This is apparently common knowledge, and that's why I was routed straight up I-17 to Flagstaff, then along I-40 to Holbrook, then down AR 77 to Show Low, a distance of some three hundred miles or so.

I got to Show Low and made my final drop, and called in.

"We need you to head for Phoenix," said Morbo, "or possibly Tucson. Take US 60."

"Point of order," I responded. "Is that the same US 60 you told me not to take yesterday?"

"Oh yeah, it's fine if you're empty."

I'm here to tell you that it's not fine. It would be fine if it were the middle of summer and I was riding a Moto Guzzi Griso 1100, with Kyoko Fukada clinging to my back from the pillion and the Rolling Stones' "Some Girls" blasting from the iPod.

It's not even remotely fine in a big honkin' Kenworth and a forty-eight-foot trailer that keeps trying to pass you while it's still hitched up. Also, Phoenix and Tucson aren't really close to each other.

So then I drove into a canyon and lost cell phone service for two hours. When I came out, I was at the crossroads, literally in the intersection, and I had to choose.

"Tucson or Phoenix?" I demanded of the first person who answered the phone.

"Hang on a second," he said.

"Argh," I said, and stopped right in the middle of the road, because I had no other choice.

It was Tucson, a load going to Erie, Pennsylvania, where I have never been, and I don't have to drive through Chicago to get there, which is also nice, although I'll probably have to pick up something in Chicago coming back. I got down here to Tucson and to the shipper just in time to run out of hours, so they put a 26,000-pound electric motor on the trailer, I chained it down, tarped it up, and then pulled out front of their building here to shut down.

I don't mind if they have a raging case of Friday Crazies at the office; I just don't see why they need to share them with me.

Here I am at the Phoenix yard.

I got up early and drove to the drop in Calexico. The drop was right on the Mexican border; the back wall of the company faced out into about a hundred yards of no-man's-land. There's the road, then this bleak area of sand with klieg lights posted every fifty yards, then finally a fifteen-foot-high wall, then Mexico. The first three guys I talked to this morning live on the Mexicali side and commute into the US on scooters every day to work. Interesting.

After that, I drove to the Yuma Proving Ground, which is a big chunk of ground that the government use to, I don't know, prove stuff. Maybe there's a building there full of washing machines, and serious men with clipboards make tick marks and comment, "Hmmm. You really will look better in a sweater washed in Woolite." Then they're off to prove something else. I personally proved that you can convince an Army civilian contract employee to put out his cigarette and find a working forklift.

Then, I drove up to Quartzsite, to within two hundred yards of my parents' house, and did not have the time to stop for even a moment. I'm serious. I drove up US 95 to I-10, at the intersection I looked to the left and saw their RV park, and then turned right and kept going, because I had to get to Phoenix before five PM. I'm not happy about that, although I did call the Venerable One and explained what was going on. He hasn't completely forgotten what it was like to have a job, in much the same way that dogs don't completely forget what happens to them when they go on the carpet, so he understood.

I made it to the drop on time by the expedient of driving past my fuel stop and smack into rush-hour traffic. Phoenix is another city, like Los Angeles, that was mostly built after the advent of the automobile, so it's pretty easy to drive a big truck around city streets. In fact, it's sometimes easier to drive surface streets than it is the freeways.

I dropped, then backtracked to the fuel stop, then came out here to the yard, since the Flying J had not one empty parking space available. Dinner at Jack In Der Box, a nice long hot shower, and now this.

And now bed.

El Centro de Nowhere is more like it.

To get to this little corner of the Land that God Forgot, you have to wake up at 5 AM in a rest area on I-5 near Patterson, drive south to Santa Nella, head west about five miles on Cal Highway 33 to find the truck stop that the computer has selected for you, discover that your fuel card doesn't work there after you have already put about three hundred and fifty dollars worth of fuel in the rig, get the surly guy behind the counter to phone in your backup card for authorization, drive up and over the Grapevine and through Los Angeles on I-5, keep going south for another hundred miles while constantly avoiding people who pull in front of you and them stop for no reason whatsoever, turn left at San Diego, drive another hundred miles east on I-8 while noticing that the only other vehicles on the road, or the side of the road, or in the sky, all belong to the Border Patrol, narrowly miss a guy darting across the highway while being pursued by a BP agent on a four-wheeler ATV, descend from a 4,500-foot pass to a valley that is actually below sea level at a six percent grade in about eight miles, then turn off at the El Centro exit. You can't miss it. I certainly won't.

I'm less than ten miles from Calexico and tomorrow's drop, and they don't open until eight AM, so I'll get a little extra rest tonight. Then I have to head to Yuma and then on to Phoenix; Friday morning I have to be in the town of Show Low. Oh, you have not either heard of it, don't lie.

I had a little treat this evening for dinner, since I had the chance and might not be back this way for some time. I have never before eaten at In-N-Out Burger; now I have. It was a perfectly acceptable burger, even delicious, but still not a patch on Herfy's. Very nice clean place though, and outstanding friendly service.

What else? Oh yeah, tomorrow is Big Dave's birthday.

Now a movie and some sleep. I got a little set of speakers for my laptop the last time I was home and they work great. I also very nearly bought a little flat-screen TV for the rig on my home time, and now I'm really glad I didn't.

Did a solid twelve hours of work today and drove over six hundred miles, including into and out of the Bay Area in rush hour traffic. Tomorrow I have to drive to Calexico, which is down on the border, as you might guess, and that will probably also take all day.

I called the guy this morning and officially accepted the job offer. I'm a little less tired, so here are the pertinent details:

1. The job will consist of driving a flatbed truck from Redmond to North Bend, a distance of about thirty miles. Once in North Bend, I will unhook the trailer, latch on to an empty trailer, and return.

2. Redmond is only about thirty miles from my house, so I will be home every night and on weekends.

3. The job is four ten-hour days, Monday through Thursday. I will have Friday, Saturday, and Sunday off. This is a vast improvement from my current situation, in which I work ten to fourteen hours a day from the first week of October through Thanksgiving and then take four or five days off, then repeat. (Go back and read this last year's blog entries if you don't believe me.)

4. It is work for the same company, so I don't lose my seniority, benefits, or anything else, except my truck, which is okay, because I won't be living in it any more.

5. I won't have to tarp loads any more. Nor will I have to drive through Chicago, the Bay Area, Wyoming, or over any mountain passes, at all, ever.

6. I will be getting paid a steady hourly wage that works out to a bit more than what I was making my last year at Hollywood Upstairs, which is not bad. I'll be spending more money on gas due to the commute (if anyone knows of a cheap little four-cylinder car for sale, let me know), but I'll be spending less money on food.

7. Speaking of food, I will be able to prepare and eat actual healthy meals, made from actual meats and vegetables.

There are more aspects to this gig that I like, but those are the deal-makers.

To be honest, when the guy called and made the offer yesterday, I asked him for a day to think about it, just because it sounded a little too good, and also because I was coming off my home time and was having the usual whiny fits over not getting to stay at home and play videogames, waah waah, et cetera.

But after flying this past everybody who answered their phone yesterday and today, it really does seem like a good call.

Bonus: my new Fleet Manager told me that I came highly recommended by my boss' boss, a person I have never met.

I will have to say goodbye to Morbo, and that's sad. He said that he will be sorry to see me go.

This company is pretty much the polar opposite of Hollywood Upstairs in the way that they treat their employees. Here, if you work hard and act like you have at least a smidgen of common sense, it gets noticed, and you get offered better work.

So, I'm going to finish this run in a couple of days, and then they're going to try and get me back to Spokane for some orientation. This job is part of a new contract we have, so we've got to work out the logistics of everything. I'll probably turn in my truck then, and maybe Martial can drive the pickup over so we can get all my stuff out. Then I get Christmas off, and probably the week after as well, and on January 4th, I start the new thing.

Oh, best part: if I do this for a few months and decide I don't like it, I can go back to the long-haul fleet, with no repercussions.

And the Japan trip is still a go.

Well, God works very fast these days.

This afternoon I got offered a new job at my company. I'm not going to go into the details just yet, but I'll be home every night and have evenings and weekends free.

The main reason I'm not going into details for now is that I'm flat exhausted. I didn't sleep a lot last night, about an hour at home and then a couple hours in the truck before starting work. So I'll have more details tomorrow, if I'm not completely knackered then too. Now, bed.

Well, I'm having my traditional Sunday-night-before-returning-to-work freakout, which only reinforces the thought that's been absolutely crushing me lately, which is that I'm doing the wrong thing in the wrong place at the wrong time. This doesn't just happen to me the night before I go back to work, mind you; I pretty much feel this way all the time.

Fortunately, I have some ideas, and I've been banging them against each other for the past six weeks, trying to get some sparks. More on that in a moment.

This home time was pretty nice, and the only way it could have been better was if Martial had been able to hang out a bit more. He's on a late shift schedule and I mostly work days, plus he was working extra time to help out, so we only had a couple of days to have any fun.

We still managed, though.

Monday I made it to the drop without any real problems, then went and dropped the trailer off and went to my sister's place to shut down. I got all the shutdown stuff done and had a shower, then went to downtown Renton with my sister while she had her hair done. We stopped on the way back and I got all the ingredients to make Spaghetti Carbonara, which turned out pretty awesome. I conked out in the truck and Martial came and got me after work.

Tuesday and Wednesday were pretty much equal parts not doing much and running little errands. I mailed Fuzzy his Christmas gift: a couple of eight-gig USB cards loaded up with Mystery Science Theater 3000 episodes. He should like that. I also hit Jiffy Lube and got the oil changed on the pickup, hit Best Buy for some DVDs and a new external HD for my laptop, and a few other things.

Thanksgiving Day I got up early and went over to Dpgnat's. EEB was there for a little bit, and I haven't seen him in a long time, so that was nice. I also called my folks and wished them Happy Anniversary. They have been married for sixty years now, wow. In the afternoon, we had some turkey and taters. It felt like I was getting home really late, but it was only about five-thirty by the time I got home, so Martial and I played Wii Golf and hung out until I conked out.

Friday Martial had to work, but he got up early enough for us to go out to lunch at a place I'd seen before nearby called Main Japanese Buffet, which is what it sounds like: all you can eat Japanese food. Awesome. Lunch for the two of us, all-you-can-eat lunch at that, ran us only twenty-five bucks for two people. Then we hit Best Buy for some more DVDs and H-Mart for some Asian beverages.

Saturday Martial was off work, but still didn't wake up until about noon. We drove into town to Uwajimaya and did a little shopping, then went for a walk around the ID. We both wanted Japanese food, so we were headed towards Kaname, but they don't open until 5 PM or so. About that time, I remembered a place around the corner that had had some "RAMEN" and "GYOZA" signs in Japanese out front, so we investigated that.

Turns out that the restaurant is called Fu-Lin, and it was ramen that reminded me so much of Kyoto I got a little weepy. It was traditional Japanese-style ramen, served with excellent gyoza, and at roughly the same price as the ramen shops back home. Wow wow wow. Next door was a bakery that had ham and egg buns just like the ones I used to get in the bakery in the food court at Kitaoji Station. We came back home, watched DVDs, played some more Wii Golf, and generally had a great time.

Today was not as great, owing to my droopy weepiness at having to go back to work tomorrow. Again, more on that in a moment. I still managed, however, to hit the sento for a nice soak and get stocked up on groceries. I got back in time for Martial to wake up and we went back to the Main Japanese Buffet again, where we had another excellent meal. This was dimmed slightly by the arrival of the bill. It turns out that the buffet on the weekend costs a bit more: forty bucks for two people. Still goo food, although I think we'll just be doing the lunch deal there from now on. Then we went to Paldo World and walked around, then hit the comic shop next door and wound up talking to the owner for so long that Martial was ten minutes late to work. Whoops.

Now I'm back here dealing with the last-minute things and trying not to completely freak out. I have to be in Redmond tomorrow morning at six-thirty to pick up a load going to several different stops. Fortunately, several of those are down in southern California and Arizona, so I'll get some sunlight, which might help me out.

Okay, now for the second part.

Regular readers who have not yet been bored completely rigid by my constant whining will recall that I had a chat with my mom a while back in which she gave me a really solid piece of advice, a quote from Yogi Berra: "IF you come to a fork in the road, you'd better take it."

Absolutely tonto readers with really nice long-term memory might remember a dream I documented several years ago, starring Great American Evel Knievel, in which we walked to the end of a ramp sticking out over an enormous canyon. Evel explained to me his philosophy of life in one sentence: "The secret is this: When you get to the end of the ramp, go even faster."

It's time I finally admitted it.

I'm an entertainer.

I'm funny and talented. I can sing, and I have good comedic timing. I can even dance a bit, although not with this current right knee. I'm smart.

I've been trying to avoid this for years, mostly out of a fear of failure, and largely due to a desire to not be the sort of person that craves the laughter and adulation of strangers. I really don't like people with that overweening desire to be needed and loved by thousands.

But I don't think that's the case. I think that this is simply a case of my wanting to do the things that make me happy. I enjoy singing and making people laugh.

Okay, the second bit is going to come as a surprise to absolutely no one. I'm just not gonna be as happy as I could be until I'm living in Kyoto again. But, I don't want to be a teacher any more. I haven't the patience for it.

So I've spent pretty much the last year thinking constantly about The Plan, refining The Plan, sketching out in my head the various signposts along the way. I haven't formally written every single thing down yet, but I have the form of the thing in my head.

These next few weeks will be spent sketching everything out and creating concrete goals from vague visualizations, but here are the four main goals. These are NOT in sequence, necessarily; that will come later.

1. Return to Kyoto and open a small bar to provide income, community, and stability.
2. Perform music and comedy in a variety of venues, including but not limited to creating a CD.
3. Develop a music and event production company in Kyoto with ancillary businesses, including recordings and merchandise.
4. Develop a design company in Kyoto.

These are obviously some huge goals and it's unwise to jump to the end right away, so here are the main focus goals for now:

1. Bring blood pressure under control by losing weight and controlling sodium intake. (I also need to look good to be a performer, so losing weight is important, plus this will help my knee.)
2. Save up enough income to travel to Kyoto in March for a vacation and fact-finding trip.
3. Develop and expand the plan.

Okay, gonna be blogging about this for a while, but I have noticed one thing already: working on the goals and having a direction reduces my depression.

Okay, still got things to do, but I needed to get this down.

Well, I got most of everything done that I needed to do while home.

For example, I took my pickup in to one of those oil-change places. I'm not going to tell you which one, but the name rhymes with "spiffy boob."

The staff at Spiffy Boob like to bring you in to their office, pour you a cup of coffee, set you down, then come and get you every five minutes and say, "Sir? Can I show you something?" Then they take you out to your vehicle and point randomly at various defects and problems thereon, offering to fix said problem for a small-to-medium-sized wad of dollars.

After about the fourth time they did this, I had to explain that the truck is thirty years old, and that I didn't pay all that much for it to begin with.

Anyway, I got some other stuff done. Now I'm waiting for Martial to wake up so we can hit the International District.

This is pretty cool:

Made it all the way through Montana with no troubles right up until Lookout Pass, on the Montana/Idaho border. The last few miles were pretty hardcore snow, and that wasn't even a problem, except for all the people freaking out in front of me. I just put it in second gear and kept rolling up the hill; having thirty thousand pounds on the trailer helped.

Now I'm going to sleep and hope that I wake up in a world in which Snoqualmie Pass doesn't require tire chains. Good night.

At a rest area.

Well, I slept terribly last night and wrenched my neck somehow but still managed to make almost six hundred miles to this place. Tomorrow I hope to get well into Montana, which will leave me Sunday to get to Washington and then Monday morning to get to Kent. That's the plan, anyway.

I got Star Trek on DVD today, and watched it once already. I'm happy with it.

Here's a thought. Why is it that people have to tell me their opinions all the time, on religion, on politics, on sports, whatever? Are they not secure enough in their opinions that they can just, you know, have them? I know I'm guilty of this too, but it's just something that's been getting on my nerves recently.

I think I'll try to just have my opinions for a little while, instead of giving them a constant airing to everyone within shouting distance, at least on certain subjects.

Maybe it's because if you walk around constantly shouting your opinions all day long, you don't have to take the time to actually think about them.

So I think I'll just think about my opinions for a while. Yeah. A little more thoughtfulness and a lot less yelling.

Okay, yeah, Chicago. It's Chicago.

I drove to Frankfort this morning and dropped off the stuff I got yesterday, and as I was pulling in there my computer lit up. Morbo had found me a job coming out of Chicago going to Kent, so I can get home and have some time off.

I got to this place, where I've been before, at about ten AM, and was told that the load would be ready at about 6 PM. Fine, okay. I made a little lunch and took a nap, and got my trailer right about when they said it would be ready.

I got it strapped and wrapped, and then a couple other drivers from my company turned up and helped me tarp it, and taught me a couple of tricks in the process. Very nice.

I'm way out of hours, of course, so I've shut down in their lot, and I'll get going tomorrow morning. I just hope the weather cooperates.

Last night, after fueling up in Duluth, I had to backtrack just a little and go south to get to the World's Creepiest Rest Area so I could shut down.

Yeah, that place was weird. There were random cars parked in the parking lot all night long, coming and going at strange hours, and every time I got out to walk towards the head, somebody would get out of their car and sort of sidle towards me. This was a bit of a shocker, frankly; I've only ever read about sidling, in books where the word is used to describe the locomotive process of a shifty or dodgy character. I had never actually seen sidling before. (I also have yet to witness gallivanting, and, remember, I lived on Capitol Hill in Seattle for many years. If there's gallivanting to be seen, you can bet that it's going on up there on Broadway.)

Once it became clear that I was in fact heading for the restroom, the sidlers would generally clear off, sidling back ("backsidling?") the way they had come, and I never did figure out what was going on, although I figured out enough of what was going on to know that I didn't want to know more. (Again: years of Capitol Hill weirdness.)

I woke up this morning and drove through Duluth into Wisconsin, and discovered, on the Wisconsin side of US 53, just the other side of Duluth, several decent-sized truck stops. Oh well. Reference for the next time I come through here.

I made it to La Crosse (French for "The Crosse") about an hour and a half early, but they were ready for me and loaded me up right away, which was nice, as it meant I could get moving and get closer to Chicago, which I did. I made it all the way here to Madison before it got dark. I was hoping that the TA here would have Star Trek on DVD, but no such luck. I drove past about ten Wal-Marts on the way to La Crosse today, but I didn't want to take the time to go inside. Oh well, I can always get a copy when I get home.

Okay, movie and sleep. I want to get going early tomorrow so I can get this junk off my trailer so I can get some other junk on the trailer and GO HOME.

Oh, and I had a nice chat with Big Dave on the telephonic device. He's going to Japan for a few days next week. I seethe with jealousy.

Remember, you can't spell "Duluth" without "dull." Sort of.

Woke up at 2:30 AM my time and got rolling towards Floodwood, found the jobsite with little difficulty, got the stuff off of the trailer, and rolled back up US 2 to a small truck stop. I shut down there, got a bite to eat, and took a nap, which stretched on through the day.

I finally got the call at 1:30 PM my time to roll to St Paul, Minnesota. No wait, don't go to St. Paul, go to La Crosse, Wisconsin. Sigh. They've been doing this a lot lately: sending me cryptic and incomplete instructions to go someplace with all haste, about an hour before I run out of time for the day so that I can't get there right away. Plus, I'm out in the middle of nowhere, where I'm lucky to find a rest area to shut down, let alone a truck stop or plaza.

I called Morbo.

"I've got a quarter-tank of fuel and about ninety minutes of time left," I said. "I can make it to Duluth."

So, I made it to Duluth. There are no truck stops in Duluth, NONE. There is something downtown called a "Travel Center," with four diesel pumps and no place to park overnight, and a rest area on the outskirts overlooking the town, and that's it. I got to the travel center and fueled up, then made it to this rest area just in time to shut down.

Tomorrow afternoon I'm going to pick up in La Crosse, then they want me to deliver the next morning to Frankfort, Illinois, which is a suburb of Chicago. Then they are supposed to be finding a load for me to pick up in the Gary yard going back to Seattle, and then I'm going to take a week off and not think about trucks or driving, and go and soak my knee for hours on end at the sento, and watch TV and drink beer at home, and eat loads of Chinese and Japanese food, and make spaghetti Carbonara at Dpgnat's house.

Okay. DVD and sleep.

Didn't take too long to drive up here and the border crossing was as easy as possible. I found a VERY small Esso fuel stop close by tomorrow's drop; the store was closed and there was a big sign saying "AUTHORIZED PARKING ONLY," but another sign with the owner's home phone number on it.

But no area code.

I saw another Esso across the street, and thought the two might be owned by the same folks. I walked over and talked to the nice Asian lady behind the counter, who informed me that the area code for Winnipeg is 204 and that they didn't own my station.

I walked back and phoned the guy, and asked very politely if I could park my rig here overnight, and he said, "Sure, no problem."

So I went back across the street again to use their restroom and chat some more with the nice Asian lady. It turned out she is originally from Korea, and she and her husband had both heard of Federal Way, which isn't at all surprising. As a matter of fact, their daughter will be going to medical school soon, and the father wants her to attend UW so that they would have an excuse to move to Seattle.

"He hates the weather up here," she said.

Nice people.

Anyway, that's about it. Hopefully I'll get something tomorrow coming back out of Winnipeg going towards home. Now a DVD and relaxation. Into my sixth week now, so I'm really trying to be careful.

On this run I've visited two new states and one new province. I'll have to redo my map soon.

Not much to say about actually getting here; I woke up in Wisconsin, drove through Minnesota, turned right at Fargo, and here I am. I did call Mom and have a nice chat with her, though.

Got here to this truck stop about noonish and discovered that it was just the other side of the freeway from all kinds of wonderful stores, like Best Buy and Waldenbooks and Target. I walked over there, my knee brace holding up nicely, and looked around, but I didn't buy much, just a couple of books. I've already got three games I'm working on for the PSP, so I don't need any more, and Star Trek isn't out on DVD for another couple of days, so I didn't get any new movies.

As I was walking over to the mall I got a call from Dpgnat, which always makes me feel better.

Inside the mall, I realized that the holiday season is off and running. Everyone was putting decorations up, except the people at Waldenbooks: there's a Borders going in across the street, and it's the same company, so they're shutting up shop before too long.

On my way back, I spotted something that made hope rise up inside my heart. It's amazing how the words "Japanese Restaurant" can just thrill me. I walked over to the place, and it was open.

And it was, words fail me, not so great.

To start with, there were no Asian people in the place, let alone any Japanese people. Not even any working there. The chef was a gaijin, the waitress certainly wasn't from Japan. I ordered hot green tea from the menu, and they brought me regular. I ordered edamame (boiled and salted baby green soybeans, delicious and healthy), and they came to the table buttered. The rice was dry, and the katsu cutlet was... well, it was okay, to be honest, and the stir-fried veggies on the side were pretty decent too.

I mean, I ate everything, but it all seemed like Japanese cuisine as prepared by someone who'd only ever had it described to them.

However, I shouldn't have expected much. It's not like we're always hearing stories about the massive Japanese community in Grand Forks. The service was certainly quick and attentive, and they got my order right.

But now I really want to get home and eat some real food.

I'm going to sleep in a bit tomorrow, have some breakfast here at the truck stop, then drive the last hundred and thirty miles to Winnipeg and shut down in front of the consignee for the night. That way I'll be ready to go at seven AM when they get there, and I'll be ready to get out of there too.

Okay, book, DVD, sleep.

Packed it in early today, only four hundred miles.

I decided to go ahead and stop here in Wilson at this lovely little truck stop because it's really the last decent place before heading into Minneapolis, and I didn't really want to be driving through rush hour Minneapolis traffic on a Friday if I could help it.

The longer I'm out on the road, the lighter I tend to run, because my temper is already pretty thin and I get tired really easily.

Oh well. I got the DVD of Up today, and I've already watched it once. This film is as lovely as I remember it, with a soundtrack by Michael Giacchino, who is my new favorite music director. His work on this film is subtle and wistful, but his work on The Incredibles was exciting and evocative of those '60s adventure films, and his work on Star Trek was vivid and thrilling. He really has the flexibility to provide atmosphere for any sort of film, unlike some other composers I can name. (coughDannyElfmancough).

Okay, I'm hitting all the wrong buttons, so I'm going to put in a DVD and sleep. One of the nice things about this truck stop is that they have seriously hot showers, so I was able to get nice and warmed up before having some fish and veggies for dinner and coming back here to the heated truck. G'night.