30th Birthday and 3 Hard Weeks

In February and March we had a rough few weeks.

Week #1
For the first time since we have had our potato run (about two years) our shipper didn't have enough potatoes for us on Tuesday. Too bad they didn't tell us this until we'd been sitting in the door for nearly eight hours. That meant we obviously couldn't leave Idaho until Wednesday morning which meant that we wouldn't be able to deliver in N.C. until Friday morning which meant we wouldn't be able to load in N.C. until Friday night (both of those things usually happen on Thursday) and that meant we wouldn't be home until Sunday morning (are you sensing a pattern?) which ultimately meant that I would be celebrating my 30th birthday on the road. :( I was a little bit upset about that but Chris was more concerned about it than I was. It was actually kind of cute how worried he was. Once we knew we weren't going anywhere for the night we decided to have some fun with it. We found out where some restaurants were as well as a movie theater. We ate Mexican and then saw two movies back to back. First we saw Taken and then The International. Surprisingly, I liked them both a lot. I had been afraid they might be to suspenseful for me. Nope. They were great. In between our double feature, we played some arcade games (shoot-em-up's and racing) and we got our pictures taken in one of those old school photo booths. It was pretty funny cramming into one of those. I kept forgetting to look in the right place and we decided funny faces were definitely the way to go.
It turned out to be a great 30th birthday celebration. I truly love spending all of my time with Chris. Nevertheless, we were a day late delivering our potatoes. When we got there they were very understanding (of course, since it wasn't our fault) but our guy made a comment about "I'll need them here by Thursday next week". Of course! No problem!

Week #2
We got to Idaho. We were loaded with our potatoes. We hit the road. About 8:15 PM in the middle of Wyoming (Stupid Wyoming!) we hit a snowstorm (more of a windstorm that was blowing the snow around) and found they had shut the freeway down about 15 minutes before we got there. Luckily we were able to get a parking spot at the truck stop right there instead of having to drive back to Rawlins to find a place to park. Unluckily, they kept the freeway shut down for 14 and a half hours. ARE YOU KIDDING ME??? For the first time in our driving experience the road was closed for more then 5 hours. Seriously. Why oh why couldn't this have happened in another month or so? Why this week, back to back with last week? When Murphy strikes he really hits you hard. It was not a great night. We couldn't sleep through the night because you can never be sure when they'll open the road up so every hour I would wake up to find out if the way was clear. Nope, nope, nope. Finally at 10:30 in the morning we were on our way. However, because we had to sit there overnight it meant we wouldn't be able to deliver in N.C. until Friday, AGAIN! Which meant... we wouldn't make it home until Sunday again. BLAH! (I'm using a lot of exclamation points and all caps on purpose!!!)

Week #3
We somehow made it to N.C. on Thursday and delivered just as we have done for two years. Oh happy day! On the way to our shipper in Statesville I noticed I wasn't accelerating up the hill. I thought my cruise control must have kicked off (it's done that a few times) but when I went to give it some gas... nothing. I cruised for a few seconds until the engine turned off and we decided I needed to get off the road before my steering wheel locked up. Long story short: we were stuck on the side of the road about 25 miles from Statesville. We had to get a tow truck to come rescue us (a first for Dobson Transport) and ended up staying overnight in a hotel because they couldn't get us fixed until the next day. So once again this meant... you guessed it. We didn't get home until Sunday. Three weeks in a row! What on earth is going on? We did have a fun night in the hotel. We stayed up really late and watched all the History channel and Discovery channel we could (we love that kind of TV). It was fun but certainly we would have preferred being home on a Saturday.



After the truck broke down we started to do some thinking. We realized that we were spending more money on maintenance on our truck then if we were to get a new used truck and make payments. We thought a little more and when we finally made it back to Utah we began the process of buying a new truck. So now we have a new one. It's almost exactly the same as our old one (I won't even bother posting a picture) except much more wonderful. It's newer, is a full automatic (no clutch this time), has less miles and is so quiet and smooth. We love love love it. The mattress inside is heaven to sleep on, too. We didn't realize how bad our old mattress was until we laid down on the new one and didn't sink towards each other in the middle. We actually stayed in our own spots. It was such a revelation. We are sleeping so much better now because there's less rattling and a wonderful bed beneath us.
I must admit that when we were moving from one truck to the other (a process I never want to repeat. We're still not completely moved in yet) I did get a little teary over it. Our truck has been so good to and for us. We put 1.1 million miles on that truck and even though we had some major repairs (especially recently) it was such a good truck for us. We'll miss our 222.

As for our new truck, we gave it the number of 795. This number has some significance to us because when we first started the loan process the first place came back with an offer of 18% interest. Are you kidding me? The next approval we got had an interest rate of 12%. It was better but certainly higher then we were expecting. Plus one of the loans had a prepayment penalty and one of them had a balloon payment at the end (I can't remember which was which). Finally, third times the charm, we got an approval we could deal with: 7.95% with no prepayments or balloons. Hooray. We'll take it. And that's where our number 795 came from. Just thought I'd share that tidbit of info.

So this week on our drive home we hit a snowstorm (in Wyoming, of course) and had to sit on the freeway for over three hours in the middle of the day waiting for it to open up. This is what we looked like.

(I had to trek through some pretty deep snow to get those pictures. Ü)

Since that made us so late getting home, I was annoyed I wouldn't be able to get my house clean from the party we had for Chris and Brady's birthday on Monday before 'Nara came to visit. Tiff was so wonderful and she came to my house and vacuumed and swept for me so that I wouldn't be so stressed. I'm so lucky to have a friend like her. THANK YOU, TIFF! So in a nutshell (a very large nutshell) that's how life's been going lately.