Saturday, October 28, 2006
Southern Mississippi
I've now been on the job for a couple weeks and my job here is a bit boring. Not sure how long I'll be here but I expect it will be a couple months or longer. I must admit that while having all that off time prior to this assignment was nice, it got rather tedious after awhile and it is good to be out on the road again for a bit.
Some excitement did happen to me about a week ago though. I was heading down Hwy 63 toward Pascagoula for some lunch and heard a strange clunking emanating from the back of my truck. As I slowed down there was a couple very loud knocks and as it turned out my driveshaft ended up lying on the ground, still connected to the tranny but not the rear end. A couple guys tried to help me push it off the road but the rear end was locked up. My truck was laid up for about a week and I drove around in a little red Dodge roller skate.
All's well now, except my checking account, as I have my truck back and it seems to be running fine. With all the time off I had at the beginning of this contract and the 40 hour weeks I'm putting in here, I'll be lucky at this pace to make my contract hours which means that the January to June period upcoming will be rather lean. I'm considering going home for a weekend and bringing back my motorcycle so I'll have something more to do although I probably won't unless I can take a three day weekend. New Orleans is just a little over a hundred miles away so I intend to make it over there sometime as well.
Katrina has really devastated this area and although it is all cleaned up, homes and businesses are still in bad need of repair or demolition. The part of town nearest the Gulf had as much as 7' of water and it's all anyone talks about around here. I remember when Andrew blew through South Miami and Port St Lucie got hit with back-to-back storms a couple years ago it was the same reaction. As I mentioned I would like to go to New Orleans and check out the French Quarter but I'm not keen on having to go through the rest of the city although, after my time in India it still might not look so bad.
Monday, October 09, 2006
On the road again... Starting to get busy
I have been enjoying my time off but am really glad to be working again. I've had my fill of volunteer work for the American Legion for a while. Not that I mind the volunteer work but cooking wings for a day or striping the parking lot or hanging signs, etc is not my idea of a challenge (I do make damn good wings though).
We've been on a few good rides over the past month. Most recently we went on the Budweiser Charity Run with maybe 1,000 bikes. That was a bit much as all the stops were overwhelmed but it was for a good cause and I saw a lot of people that I hadn't seen for a while. In previous weeks we went on a big inland loop around central FL and took a nice coastal run up to St. Augustine.
