Thursday, September 10, 2009

Comrades In Driving

I've been thinking about my fellow blogging drivers and thought I'd do a little post to honor my comrades on wheels by giving you all a little heads up to some of the men and women out there who haul your shit around the country. Drumroll please.........


THE HIGHWAY HAGS

What can I say about my favorite women? I really want to gush, but they seriously might think I'm a deranged fan or a stalker. Although, stalking in a seventy-five foot vehicle isn't very sneaky or stalker-y, so I guess I'm safe if I do my gushing from a distance. And as I write this, they're stuck in Memphis and well, I'm not. So they'll never catch me.

Hedon and Stace are two very intelligent, very witty, very well read women. And I don't mean they're reading People magazine either. They write about boobery on the road, the evil that employs them (known as TWMNBN - Those Who Must Not Be Named) including Uriah (the evildoers manservant), and they also post pictures every once in a while (which usually depict seedy side roads in Newark or docks they deliver at that have a large rat population). They're also pretty into politics, although sometimes they have to abstain from the idiocy that is the news so their heads don't explode. Stace is particularly careful of staying away from the television during times when hot issues are being debated ad nauseum. Also, she severly limited herself when the
bumbling “Decider” was in office.

You won’t get a picture of these two since they’re camera shy, but there are plenty of pictures of Maggie; that’s her up there on the pink satin, posing for her Glamour Shot. She's cute as a damn button, so when you think about it, who really cares to know what my two favorite trucking bloggers actually look like. I think I can live without it. I've seen so many pictures of Maggie that if I were to spot her in a truck stop, I'd just have her lead me to the Hags. But, if you can’t sleep without seeing what they look like, click
here to see what they have to say about themselves. Consider yourself warned...you are entering a domain where the inhabitants exist solely on Diet Coke, dog biscuits (Maggie, not the Hags) and books on tape.

I'm pretty critical and I don't like to waste my time reading crap, so I'm pretty confident that I'm recommending a good time here. From Stace's
exquisite green eyes to Hedon's gigantic ass, I love every inch of them. I hope you do too.


GI-GI ROXX


Gi-Gi calls herself an "Over-The-Road Adventuress", and boy is she. A beautiful, young (just turned 30 on Tuesday!), cheeky solo driver, she provides some excellent posts for our reading pleasure. She's very wordy, and I mean that in a good way because I LOVE it!

She writes in the same manner I'd imagine she talks. I feel like I'm sitting at her kitchen table or across the booth in a truck stop listening to her when I read her posts. (She probably should know that I laugh and smile at all the right spots when she's telling her stories.) I also always read her posts to Ed whether he wants to hear them or not. We sit three feet apart; he has no choice.

Why? Because I'm in awe that she does this all by herself. I have Ed if I get into a jam on a street that's too small or magically turns into a dead-end; Gi-Gi calls the local police to help her out. I have Ed if there's an icky looking guy loading the truck at a shipper and I just don't want to deal with him; Gi-Gi does it herself. If I'm jonesing for a Hostess Cupcake at midnight, I have Ed who will walk across a dark truckstop parking lot to get it for me; Gi-Gi has to do it herself. Of course our situations are different since we're team drivers and she's not, but still. Although, Ed would probably love having a team driver like her! At least she'd get out and slide the tandems if they needed to be moved. I would just be like, "Tandems? We don't have those, do we?" Which of course translates into Ed doing it. (We actually don't have tandems.)

Go on over and
check her out; in most cases, you'll get a blow-by-blow on what a day in the life of a truck driver is really like. She's very descriptive and gives great detail. And she also posts plenty of pictures. She drives for the big orange pumpkin and has even gone as far to give her truck a name; it used to be “Trucky” until they retired Trucky and gave her a new ride. Now she travels the highways in the saddle of “Kenny”, who for all intents and purposes, goes by the affectionate nickname of “Squeak”. Read this post to find out how the gears in her head churned to come up with that one.


FANDANGO TRAVELERS

Tony and Jana hail from the Lonestar State.....waaaaaaay down near the border in the tiny town of Terlingua. Say that five times fast; tinytownofterlingua, tinytownofterlingua, tinytownofterlingua, tinytownofterlingua, toonyternoftoonlingua.

Towny Tern of Toonlingua??? See what happens!

Anyway, Jana writes the blog and you’ll find many pictures of places they travel, locations they deliver, restaurants they eat in and places Jana shops (check out her Asheville, NC finds!). She reads a lot, loves music and
crochets like a fiend!!

I’m starting to feel like a real slacker since I’ve never made anything that I can actually snuggle up to in my truck! Knitting needles might be considered a weapon at some places (those hyper-vigilant military installations), but I think I might be able to sneak through a crochet hook!


ALL THINGS BRADBURY

At this location, you’ll find Ruth Ann and Ralph “Brad” Bradbury. Salt of the earth folks from West Virginia document their travels through Ruth Ann's e.e.cummings style of writing. She eschews the use of capital letters.

I'm a big fan of these two people. Never met 'em, but like them nonetheless. They are funny and kind, have some of the best white knuckle adventures I've ever read, and as "internet friends" have often reached out to include us in their lives...they even invited us to join them for Father's Day at their home, even though they were planning on having a house full of people!

I have to say, I might be a bit in love with them because Brad barbecues a mean rib (so I hear) and Ruth Ann can whip up one of Ed's favorite meals (Biscuits and Gravy) with her eyes closed. I'm guessing we'd get along pretty good if we sit down over a plate of those! We keep going back and forth about getting together and they've invited us so many times I can't count anymore, but I won't stay away forever. One of these days we'll be passing through and I promise you I'll be right on their doorstep. Ruth Ann better have those biscuits ready!


CAFFEE'S TRAVELS

Linda and Bob Caffee are expedite drivers. That means the stuff they haul has to be there yesterday. I'd imagine that kind of thing can be stressful when you have to deal with the same traffic, accidents and slow moving tourists that we do. Getting stuck behind grandma and grandpa in their RV on the way to Quartzsite for the winter has got to make them want to pull their hair out! But then, these are people who HIKE, so they obviously like torture and pushing themselves to limits unknown to sorry drivers like us.

From one of their early posts, Linda tells a little bit about them and how they got into the expedite business: “We have been married thirty-one years and have two daughters. Bob was a mechanic and has worked on cars, irrigation motors and diesel engines and was the shop foreman for Morton County, Kansas. I was a stay at home mom until the girls started school. I was very lucky to start out on the ground floor when our county first started getting computerized. I started the county's in house mapping program and was involved with the county’s re-appraisal. I worked at the courthouse for 14 years and left as supervisor of Data Processing. Throughout Bob’s career when an extra truck driver was needed, Bob or I would fill in. We both have our class A licenses and over the years have hauled grain to elevators, hauled water to drilling rigs, and would fill in at times as a dump truck driver. We knew when the girls left home to attend college we would go through the empty nest syndrome so we made plans for our future. We started our research in the trucking world. Our youngest daughter was still in high school, so we decided Bob would go to truck driving school and I would continue my job until she graduated. Our plans included me eventually going to school so we could drive as a team. I figured out really quick I liked that passenger seat and every time I looked in the mirror and saw 53" of trailer behind us I became even more attached to that seat! We were from a very rural area of SW Kansas with all two lane roads and the closest stop light was 35 miles from our small town, all of the traffic situations that Bob got us through constantly amazed me. After being out on the road for a year as a driver Bob decided that being a driver was not for him so we started a lawn care business….."


Intrigued? Read the rest of the story here. They have moved from their original blogspot location, so when you're done over there, visit them over here at Expediter's Online.


DECORINA AND SKYLAR

This multi-talented woman is a truck driver AND an interior designer. She currently lives in Colorado but has also set up house in Virginia and the historical copper mining towns of Arizona. On her blog you'll find pictures of fabric samples, before and after shots of renovations and politics, politics, politics.

She loves our president (I think even more than I do!) and blogs her little heart out about him and much of what's going on in our country today. She doesn't have much tolerance for idiots (unfortunately, there are a lot of them out there) but she doesn't mind a good debate.

If you don't have a strong stomach for politics, you might want to skip those posts and read the other goodies!


~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
1 YEAR AGO:
Black, White And Tan
2 YEARS AGO:
If Wishes Were Horses, Beggars Would Fart At The Speed Of Light
3 YEARS AGO:
Draped In Sarcasm
4 YEARS AGO:
Feast Your Eyes

12 comments:

all things bradbury said...

wow!...our first review!....thanks for all the kind words, for us and everyone else....and as always, the door is always open....it doesn't take long to whip up some biscuits!

Gil said...

Great tribute to your friends! I'll have to wander over to their blogs. Thanks.

Angela said...

Oh yay! I love it. I get to read about myself, and the others that entertain me! Great blog... thanks for the pimping! ;o)

Team Caffee said...

Wow how cool! You really know how to write and get us very intrigued... You have wrote about new people that I will have to start following. Great Job!!!

Fandango Travelers said...

Gee, I'm blushing. I love it that you put us all together on here. It's fun to feel like I'm included in the "Cool Group" with all my other trucker/blogger heroes.

Decorina said...

Thanks, Salena for including me in such a great group! Nice to see more details about other drivers. Now, I need to go change my email address on the blog. I changed providers and can't get the email part ironed out yet.

Stace said...

Thanks Salena! We love you right back, girlfriend. :-)

Douglas Halfpenny said...

Salena
It's fun to read about the people you care about. Especially knowing that some, maybe many, you've never met. I'm always amazed how we need to feel connected to others and how they fill our various gaps and needs just by being who they are.

I can't believe how much I miss my brother having connected with you! He was rarely home (you know this well) but when he was, we got the stories. Yes, yes I only believed half of them!

By the way, Halfpenny is Irish which could explain a lot. I probably shouldn't go into too much detail here because I know you got friends ... lotsa friends .. and what must they think of me?

My blog was written after a meeting with my new business partners on Long Island, NY. in August. At that meeting (ran over 6 hours) there was a nay-sayer who kept killing everybody's ideas and I recalled the "YES ... AND" ploy we used in improv theatre. It worked amazingly well and even the nay-sayer caught on.

Thanks for the callback on FB and I look forward to traveling with you on The Daily Rant.

Best regards, Doug Halfpenny

Michelle | Bleeding Espresso said...

Awesome list, thanks for sharing! Have you thought of doing a group blog with a bit from all of you? Something like, I don't know, 10-4, or Over and Out, or Breaker 1-9?

(Yes, I come from a family of truckdrivers...my grandmother used to be Grandma Moses on the CB) ;)

Douglas Halfpenny said...

Hey Salena

I wrote on the Hags blog yesterday exactly that. A shared blog called "Blog Rolling" or "Best of Rolling Blogs". Point is your "considerable talents" should be shared with the world.
Regards, Doug

I sent you an email at the aol address. Does it still work?

Anonymous said...

...so enjoyed the interesting read about other truckers (you are my first)...Miss Tooth Arkansas still has me laughing...reading your blog enriches my life...thanks for sharing...your eternal fan..MAE

Hedon said...

You know...

if there was actually any interest from all the other folk you mentioned here...

I think I would be happy to set up a communal type blog that we could all post at with links back to each person's individual blog. Maybe something like "truckers_road_stories.com" or something similar. It could seriously provide some page-rank juice to everyone involved along with possibly turning new readers on to your own personal blog.

There are enough of us that each team involved would only need to be prepared to post once every ten days or so and it would still have plenty of content.

Also, most of us don't post only about trucking on our personal blogs so if the community blog were only about trucking stories you could probably cross-post or re-post old trucking stories you've already posted in the past on your personal blog. This could make them available to a whole new group of readers.

I'm thinking a lean and clean design, no ads, and lots of links back to everyone's personal blogs. It would probably only take me about a week to set up then everyone could post whenever they felt like it as you would all be registered as "editors" with posting rights.

Just something I was considering doing... not 100% sure I'm up for it but wanted to see what everyone thought before investing any more thought into the project.

Any interest out there?