So here we are, a guy who values the privacy of himself, his family and freinds, blabbing about his doings right here for the entire world to see!!
I suppose anything ten years old or earlier would have to go into a separate, ancient history file. Otherwise this blog would end up five hundred pages long and I'd have to find a publisher!
So, I could start about ten years ago. Around that time I suppose one could say I ventured off on a path totally different from the trail I had been plodding along before.
Stress!! In the late summer of 1998 my ex-wife, unwittingly started a chain of events that introduced to my life the entire list of top stress producers in a very short period of time. Between September of 1998 and June of 1999 I managed to experience Divorce, Loss or Sickness of a Spouse...
(she was diagnosed with cancer two months after leaving and since she had left, and moved on to her own life, I was completely in the dark about her condition and outcome for nearly 18months! Imagine reading daily obituaries hoping NOT to see the woman you married listed! But, thankfully today she is a survivor!!)
...a Job Change, (more like a complete lifestyle change!) a Major Relocation, and a New Relationship.
Shortly after finding myself a single guy again, while working in a very unsatisfying job..(or was it a pointless, meaningless GRIND?) I made a decision to train as a truck driver. Looking back at that time it was probably a form of ESCAPE! About the time I finished training and started with my first trucking job, I also met my freind Debra from Vancouver, Washington, and it was only a few months before I threw out half my stuff and saved or stored the rest, and moved there. The lesson is that 'rebound relationships' rarely work, but they CAN result in very good freindships. Debra and I long ago buried the boyfreind/girlfreind status and have become very good freinds! She and I have, with each others families shared deaths, marriages, births and life goes on as we all learn and grow. And I will add, looking back over all the people I have known over all the years, Debra is without a doubt one of the most caring, kindhearted, giving people I have ever known. I have often joked that if she discovered that the mother-in-law of the third cousin, of the step-brother of the stranger who lived 5 houses down had a birthday, or some other occasion, she would find a way to celebrate it!!!!
I had been involved in Logistics in one way or the other since 1972 when I found myself in a Transportation unit in the Air Force. All those years of seeing the trucks come and go must have put a bug in my head at some point. I started with a west coast company here at home and spent four years traveling the I-5, Seattle to LA corridor with frequent side trips as far east as Denver. On the third year I began going to places outside the normal company freight lanes, and visted places like Chicago, Kansas City and Dallas.
Shortly after finding myself a single guy again, while working in a very unsatisfying job..(or was it a pointless, meaningless GRIND?) I made a decision to train as a truck driver. Looking back at that time it was probably a form of ESCAPE! About the time I finished training and started with my first trucking job, I also met my freind Debra from Vancouver, Washington, and it was only a few months before I threw out half my stuff and saved or stored the rest, and moved there. The lesson is that 'rebound relationships' rarely work, but they CAN result in very good freindships. Debra and I long ago buried the boyfreind/girlfreind status and have become very good freinds! She and I have, with each others families shared deaths, marriages, births and life goes on as we all learn and grow. And I will add, looking back over all the people I have known over all the years, Debra is without a doubt one of the most caring, kindhearted, giving people I have ever known. I have often joked that if she discovered that the mother-in-law of the third cousin, of the step-brother of the stranger who lived 5 houses down had a birthday, or some other occasion, she would find a way to celebrate it!!!!
I had been involved in Logistics in one way or the other since 1972 when I found myself in a Transportation unit in the Air Force. All those years of seeing the trucks come and go must have put a bug in my head at some point. I started with a west coast company here at home and spent four years traveling the I-5, Seattle to LA corridor with frequent side trips as far east as Denver. On the third year I began going to places outside the normal company freight lanes, and visted places like Chicago, Kansas City and Dallas.
I got the bug to get out and stretch my legs and switched to a major carrier in Nebraska where I really started to travel. I had a road atlas that I carried (after nearly ten years it was VERY VERY well worn) and after my second year with that company and combined with the regional travels with the first one, I discovered by highlighting the routes in that atlas, that I had covered every Interstate Highway in the lower 48 states (except Maine) almost all the US highways and a good part of each individual State's highways, and visiting ALL the major metro areas became commonplace.
Often people would ask (and still do) what was your favorite part of the country. Funny thing, they all expect some wonderfully exciting, "travelogue" on my adventures. Truth be told that after logging well over one million miles behind the wheel of a semi truck, ALL OF IT has blended together into a faded, nearly distant memory. There are times when something will trigger a thought of a fun trip, a good load, the excitement of being chased by a tornado or two. (one was close enough to get me to start thinking that it was time to "quit this stuff") I've driven through the back end of hurricanes (Ivan), been in too many whiteout snowstorms where you trust the orange poles marking the ditch are accurate (IF you can see them!!) all the while knowing you cant stop from the danger of getting rearended by another truck! Driving in winds that could lift the rear trailer tires off the road became the course of a normal day. I know highways in this country where a typical winter trip reveals a truck on its side in the ditch every twenty miles! I'll keep to myself those times that carelessness, and irresponsibilty ended up in a far too close up view of the absolute WASTE of needless accidents. Even today I shake my head at the complete oblivious state of mind that most people drive in! If they only had a clue! Oh, by the way, my favorite part of the country? It's right here at home Toto. Just click your heels!
Several years ago, I found myself picking up a load of freight someplace in California (I think it was Visalia) where I met another driver from our company. I was going to Tampa, Florida with my load. Joy, was off to Chicago with hers. So we ended up travelling together, chasing each others bumpers as far as Amarillo, Texas, where after forming a new freindship our routes split.
The ensuing months and trips found us crossing paths all across the country and finding time to stop for mealbreaks and for me to absorb some of the thoughts and opinions of my living, breathing Bible Reference Guide and freind!!
Over a period of time, I think we both began convincing one another that 'regular people like us' have no business running all over the country in a "no life" life. She bailed about a year before I did, and is now settled in the Rocky Mountains, and our "get-to-gethers" now come in the form of occasional phone visits. But it should be said that the old jingle of "You meet the nicest people on a Honda", should be revised to "You meet the nicest people in a Freightliner"!! :)
About four years ago out of nowhere, a long forgotten interest in boats surfaced. One day I was driving across Montana, of all places, when I thought, I need a house....then I thought, who will cut my grass and take out the garbage? Then the idea of living on a boat began poking into my thoughts. Soon the thoughts turned into actually LOOKING at boats, with the guidance of my freind Neil ( I always seem to have to good fortune when starting a new adventure to be guided by absolute 'gurus' in the thing I find myself pursuing!..more on that later) who knows everything from the top of the mast to the bottom of the keel about boats!
I ended up moving back to Tacoma and into a thirty year old, 33 foot sailboat where I liveaboard today and it is from here that you read this prose! There are days when I ponder whether I did the right thing. When I was on the road, and home only for a few days at a time living aboard was a wonderful break from the truck. But I have to honestly say that after enduring a freezing winter aboard, climbing on deck in lousy weather to refill my water tanks, worrying about the dockpower overdoing the limitations of my wiring, staying warm, and trying to eat without proper refrigeration, I began to wonder. However, I also remind myself that I have a waterfront home with 360 degree water views, freindly marina neighbors, frequent ducks and an occasional seal passing by, not to mention the cheery racket of the ever-present seagull. And there is something to be said for getting gently rocked to sleep.
Now I have yet another 'guru' to add to my little group. And this story I tell becuase I think there is a message worth telling. While I was on the road, I absolutely detested truckstops and the people who frequented them. Chainsmoking truckdrivers who lost their bar of soap last year, with an unbending opinion on EVERYTHING, were not the sort of characters I wanted to share a meal with! I ended up eating in my little rolling "house" parked as far away from the filth, ( yeah they pour the contents of their Gatorade bottle "toilets" onto the lot!! I'm serious...truck drivers are PIGS!!) as I could and spent my down time logged into a laptop.
In some attempt to keep a connection to home, I began perusing the online version of our local paper. In there I got involved with posting comments to published articles and letters. After awhile there seemed to be a gathering of regular participants.
There was one in particular I had banged heads with over one issue or another. Lisa being labelled the Left Wing Wacko, Hippie, Liberal. And Dale, earning the title of the Right Wing, Republican, Conservative. As you can guess we had a few shall we say disagreements. Haa!
However it wasnt before long that our mutual interests down here on the water, ended up with a distant face to face "meeting" and a wave, and I think, the realization that we were both actually HUMAN! After that our 'battles" dissolved into freindlier exchanges. On occasion, we even sided together in arguments against others! Now the story goes further.
Lisa read where I made a comment about buying a bicycle. I knew some truck drivers who carried bikes with them, and I had a remote idea about maybe buying one for some vague notion of getting in shape. I started a regular walking routine last June when I came home, but this winter I, literally on the spur of the moment, bought a bike!
Now then, back to the story. So, Lisa reads in our online newspaper comment section that "Dale has a bike!?" Then she actually DARED me, in a public forum, to a ride around our local park.
(Photo's courtesy of Lisa and her kewl hi tech camera!)
This was after several short, flat, just around the block, excursions that I had been doing on my own.
So, the park, the ride. It was FIVE MILES! Something I wouldnt have considered in the past. When I discovered it was 'do-able', and actually not all that difficult, I was HOOKED!!
I try to ride every day and its ALWAYS at least 5 to 10 miles of the hilly route at the Park, or two to three hours of steady riding on flat ground in another part of town.
My weight ( which was never really bad) has dropped maybe fifteen pounds since last summer. My attitude is EXCELLENT. I find I have no interest in 'banging heads' anymore with differing opinions that prove nothing. My chronic backaches from years behind the steering wheel have vanished and I feel ten years younger....actually maybe more. When I was 43 I didn't feel THIS good!!
So, there you have it. Dales life in a nutshell. Its been up, its been down, its been here and there. Happily the downs have been far less than the ups. Today I enjoy life with the knowledge that REAL wealth is in the peace and tranquility that only comes from good health, good freinds and family. All the material junk is simply "rust and dust".
Welcome to my blog. Stay tuned for updates.
