When I asked at Starbucks the next morning if they had found a memory card, they said no, so I was surprised to find it on the floor right by the chair I sat in yesterday. Obviously, the floor didn’t get swept overnight. The card is only an inch square but was in plain sight.
The sun was shining brightly as I drove due south for several hours before pulling into a truck stop in the middle of nowhere in a place called Beto Junction at the intersection of US75 and I35. It was early afternoon, very busy with trucks coming and going, but I was tired and hung out in the van for a few hours, reading and taking a nap. I love stopping at venues like this when traveling, places with hundreds miles of prairie out the window, not urban or even suburban. There was a single motel (the Wyatt Earp) with a life-size buffalo sculpture on the lawn. It wasn't a hard decision to stay the night (but not in the motel).
Semi drivers intrigue me…What about their lives apart from the road, the long days of driving, the kind of money they make, the companies who hire them, their trucks which vary from ordinary and generic to highly polished with gleaming chrome and bright paint; how do they maintain a healthy lifestyle should they wish to do so? Some drivers have dogs also. Some are African-American but most Caucasian. One cattle truck idled for 30 minutes right in front of me, with the cows inside making small clicking noises as they jostled in their confined space. In my experience, the drivers are quiet, go about their business, drink a lot of coffee, use these stops for what they need and move on through wonderful sunny dry days but also through cold wet nights and tornado alleys and snow in the mountains...and heavy traffic near big cities, always aware and watchful of passenger cars and RVs and smaller trucks, on roads where deer are prone to jump onto the highway. There was a steady movement of trucks exiting directly in front of my van, but it wasn’t bothersome or annoying. The noise is a given of course, but it becomes white noise (for me anyway). After hours of this, they started to seem like gigantic mechanical explorers heading into an alien world. With such a constant stream of them, it came surreal.
The store was orderly and clean with few offensive products. There is often a small revolving bookcase in these places with titles of faith and self-betterment, or westerns. Lots of trucking products for minor repairs, some clothing, items for smart phones and other screens, fast food, beverages (but no alcohol) and small packages of dog food. The never-ending country music on the overhead is interrupted with the shower announcements. One of these days, I'm going to try this option.
I ate in the attached Country Pride restaurant and had good food…real chunky mashed potatoes with good brown gravy and a lean hamburger steak with onions and mushrooms, with the veggie component from an adequate salad bar. I figured that Kansas would have good beef, and it did.
Late in the afternoon, clouds moved in with a forecast for 100% rain by midnight. I closed all the windows, and it did indeed rain hard, but I was completely comfortable and warm in my new sleeping clothes, feeling totally tucked in. The rain masked the truck noise and I slept well. I did put up a couple of window shades on one side which also helped reduce the fish-bowl feeling I sometimes have.
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