I'm so tired tonight that my first thought was to just hang it up for the evening and forget about posting anything to the blog... but I've had so much caffeinated soda throughout the day today, that it may be well after midnight before the eyes finally close for good.

   Was up at 7:00 a.m. this morning and ready to get an early start on the road. My brother-in-law, Mark, had found me a covered spot out at the Co-op he works at, to park the truck and trailer in over night. That way it would at least be protected if it started hailing along with the rain the area had during the evening. So he, being up and off to work even earlier, drove it back over to the house for me about the time I got up, and told me that he had 'aired' up all of the tires and that he had found the reason the back rear truck tire was losing air. Seems that I had picked up a small screw somewhere along the way and it was causing a slow leak that didn't really become apparent until I hitched the trailer up to the pickup and put all of that weight on to the rear end.

   Mark managed to get me in to see their tire guy first thing this morning so we drove over there and this really skinny guy, whom I forget the name of, took the tire off the truck, dismounted it from the rim, removed the screw and patched the hole, then put it all back together again and mounted it back on the truck, and did it all in 15 minutes or less. The really cool thing is that the whole thing only cost me a grand total of $15.

   With all of that going on, it was nearly 9:00 before I actually got on the road this morning, so about an hour or so late. Rainy, cool and a little foggy for the first couple of hours. Very pleasant driving however as I headed north to catch I-80 EB. After that it was pretty much steady driving other than stopping for gas every 200 miles or so. Still a stiff head wind for most of the morning, so gas mileage went down to the 8-9 miles per gallon range... ouch! Once I passed Omaha and turned south however, what little wind that was left, was behind me and I managed to do 10+ per gallon and that was with the air conditioning on the whole time.

    Pretty pleasant and uneventful driving for the most part. Of course there was that 1-2 seconds of terror late in the day when some semi truck driver missed his turn off to Kansas City and nearly took me and another vehicle out with him as he swerved across two lanes of traffic to get back onto the exit. But we all survived the incident and none of us are the worst for wear from it.

   Currently tucked into a rest area just west of Columbia Missouri and am hoping to get a few hours of shut-eye here. Will have to see how it goes as the highway is very close by and very noisy right now, plus I am sure some semi will come in and park right next to me sometime during the night and leave his generator going the whole time. Oh well... I always have a good set of ear plugs handy if I need them.

                         Hunger

Hawks sit silently on the fence posts in the early morning light.
       They wear their foggy shroud like a mantel around hunched shoulders.
The sun is there, somewhere in the east, but for now all is cold and grey and damp.
        Silent eyes stare out over the empty fields... they search in vain for movement.
Hunger is their companion this morning. They sit without motion and wait.


On the highway, cars pass, some going east, some going west.
     You can hear them in the distance even though they are hidden by the fog along the river.
Inside their sealed cocoon's the heaters purr as people stare at the passing billboards.
      The next exit has a Denny's or a McDonalds, hot coffee and donuts.
There is no need to wait when others have prepared your food for you.