October 13th..early

Home by 10pm from a quick flit south.

No pics this time, although there are a couple on the camera but they are just more of the same. Left home at 2am Sunday and managed to get into Springfield, Illinois for 8am Monday. I managed to avoid having to go over the Red River scale by virtue of passing by at stupid oclock as they like to keep fairly normal hours.
I wasn't over, but the drive axles were real close and I didn't want the scrutiny. I had slid the trailer bogie forward another notch, putting the pin-to-mid axles to around 39 feet, but I didn't want to move it any more, so I just put in 100 gallons of fuel in Fargo and carried on.
The leaves in Wisconsin were absolutely amazing. they have the BC display hammered, but the light was crap and the traffic was bad so pics were not available. You will just have to take my word for it.
Anyway, I battled the construction through Illinois. I tell you, it is a joke. Almost every bit of interstate is dug up in that state. Now I like Obama. I think he has tremendous vision, unlike the opposing goons who just have deep pockets and short arms, but it is taking the piss a little that his entire state is getting their roads fixed up (except Chicago which would need levelling to fix)..

The drop was easy to find. Exit I74, turn right and follow for a few miles and, presto!! Of course, it was Columbus Day, and I found this out somewhere between I74 and the drop.. A tense little while followed, especially when my call to them was answered by voicemail! But they were open for business, and happy to take the load of lumber.
Now they have 5 loading docks. 3 are at the front and are a piece of cake to get onto. The other 2 are around the back and are total witches. Remember I said about the axles being at 39 feet instead of 41? Damned good job, too. If they had been at 41' then the truck wouldn't have made the turn.
Out of there for 0930, and the drive to the collection (Gypsum again... a little unnerving after last week) was 2 1/2 hours.. and my appointment was at 1300 hrs.. Easy as you like, right?
Well no. See, the collection was in Cayuga, Indiana. That part of Indiana is about a mile over the time zone line. It means that the last mile or so took me about 61 minutes. I got there 3 minutes late!!!
Not to worry. See, they have a minimum number of reels to load. In a van it is 7. The reels weigh about 5800lbs each so my worries for the load weight were unfounded. I came away light!!
Up through Illinois again to South Beloit, where I showered and got some grub, then I decided to hammer through to avoid the chaos which is the Twin Cities (as well as the Hudson scale... read the next paragraph, it explains why I wanted to avoid that one) So I got into the rest area at St Cloud and get some rack time.

In honesty, I had been a little tense the entire time, ever since Fargo. It was there that I discovered my wallet was not on my person, and not in the truck. It was, in fact, in the centre console of the Explorer, and it contained my driving licence, cards and, most disconcerting of all, my PR card for Canada!!!

I got to the border, having filled up and got my duty frees with the 30% discount, and explained that I had only my passport.. Canada Customs are the fairest I have ever encountered.. They couldn't care less about that. Once they zapped my passport they saw I am clearly an honest and upstanding person and let me in. I took advantage and went to get a copy of my B4 declaration which has my old gun listed on it so I should be good to import that at some point, and drove home..


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