I was looking through one of my favorite forums called The Truckers Report and stumbled across a thread witrh a funny title that I had to read and then post this story to. The thread title was"the Strangest Place you're Bathed? For thoose ofd you not farmiliar with trucking we don't have showers in our sleepers unless we are lucky enough to have one of those 101" long bunks then we have everything but there are not to many of those out there! We have been known to go for several days between a bath or shower as time can play rough on us and I was doing a dedicated run to NYC and I would shower the night before I got to town and then it would be 1 and a half to two days before I got a "normal" shower. Handi wipes do help in the in between times!
So here is my post for you to enjoy:
Aside from the creeks in the oil patch, hoses, sinks, rivers and lakes I'd say the strangest place wasn't so strange as to what happened!
I was parked on Meeker Ave in Brooklyn on the 4th of July! I had finished my 2 days of deliveries and was waiting on that load message knowing it wasn't going to come in till the next day!
I NEEDED a bath badly!There are NO truck stops in the 5 boroughs or on Long Island! My friends were not home so a shower at their flat was out of the question and I wasn't going to go all the way up to the Bronx to another friends apt!
So, it's time to get ready for a truck shower! I always carry an old orange bathing suit with me for in case I get to go swimming or I need to do a jug bath! I get "dressed" for my bath and put on my flip flops and grab 3 gallons of water out from under the bunk and set then on the catwalk between the truck and trailer. I grab my wash rag and liquid soap and get the wash rag ready by squirting some soap on it and then grab my shampoo and towel and climb up on the catwalk.
Now I'm parked about half a building down from the Union Pool Bar. It's about 4 o'clock and nice and warm. I get the first gallon of water and pour it over my head and get wet and of course pull the swim trunks out a little and get "other" body parts wet and start to soap down.
Of course for "proper" washing I always start with my face and work my way down and having a face full of soap my eyes are closed.
Yes, I've washed myself enough times that I don't need lights or have to see what I'm doing! Uncle Sam helped me learn how to do a fast bath also!
Any way I'm soaping on down and get to the "other" parts and reach in with the soapy wash rag and for some reason I hear, a giggle? HUH? I'm thinking and so I do my legs and feet and then add a little more water to my head and am searching for my bottle of shampoo and I hear, "A little to you left" in a female voice!
I stand straight up with a gallon of water in my hands and rinse the soap out of my face and look towards the place where I heard the voice and to my surprise I have an audience! Apparently the whole bar emptied out as I was more interesting than sitting and talking to your friends sipping your suds!
A free show has opened out on the side walk and I'm the center of attraction!
There are cameras and cell phones out and I'm starting to get applause so I do the first thing that comes to mind. I scream and "cover" my chest with my wash rag and get a standing ovation! One guy tells me when I'm finished to come on in and my drinks are on the house!
OK! I finish doing my hair and drying off, yes, in front of God and Brooklyn and climb in the truck get dressed, sprinkle on a little cologne and go in and have a great time at the Union Pool and some well earned beers!
I just hope I never see the videos on YouTube! Too bad I hadn't put a hat on the sidewalk as I might have been able to buy a nice steak dinner out of the donations!
The 4th of July in NYC will never be forgotten by yours truly!
Rollover
__________________
No greater love hath a man that he give up his life so another my live John 15:13
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Saturday, July 31, 2010
Thursday, July 29, 2010
Chapter 30 Can I ramble on or what?
Chapter 30
Can I ramble on or what?
I’m getting to know about all kinds of medical tests! It’s actually interesting to find out what can be done with technology!
The newest addition to my growing list of medical things done to me is the ENG or Electronystagmogram, and what it does is measures involuntary rapid eye movements called nystagmus and evaluates the muscles controlling eye movements. No, I cannot pronounce any of the words with more than eight letters!
I can say it was actually fun to do as I didn’t have any needles pushed into veins or drink nasty pasty chalky drinks or get shot with radioactive beams!
I got to wear the coolest riding goggles I’ve seen! We’re talking Star Wars and other scifi stuff! These goggles have cameras in them to look at the eyes and muscles and have covers that the technician flips down do you are in the dark and can’t see.
The test took about 45 minutes and you sit upright, lay down roll onto both sides move you head into different angles and watch red lights on a light bar move back and forth up and down.
It was interesting to say the least and when I was done I talked to the girl and I told her that it seemed that when I was in the dark with the covers down that I thought that my eyes did not want to stay “looking” in the same direction. I was supposed to look at a certain “spot” on the wall when I could not see anyway! She agreed and then she said most people don’t release that they do this. Well I’m not most people! She tells me that the doctor will see me next week and I check out and go into the waiting room to wait for Barbara to get back as she had to see a doctor also!
As I walked into the waiting room I see one of my old nurses from my cancer team. I walked over and asked her “don’t I know you?” in a joking way and said” your name is Donna isn’t it!” and she smiled and asked how I was doing and said I must be doing good as I looked pretty good!”
Me I look at this mug every day and I can’t agree with her but I thanked her any way and we talked for a while until Barbara came and we said our good byes and headed home.
Next week arrives and I go in to see what the ENG came up with and oh yeah I now get more medical terms that describe my life!
I seems that radiation and brain surgery has caused another problem as if I didn’t already realize this! Me from not going to a doctor unless I was bleeding out of every pore of my body or threatened my my wife is starting to “see” things in a different light like X-Ray vision!
The new medical terms, yes, terms, plural, or for those of you like me who need a better description, more than one term! They are called Vestibular Neuronitis (http://emedicine.medscape.com/article/794489-overview ) AND Vestibular Neuropathy (http://www.cs.umb.edu/~dqg/newone/balance_stories.htm )
or as the doctor puts it “Your right ear took too much damage from radiation and surgery.” As we talk she is giving me a list of exercises and that I’ll need to get some therapy. If I want, Tai Chi classes she said will help and we talk more and the killer hits. No Mr. Purdy, I do not think you’ll be driving big trucks any more unless the therapy works as I hope it will, but…. It’s the darn BUT that hit the floor making a nasty sound as she continues, I don’t think we’ll have that much success.
I think somewhere in my larger than life files in St Johns computer system it says: DO NOT SUGAR COAT TEST RESULTS WITH PATIENT! HE CAN HANDLE IT! I made that clear 2 years ago. I’m a straight shooter and I don’t want the happy stuff blown up my six! Give it to me straight!
Well I guess she did and I did not want to hear THAT! Here I am, wanting my life back, and it seems like that is not going to happen! Me, I can agree with her. There is no freight out there worth me dying for or me killing an innocent motorist because I need to pay bills, get out of the house and get back to work driving something that can weigh 80,000 pounds down the road. I can lose my CDL (commercial drivers license) if I can’t get the dizziness and vertigo to stop. I have a hard enough time RIDING in the car and I’ve even driven a couple of times. I’ve made it home and it wasn’t as fun as I remember driving to be. I guess it’s a good thing I don’t have the bike any more as that wreck could hurt!
Therefore, it looks like my driving days are at an end. At least truck driving and the way I make a living to support my family! This stupid disability is not worth much as I am used to making in a week what I’m getting in a whole month! Try it some time! It’s way over rated! Trust me on this! How do people enjoy being on disability who can work but are the ones that ruin it for those who must be on it! Poverty level living sucks big time!
My only hopes at work is something I can do while sitting in front of a computer. I can talk to people except for stupid people like creditors! I actually broke my 16 year old phone while slamming it down on a Sprint creditor! Yep, temper, temper as if Selixa is going to “keep me calm” with that moron! A bottle full of them running through my veins would not have stopped me from reaching through the phone and strangling someone who so desperately needed to be choked to the floor!
That’s one job I can’t do. Call and harass someone like me that can’t pay to cross the street if it cost a nickel! This town is getting to be like Buffalo, Ny., bringing in call centers and saying that the economy is improving! Look at our unemployment rate now! It’s going down!! Yeah right! Call centers is not real work! As soon as every one gets back to work at a real job making honest money and paying their bills then the next wave of unemployed hits the market. The out of work credit collectors! What a vicious circle it is!
Maybe Prime will hire an old truck driver or one of the other companies (except for my old company!) or maybe I can do a convenience store! Who knows, as with all this new medical information in my head I still can get one of the 20-30 medical jobs that are posted through the state employment site every day! Keep dreaming there slick!
As I posted on my Twitter thingie, yeah I’ve bitten that hook also! It’s time to start a new life as I can’t get my old life back! I’ll start by looking back and crying at what I’ve been through, what I’ve lost and what I can still lose and then I’m going to laugh at all of that same things as when I look back at it all I CAN do is laugh!
I had a Face Book friend that had posted a few weeks ago”Cancer stole all my dreams” and I posted back “Yes, Cancer stole all my dreams and I made more dreams to follow.” She did not like it and we’re no longer friends. I guess it’s a good thing that I CAN look back and cry, laugh and make more dreams to follow. Now I need to change those dreams into a new life!
I’ll let you know how that works out for me.
Can I ramble on or what?
I’m getting to know about all kinds of medical tests! It’s actually interesting to find out what can be done with technology!
The newest addition to my growing list of medical things done to me is the ENG or Electronystagmogram, and what it does is measures involuntary rapid eye movements called nystagmus and evaluates the muscles controlling eye movements. No, I cannot pronounce any of the words with more than eight letters!
I can say it was actually fun to do as I didn’t have any needles pushed into veins or drink nasty pasty chalky drinks or get shot with radioactive beams!
I got to wear the coolest riding goggles I’ve seen! We’re talking Star Wars and other scifi stuff! These goggles have cameras in them to look at the eyes and muscles and have covers that the technician flips down do you are in the dark and can’t see.
The test took about 45 minutes and you sit upright, lay down roll onto both sides move you head into different angles and watch red lights on a light bar move back and forth up and down.
It was interesting to say the least and when I was done I talked to the girl and I told her that it seemed that when I was in the dark with the covers down that I thought that my eyes did not want to stay “looking” in the same direction. I was supposed to look at a certain “spot” on the wall when I could not see anyway! She agreed and then she said most people don’t release that they do this. Well I’m not most people! She tells me that the doctor will see me next week and I check out and go into the waiting room to wait for Barbara to get back as she had to see a doctor also!
As I walked into the waiting room I see one of my old nurses from my cancer team. I walked over and asked her “don’t I know you?” in a joking way and said” your name is Donna isn’t it!” and she smiled and asked how I was doing and said I must be doing good as I looked pretty good!”
Me I look at this mug every day and I can’t agree with her but I thanked her any way and we talked for a while until Barbara came and we said our good byes and headed home.
Next week arrives and I go in to see what the ENG came up with and oh yeah I now get more medical terms that describe my life!
I seems that radiation and brain surgery has caused another problem as if I didn’t already realize this! Me from not going to a doctor unless I was bleeding out of every pore of my body or threatened my my wife is starting to “see” things in a different light like X-Ray vision!
The new medical terms, yes, terms, plural, or for those of you like me who need a better description, more than one term! They are called Vestibular Neuronitis (http://emedicine.medscape.com/article/794489-overview ) AND Vestibular Neuropathy (http://www.cs.umb.edu/~dqg/newone/balance_stories.htm )
or as the doctor puts it “Your right ear took too much damage from radiation and surgery.” As we talk she is giving me a list of exercises and that I’ll need to get some therapy. If I want, Tai Chi classes she said will help and we talk more and the killer hits. No Mr. Purdy, I do not think you’ll be driving big trucks any more unless the therapy works as I hope it will, but…. It’s the darn BUT that hit the floor making a nasty sound as she continues, I don’t think we’ll have that much success.
I think somewhere in my larger than life files in St Johns computer system it says: DO NOT SUGAR COAT TEST RESULTS WITH PATIENT! HE CAN HANDLE IT! I made that clear 2 years ago. I’m a straight shooter and I don’t want the happy stuff blown up my six! Give it to me straight!
Well I guess she did and I did not want to hear THAT! Here I am, wanting my life back, and it seems like that is not going to happen! Me, I can agree with her. There is no freight out there worth me dying for or me killing an innocent motorist because I need to pay bills, get out of the house and get back to work driving something that can weigh 80,000 pounds down the road. I can lose my CDL (commercial drivers license) if I can’t get the dizziness and vertigo to stop. I have a hard enough time RIDING in the car and I’ve even driven a couple of times. I’ve made it home and it wasn’t as fun as I remember driving to be. I guess it’s a good thing I don’t have the bike any more as that wreck could hurt!
Therefore, it looks like my driving days are at an end. At least truck driving and the way I make a living to support my family! This stupid disability is not worth much as I am used to making in a week what I’m getting in a whole month! Try it some time! It’s way over rated! Trust me on this! How do people enjoy being on disability who can work but are the ones that ruin it for those who must be on it! Poverty level living sucks big time!
My only hopes at work is something I can do while sitting in front of a computer. I can talk to people except for stupid people like creditors! I actually broke my 16 year old phone while slamming it down on a Sprint creditor! Yep, temper, temper as if Selixa is going to “keep me calm” with that moron! A bottle full of them running through my veins would not have stopped me from reaching through the phone and strangling someone who so desperately needed to be choked to the floor!
That’s one job I can’t do. Call and harass someone like me that can’t pay to cross the street if it cost a nickel! This town is getting to be like Buffalo, Ny., bringing in call centers and saying that the economy is improving! Look at our unemployment rate now! It’s going down!! Yeah right! Call centers is not real work! As soon as every one gets back to work at a real job making honest money and paying their bills then the next wave of unemployed hits the market. The out of work credit collectors! What a vicious circle it is!
Maybe Prime will hire an old truck driver or one of the other companies (except for my old company!) or maybe I can do a convenience store! Who knows, as with all this new medical information in my head I still can get one of the 20-30 medical jobs that are posted through the state employment site every day! Keep dreaming there slick!
As I posted on my Twitter thingie, yeah I’ve bitten that hook also! It’s time to start a new life as I can’t get my old life back! I’ll start by looking back and crying at what I’ve been through, what I’ve lost and what I can still lose and then I’m going to laugh at all of that same things as when I look back at it all I CAN do is laugh!
I had a Face Book friend that had posted a few weeks ago”Cancer stole all my dreams” and I posted back “Yes, Cancer stole all my dreams and I made more dreams to follow.” She did not like it and we’re no longer friends. I guess it’s a good thing that I CAN look back and cry, laugh and make more dreams to follow. Now I need to change those dreams into a new life!
I’ll let you know how that works out for me.
Tuesday, July 13, 2010
Chapter 29 The Snake, a Biker and Smokey Bear
The Snake,a Biker and Smokey Bear
I've played with snakes all my life and they don't bother me until while out riding in North Georgia on a nice warm sunny day this pick up I was following ran over a rattle snake and threw it into the air.It landed squarely on my handle bars.
To say that snake was a tad bit pissed was an understatement, as he was thrashing around and biting at everything it saw as the handle bars were a little warm and must have been showing up in it's "thermal viewers" until it saw me and my nice hot body that was going cold with fright!
Needless to say, I almost unassed that bike while trying to grab that insane thing. I managed to get it with my left hand and throw it as hard as I could to my left, unfortunately on the hood of a passing car and as I looked back I noticed the light bar on the roof and the next thing I see are brake lights and cop car all over the road as that rattler was going insane on his hood!
Me, I went ahead and stopped as I knew that when ole Smokey got his shit straight his next target was a biker going in the opposite direction!
About 2 minutes later after he got out of the ditch here he came and pulled up behind me and from the way he bailed out of that car I knew life as I knew it was over!
He walked up to me and stood there with his hands on his hips and then broke out laughing so hard I thought he was going to have a heart attack! When he got it out of his system and me looking around for the punch line he gave it to me.
He tells me he saw me weaving all over the road and was going to pull me over and see how much I'd been drinking when he saw me finally grab that rattler and fling him away! That I choose that precise moment to let him go was the beginning of his experiences with a flying snake that sacred the hell out of him. He decided after the initial scare to come back and check on me and couldn't believe I was sitting there so calmly.
I looked at him and told him the only reason I was sitting there was I couldn't get the seat out of my ass and that trying to smoke 10 cigarettes at once was pretty hard to do on a bike at 60 MPH! We both sat there for a few minutes smoking a few more cigarettes chuckling about flying snakes, pulling the remains of seats out of our asses and finally parted ways!
I seriously thought long and hard about buying a windshield but what are the odds of that ever happening again? I still have no windshield but I don't ride to close to pick up trucks in the summer time!
Ride safe
Rollover!
I've played with snakes all my life and they don't bother me until while out riding in North Georgia on a nice warm sunny day this pick up I was following ran over a rattle snake and threw it into the air.It landed squarely on my handle bars.
To say that snake was a tad bit pissed was an understatement, as he was thrashing around and biting at everything it saw as the handle bars were a little warm and must have been showing up in it's "thermal viewers" until it saw me and my nice hot body that was going cold with fright!
Needless to say, I almost unassed that bike while trying to grab that insane thing. I managed to get it with my left hand and throw it as hard as I could to my left, unfortunately on the hood of a passing car and as I looked back I noticed the light bar on the roof and the next thing I see are brake lights and cop car all over the road as that rattler was going insane on his hood!
Me, I went ahead and stopped as I knew that when ole Smokey got his shit straight his next target was a biker going in the opposite direction!
About 2 minutes later after he got out of the ditch here he came and pulled up behind me and from the way he bailed out of that car I knew life as I knew it was over!
He walked up to me and stood there with his hands on his hips and then broke out laughing so hard I thought he was going to have a heart attack! When he got it out of his system and me looking around for the punch line he gave it to me.
He tells me he saw me weaving all over the road and was going to pull me over and see how much I'd been drinking when he saw me finally grab that rattler and fling him away! That I choose that precise moment to let him go was the beginning of his experiences with a flying snake that sacred the hell out of him. He decided after the initial scare to come back and check on me and couldn't believe I was sitting there so calmly.
I looked at him and told him the only reason I was sitting there was I couldn't get the seat out of my ass and that trying to smoke 10 cigarettes at once was pretty hard to do on a bike at 60 MPH! We both sat there for a few minutes smoking a few more cigarettes chuckling about flying snakes, pulling the remains of seats out of our asses and finally parted ways!
I seriously thought long and hard about buying a windshield but what are the odds of that ever happening again? I still have no windshield but I don't ride to close to pick up trucks in the summer time!
Ride safe
Rollover!
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