Choo Choo Continued

A little while back I posted about a load we did out of Kansas City's Union Station.  I mentioned I would dig up some photos of our previous visit.  So here they are.  But first here are a few refresher pictures.  

The following pictures where taken 3 years ago when we were in Kansas City for my birthday and visited this same station!  It was so cool so be able to get photos of us and the truck next to this very same engine!  Remember this is the guy who recently snagged that air line off of a train he found lying on the ground at a RR crossing.

Anyone who knows me understands this picture.  I mean come on, chocolate and a big teddy bear who wouldn't fall in love :-D  No he wasn't for sale, or yes he would have been my birthday present!

Touring the trains...

Chatting with the retired conductors...for several hours.  Really nice guys and the one on the right had been to a lot of the same places we have been.  It was really interesting comparing notes on how things had changed between our visits.  

A neat mural on the wall done of this same station in years gone by.

I got to sit in the engineers seat.   My left hand is on the train horns and YES THEY WORKED!  The first time I pulled the lever at the conductors urging I nearly jumped out the window next to me :-D  

Ostrich!!!

We were heading north on 15 in SoCal and I was on the phone with a friend from home.  When all of the sudden Randy starts waiving his arm in front on me pointing to our right, yelling "Look, Bonny, LOOK!"  At first all I see is empty hills. No houses, vehicles, nothing insight.  Then he points my head and I see it...an OSTRICH!  The ostrich is running full out along the side of the highway headed to LA :-D

 

Sorry it happened to fast to get a photo of it racing the traffic. Boy that would have a been a keeper too.

Squirrel Email from a Friend

I just had to share to share this with all of you after I read it...

Finnegan the squirrel
 
The moral of this story is the best part!!!

Debby  Cantlon, who plans to release Finnegan, the young squirrel, back into the  wild, bottle-fed the infant squirrel after it was brought to her  house.

When  Cantlon took in the tiny creature and began caring for him, she found herself  with an unlikely nurse's aide: her pregnant Papillion, Mademoiselle  Giselle.

Finnegan was resting in a nest
in a cage just days before Giselle was due to deliver her puppies.

Cantlon and  her husband watched as the dog dragged the squirrel's cage twice to her own  bedside before she gave birth.

Cantlon was  concerned, yet ultimately decided to allow the squirrel out and the  inter-species bonding began.

Finnegan  rides a puppy mosh pit of sorts, burrowing in for warmth after feeding,  eventually working his way beneath his new litter  mates.

?
Two days after giving birth, mama dog Giselle  allowed Finnegan to nurse; family photos and a videotape show her encouraging  him to suckle alongside her litter of five
pups.

Now,  Finnegan mostly uses a bottle, but still snuggles with his 'siblings' in a  mosh pit of puppies, rolling atop their bodies, and sinking in deeply for a  nap.

Finnegan  and his new litter mates, five Papillion puppies, get along together as if  they

were meant to.

Finnegan  naps after feeding.

Finnegan  makes himself at home with his new litter mates, nuzzling nose-to-nose for a  nap after feeding.

MORAL OF THE STORY: Keep loving everyone,
even the squirrelly ones !      

POP

Randy was driving across 40 this week, while I was cooking Gumbriot, when we both heard a really loud POP!  He pulled off at the upcoming exit so we could take a look at the tires.  It was so loud that we both thought we had blown a tire off a rim or something.  We crawled over and under the truck and trailer.  We couldn't find anything wrong, so we chalked it up to another passing truck as the source of the pop.

You can sorta see in this photo we weren't stopped in the best spot.  We were twisted on a sharp right lean pointed uphill.

Of course when you are in a hurry to find a place to stop you can't be choosy, but when we stopped looking at the truck and looked at where we were at, oops.  The pot holes in front of us were plentiful, deep and of course going to be hard to miss when we left.  The pot hole Randy is standing in is about 8-10" deep by 6' across and you can kinda see how sharply slopped the area is.

While looking at the pot holes I spotted this vertical windmill in the back ground.  I was so excited at seeing it up close, because I have been reading a lot about them recently.

What a WHEEL HOG.  While I was sidetracked by the windmill, he thought he would jump back behind the wheel.  He had already done 700 miles on the nose at this point.  Even though he could technically (as he was arguing) drive for a while longer, I put my foot down.  Supper was ready for him to eat and this was as good a place to switch as any.  He only had 30 minutes left on his log for that day anyway.  Then he tried arguing that it was going to be hard to get out of the spot we were in and the next fuel stop was only a little ways away.  I won.  Of course I made it back on the highway with no problems AND managed to miss ALL of those nasty pot holes to boot!!! :-P

The culprit is found!  We have a small basket next to the driver's seat where we keep the essentials (ie: pliers, screw driver, tape measure, gloves, etc).  We had a small plastic bottle of aluminum polish here that the seat apparently came down on.  HARD.

Hard enough to smash the top down and blow a hole in the side of the bottle! That's where the pop came from.  We found this when we were getting the truck polished the next day and wanted to rub down the CB antennae while standing around waiting.  From now on we will keep the touch up polish with the rest of the detail products in one of the trailer boxes.

In N Out Burger

When we are in the Southwest we always make the trek to the closest In-N-Out Burger.  Since we are staying in the TA East in Ontario, CA that is just across the truck parking lot (we always park in the back row and it's a VERY BIG lot), thru the truck stop to get out of the fenced secure lot, across the front parking lot, up the hill, over the bridge, across the highway and right at the first corner.  A hike to say the least, especially in the California sun!  But by the time you walk over and back you don't feel as guilty about indulging.

If you have ever eaten at an In-N-Out you understand.  If you haven't, I hope you get the chance someday.  For years we would make the trek just for Randy.  He fell in love when he was in the Navy stationed in San Diego years ago.  He tried for years to get me to try their food with no success.  I am not a burger fan.  Then along came my food allergies and I couldn't eat out anywhere largely in part due to the wide use of sulfite preservatives.  

In-N-Out to the rescue.  We were in Reno, NV a few years back when I discovered that all of their food is fresh, never frozen and absolutely no preservatives!  So I finally gave in.  Once is all it takes and your hooked.  I still am not a burger fan, but I will hunt down an In-N-Out Burger.  I always order the same thing:  hamburger, animal style (lettuce, tomatoes, pickles and grilled onions) with no sauce, 2 orders of fries and a small coke.  YUMMY!!  We always laugh as we are eating and say it sure is a good thing we don't live down the street from one of these places :-D

Here are a few of their tag lines (I can tell you, you can taste that they are all true):

All our burgers are made with fresh beef that's never frozen.

Our buns are made without preservatives the old fashioned way-from real sponge dough.

We hand-leaf our lettuce every day.

Our fries are peeled and diced daily from fresh Kennebec potatoes.

We've cooked our fries in cholesterol free oil since 1948.

I love to watch them push the potatoes thru the hand operated fry cutter just before they cook them.  Talk about knowing your food is fresh!

 

Train Airline

On our way to and back from the chrome shop we have to cross a set of train tracks.  

It was then that Randy saw it...

grabbed it up...

fell in love...

carried it back to the trailer...

and he is taking it home.

And he teases me about my rocks? ;-D

Chrome Shop

We finally located the new light surrounds we have been searching for. They are for the turtleback style lights on the side of the sleeper.  Since we needed over 40 of them we had to have them ordered.  I can't wait to get home and get them on the truck!

I also finally found the correct shifter-nob in the matching wood to our wood/chrome steering wheel.  We installed the new nob this evening.  It looks so much better than the chrome one.  I never thought I would say this, but I think that the chrome one just blended in with the rest of the chrome in the cab and never really looked that good.  The wood one seems just right.

This is Denis who has helped us on many occasions, but today was the first time we really talked.  The shop is usually to busy to even get help easily, but today things slowed down as we finished our order and we talked for a while.  He has lived in SoCal since the late '60s, but he is a Canadian from Ontario.  Two of his brothers moved to SoCal in the early '60s and it took him a few years to finally convince his wife it was a good idea.  As soon as she gave him the OK, he said he sold everything (the boat, apartment, cottage, etc) in less than 3 months.  They made the move with no job arranged for either of them.  He said it was hard at first, but with some help from his brothers they made it.  When we asked if there was anything he would have done differently, he quickly answered that the only thing he regretted was not doing it sooner!  He said it has been hard being so far away from his wife's family in Ontario, but they make the trip in their RV every 2-3 years.

Pretty Fog

It is kinda hard to see thru all of the bugs on the windshield, but it was actually very pretty.

Polish Me Please!

If you remember we took that trip into the wilds of the Pacific Northwest a few weeks back and ran thru several ice storms.  Then we were unable to find an open truck wash before we loaded our next TVAL load.  As a result it was two weeks before we got all the deicers off the truck. By that time it had already etched all of the aluminum.  It wasn't too deep, but it definitely was going to need to be wheeled to get it gleaming again.

So after running all out to cross the country (2200+ miles of it) in less than 30 hours we decided to forgo sleep and get the truck polished before we got dispatched on a load out of SoCal.  So off to the new Little Sisters Truck Wash and Polish Shop in Fontana we went.  We got the truck and trailer washed and waxed first.  Why bother with polishing a dirty truck?  Then got in the polish line.  We knew it was going to be a long day since this wasn't going to be a simple touch up job.

Sure enough, after spraying everything down with acid and stripping off all the parts that would get in the way of the polish wheels, it took them over 7 hours.  It was well worth it though as they did a great job.  After the acid they took the time to run from brown tripoli rouge with yellow treated wheels to white jewelers rouge with soft untreated cotton wheels with petroleum distillates.  It now shines like new again!  

Waiting in the polish line...

Starting to disassemble by taking off the steer covers...

on to the drivers...

Pulling into the shade of the building...I just love the Little Sister's signs, don't you?

Of course this box has already been shot with acid, but I just love to watch it start to get shiny!

Starting to unbolt the side fairings so the steps can be polished.

Passenger side with side fairing removed.

Here you can see the train horns and generator exhaust 

which normally are hidden behind the passenger side fairing.

Randy removing the sleeper steps so that the rear of the 

passenger side fuel tank can be polished more easily.

Looks weird without the steps.

These are the train horns and PA speaker that are 

normally hidden behind the driver side faring.

More photos showing it getting shiny...

So how do we entertain ourselves for 7 hours while waiting for the job to be done?

Clean and polish the antennas...

Take pictures of neat trucks going thru the wash and talk with the drivers...This one of course was of particular interest to us given our love of off roading and Jeeps!

We went to get some subs at subway and what do we find...the cutest little bug ever!  I am still wondering if he would have fit in it?