Black Lives Matter, holding hands, anti-racism

A Simple Act of Decency From Long Ago

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Late one evening in the summer of 1993, I was on a bus with my then-girlfriend. I was accompanying her home to the northwest area of Montreal. I didn’t feel right letting her go alone because I didn’t like the thought of a young woman being on a bus by herself well after nightfall. Little did I know that it wasn’t her that I would end up worrying about.

My recollection of the events are sketchy but the gist of the story is certain. A small group of young white guys got on the bus at one point and began making derogatory comments about a young black guy that was sitting near us. He was clearly minding his own business. I didn’t hear what they said but I knew it wasn’t good, considering the way they kept looking at him. My girlfriend knew it too.

Soon the black kid dinged the bus bell and was set to get off. The group then motioned to leave as well. My girlfriend told me she thought they were going to jump him. In my naivety, I asked if she was sure. ‘Pretty sure,’ she said. I said, ‘okay, we’re getting off too.’

I had no idea what I was going to accomplish by getting involved. I also didn’t know if my girlfriend or I might get hurt. Neither of those things occurred to me at the time. I knew I had to do something to prevent this innocent young man from getting hurt, or worse. Continue reading →

Highway 77, north Carolina, covid, stay home, coronavirus

Into The COVID Coffers

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Two Different Deaths and Other Isolation Thoughts

1. Mournful

Tuesday April 7, 2020 was an unusually warm evening in this strange new coronavirus world. Just after 9pm, I pulled into my go-to truck stop in Mount Nebo, West Virginia. Usually I park among strangers: road-weary drivers that I don’t know and don’t care to meet. This time my friend Paul parked beside me at the back of the massive lot. He typically drives a different route and on a different schedule, and we talk only on the phone. But the COVID-19 crisis has quickly forced major changes in the trucking industry and on this rare occasion he was in the Carolinas too.

He departed North Carolina an hour later than I did but his loaded trailer was much lighter than mine. So he managed to pass me minutes before the U-Save Travel Plaza. We were glad to have the opportunity for in-person conversation. Of course, we were six feet apart as per now-standard COVID regulations, him sitting in his driver’s seat, me standing outside in the clean air of the Appalachian Mountains.

We talked for a short while before Paul went for a walk to stretch his legs and then ate his late evening dinner. I breezed through my regular 30-minute workout outside my truck then went inside the store for a shower. As I waited for the shower to heat up, I took a quick look at Facebook. I’ve become more curious about my friends’ posts since this virus struck and started upending all our lives.

The first post I saw announced the worst possible news. A woman I know from high school had just lost her husband to the virus. She posted several photos of him smiling and surrounded by family. She wrote a brief and sincere message stating that they always believed he would come back home. I teared up immediately. I looked back at her previous posts to remind myself of her husband’s circumstances. Then I posted a short message of condolence. This was the first person even remotely close to me to contract the virus. I never anticipated the first might be fatal. Continue reading →

New Respect in a COVID World

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Respect, Remarkably

I always wanted to feel valuable at work. I rarely did during the decade-plus that I toiled as an online journalist. Sure, I wrote enough great content, did some cool video editing and was a collaborative team member. But I never felt useful and respected at the level I had anticipated when I started my journalism training.

In fact, it wasn’t until this last week that I felt that level of usefulness and respect. With the shit storm of COVID-19 running rampant all over the world and me out on the road faithfully trucking along, the adulation that I’d long figured would one day come … well, it finally did, in an ironic way.

I originally set my sights on journalism because I wanted to turn my writing gifts into a sustainable living. I foresaw recognition and advancement that never came. Then the bottom dropped out of the journalism world. In 2013 my department at the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) got axed. I went through four hard years of varied employment before I looked into trucking. It seemed to be the only quick route back to a decent living. Nearing 50 and with few options, I jumped at the opportunity. I never envisioned that I’d be much more than content in this new world. I surely never imagined being bestowed with admiration. Continue reading →

firefly-central-park-new-york-city

Oh, The Glow

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Last evening, July 19, 2019, as dusk turned to dark, Kim and I sat outside on our stone front porch, each armed with a wonderful Cranberry Rosé Cider from the No Boats on Sunday beverage company. I had just return from inside because Kim rightfully suggested that we drink from classy beer glasses rather than straight out of the bottle. We were looking around our neighbourhood and discussing who lived where when we first moved into the townhouse directly across the street 17 years ago. That was seven years before we made the gargantuan leap across the road to our semi-detached backsplit.

It was a particularly warm evening, on the heels of a hot day. Here in Burlington, Ontario we were considerably above the 30-degree Celsius mark, not figuring in the humidex. But that’s nothing compared to what New York City and the rest of the American Eastern Seaboard was facing. We had just returned from NYC a day earlier and were reflecting on the amazing sites we had seen there, having scoured much of central Manhattan and the lower west side. We were grateful not to be there now, because walking around in 30-degree Celsius heat was arduous enough. Now it was closer to 35 and feeling like over 40.

There was little unusual about this evening, other than we only get the chance to do this sitting around and enjoying a beverage in the late evening once every few weeks. That’s because I’m away in the truck so much and Kim is often in bed by nine o’clock. So, here we were together around 9:30pm, with our Maltese Poodle Sydney resting on Kim’s lap. Continue reading →

When The ‘Going’ Gets Rough

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Highway 19, west virginia, hico, mount nebo, summersville, truck driver

An incredible view along Highway 19 in West Virginia – a place no one should ever want to soil.

I lament the very idea of ‘going’ here

There’s no denying the beauty of driving along Highway 19 in West Virginia. The green covered mountains and lush valleys make you forget – even if just briefly – how poor this state is and how hard life is for its people.

The vast hilly region is absolutely underappreciated. In fact, I’d heard remarkably little about the area until I started driving through it weekly as a long-haul truck driver. That was in the spring of 2017. Prior to then, I knew nothing of the spectacular New River Gorge and the mighty bridge that spans its width.

This entire part of the country is far too beautiful to soil. It’s a shame when you have no choice. Allow me to explain the messy details: Hundreds of trucks pass through these parts daily, en route to destinations where they deliver and pick up freight. It would make perfect sense that any route travelled so heavily by transport trucks would have ample facilities to support the volume. It doesn’t.

For cars, small trucks and motorcycles – plus most campers and even motor homes – it’s easy enough to pull over into any roadside restaurant or store parking lot, in Summersville, Fayetteville or Oak Hill, for instances. These drivers and passengers don’t have to ‘dirty’ the gorgeous environment. After all, no self-respecting human wants to leave behind a remnant of their visit. Continue reading →

Lot Lizards, Lamentably

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lot lizard, truck driver, trucking, truck stop

Lot lizard graphic from topsimages.com

Imagine a long-haul truck driver hundreds of miles away from home. He’s at the end of a long day of delivering and picking up freight. He’s found a parking spot in a truck stop and has decided he wants company.

Now picture another truck driver who arrived at the truck stop earlier, only to have the first guy park beside him. This driver wants nothing but an evening of peace and quiet, a decent dinner in his truck, a hot shower and a Leafs or Raptors game on the satellite radio. This driver is me.

I don’t care anything about the first driver. What he does on his own time is his own business, so long as it doesn’t affect me in the least. I certainly don’t want to see or hear about his ‘company.’

Check out these interesting “insane” lot lizard stories.

I Want To Pretend That I Didn’t See Anything

Unfortunately, this brings me to an evening a few weeks at my favourite Pilot truck stop in Gaffney, South Carolina. As usual, I parked in the far back corner of the lot. Typically, that’s where you get the most seclusion and least disturbance from the noise and headlights of the incoming trucks in the fuel aisles.

I was sitting in driver’s seat at around eleven o’clock, trying to decide if I should lie down in my bunk. I was fiddling with the radio and looking around when a car pulled around the corner. Continue reading →

Tragedy at Jane Lew Truck Stop

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truck stop image, tractor-trailer

A random truck stop parking lot, at dusk

Sadly, it’s not news when a truck driver dies. At least it’s not news to most truck drivers. But what happened on Wednesday, December 5th puts a devastating new spin on truck driver deaths. A young trucker was walking through the Jane Lew Truck Stop and was run over by a rig that had just entered the lot.

I learned of the tragedy on the Twisted Truckers page on Facebook. Initially, I saw the altered image of a truck driving upward toward heaven. That was unusual. Then I read the text and discovered the horrific truth. The last sentence of the post read: “Everyone needs to slow down in these truck stops and pay more attention to everything and everyone around you.”

A follow-up post on Twisted Truckers, a day or two after the tragedy, showed a picture of a set of truck keys, which the author said belonged to the deceased driver. She said the driver had a wife and children who now had to spend the holidays without him. She said she can think of no reason that anyone should be traveling fast enough through a truck stop to kill someone.

Details unknown

I asked my friend Tony if he had heard any of the details. He stops at Jane Lew frequently when he’s passing through West Virginia on his way back from the Carolinas. He later told me that he talked to a waitress at the truck stop’s restaurant. She said the truck in question came barreling into the lot and ran over the victim with all five axles.

How exactly the calamity happened, I don’t know. No doubt an investigation has started that will look at all the possible angles and answer key questions, such as:

  • Was the truck travelling at too high a rate of speed?
  • Was hitting the victim unavoidable? (Were his clothes too dark to see? Was he wearing reflective clothing or carrying a flashlight?)
  • Is it possible that the driver was unaware that he hit the victim?

Continue reading →

Me and Joe Rogan: My Podcast Plan

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The Joe Rogan Experience

Photo taken from Twitter.com

The Joe Rogan Dream

I have this dream – a recurring vision, really – that I’m sitting across the desk from Joe Rogan. He’s asking me questions about my past: my decade-long battle with Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, my erstwhile journalism career, my unlikely odyssey to a second career as a long-haul truck driver, and my lifelong ambition to become an author of memorable fiction. For the sake of comedy and biographical context we go way back to my school days, where I was tall and gangly, shy and awkward, a bullying victim and deathly afraid to talk to girls.

Joe’s never had a guest quite like me. Okay, let’s settle down with the hyperbole. The truth is, he regularly welcomes guests – scientists, journalists, musicians, media personalities – who are unlike him because he’s highly curious. He’s also refreshingly prepared to change his perspective on just about anything, after being convinced by facts or a compelling argument. Note to self: conjure a compelling argument. Continue reading →

City Truck Driving: Thrilling or Soul-Killing?

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driving in the city streets of Cambridge, Ontario

Steering through the streets of my old haunt: Cambridge, Ontario.

Feel the Fear

I’m going to scare the hell out of you without even trying, if you’re up to the test. Hop into my cab and we’ll go for a ride around the city – any city. I want you to see how tricky and dangerous it can be driving a tractor-trailer through busy streets. By the end of this unique day, I’ll want your answer to this question about city truck driving: Is it thrilling or soul killing?

Pretend real hard that you’re sitting beside me in my Freightliner cab. I know most of you won’t know what that looks or feels like. So, imagine that you’re in a massive truck that’s loud and powerful. You’re sitting up high and have a superb view of all nearby vehicles. If you look down into any regular car driving beside you, you can stare at people on their phones. Yes, it’s illegal for drivers but they do it anyway. You’ll also have a bird’s eye view of passengers playing with their hair and slouched in their seats looking unabashedly bored. Sometimes they will look up at you with ostensible fear. In this case it’s probably your truck they’re scared of, not you.

My cab has a sleeper bunk in the back; it’s called a sleeper cab. The added length makes driving even harder. Plus, I have no rear windows. I rely entirely on my side mirrors to see what’s behind and beside me.

I’m pulling a 53-foot trailer. The tractor and trailer combination weighs between about 32,000 to 80,000 pounds, depending on how much freight I’m hauling. That number is important because it affects everything, namely how much time it takes me to come to a complete stop. If I’m heavy, it could take 5-8 seconds to stop. It may take longer than that to build speed again. I do a lot of stops and starts in the city, so you’ll need to use your patience. I use mine hourly.

One more thing: the cab and trailer are each just under 4.14 metres high. That’s 13 feet 6 inches. When we’re nearing a bridge, we’ll want to look for a sign that says the bridge has enough clearance. On the highway that isn’t usually a problem because most every highway bridge is truck-friendly. Not so in the city.

Are you scared yet? Continue reading →

The Truck Stops Here

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truck stop, pilot, flying j, tractor trailer, trucking, rest area

Pilot truck plaza in Wytheville, Virginia, mostly empty in the late morning

“They paved paradise and put up a parking lot.”

The classic Joni Mitchell lyric has been attributed to many ‘doom of green space’ scenarios: I’m sure Ms. Mitchell was thinking of urban landscapes where beautiful trees and kid-friendly greenery have been bulldozed in favour of dreary asphalt. I’m pretty sure she wasn’t thinking of truck stops.

Fortunately for inner city park lovers, most truck stops don’t infringe on their trees and grass. They’re out in the boonies at major highways junctions, where noisy air brakes and massive trailers aren’t a problem. Out there in the open air, there’s big money to be made from filling giant fuel tanks and feeding and showering hungry, dirty truck drivers.

The Wytheville – Fort Chiswell corridor in southern Virginia is such a place. This is where Interstates 77 and 81 cross in the southern section of Virginia. The area is a de facto gateway to North Carolina, namely the nearby populous Piedmont Triad of Winston-Salem, Greensboro and High Point. Charlotte is a couple of hours south.

I use this stretch of highway as a convenience. It has a half dozen or so giant truck stops – they’re called ‘travel plazas’ – including three from the Pilot/Flying J company. That’s where my company wants me to fuel. Continue reading →