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.

For truck drivers, it’s an entirely different story. It’s tough enough to pull over an 80-foot long behemoth of a vehicle anywhere, apart from at truck stops and roadside rest areas. Even then, there aren’t always available spots because there are simply too many trucks and too few truck parking spots – especially at night when parking a truck can be nearly impossible.

When No. 1 calls out loud

As truckers, if we’ve planned well, we conduct our bathroom business either before we get on Highway 19 or after we get off it. But that leaves up to two hours in between. Much of that time is spent on secluded mountainous terrain, and much of that terrain has a paved shoulder. It’s almost calling out for those in need: “Hey you, park here. Why bother holding it in and risking leakage, discomfort, or even pain?”

Why bother even trying to hold it in? That’s what I usually ask myself. After all, easing the discomfort will only take a minute or so and then you get right back in your truck and drive away, no damage done.

To clarify, I’m talking about No. 1 and not No. 2. For those who have to go ‘big,’ unless you’re a pig, you either have to hold it until you get to one of the parking lots in the Mount Nebo area or evacuate in the privacy of your truck. That’s one of the reasons we truckers carry wet wipes and toilet paper.

Back to No. 1: You might have heard of the super disgusting pee bottles that some truckers use. These include empty containers of Coke or Gatorade. I promised myself that I would never resort to peeing in one of these. I can’t stand the idea of carrying around my urine. Plus, it’s not easy aiming into a small bottle neck. I can’t believe drivers even try this. I say, if you have to use a pee bottle at all, use it for emergency nighttime pees, then dump that bottle – into a trash can and not out the window – first thing in the morning.

I don’t even do that. Why not? Because: ‘eww’ and ‘yuck’. I do what needs to be done when nature calls: I use nature and thank nature for being there. Then I look around and admire the surroundings that are infinitely more visually appealing and sanitary than the average truck stop bathroom.

They just ain’t pretty at all

The average truck stop bathroom is a place where few would choose to frequent. Many of them are a few short steps from revolting. Let’s be clear that my standards for a clean toilet are lofty, so I’m extra picky. I always place a long strip of toilet paper on either side of the seat before sitting down. I’ve always done this in public restrooms and that’s been especially true since I started trucking.

I single out one particular bathroom as being the worst culprit of horribleness. I’m not going to mention its name or location, because I don’t want to single it out when many others are just as bad. This includes a bunch that I’d never visited but have heard about from other drivers. Anyway, this particular bathroom is in a travel plaza that’s located on the aforementioned Highway 19. I willingly stop there regularly, almost weekly, because it’s huge and there are always plenty of available parking spots.

The vastness of the lot is its draw. It’s also nice to breathe the mountain air, amid the ever-present breeze of diesel fuel. The large store is decently stocked and the staff are nice. Plus, the private showers are okay; just old. The water pressure is in fact superior to that at some of the other so-called ‘better’ truck stops. And, there’s a mechanic’s shop at the back of the lot and they do good work. I’ve had emergency repairs done there a few times. But you can tell the whole plaza is desperately in need of upgrades.

Frankly, the men’s room is a sloppily maintained ode to nausea. If the stink doesn’t hit you in the first few seconds inside, I question your sense of smell. And, if you’re able to withstand more than five minutes inside this ventilation-restricted chamber, you’re more (or less) of a man than I. I’m hesitant to even place my toiletry case on the sink beside me as I wash my face and brush my teeth. It’s an L.L. Bean product after all, and I don’t want its integrity soiled.

Ideally, I pee alone

The men I see inside are mostly truck drivers, I presume. My nose is already on high alert as I approach the door, and I try not to distinguish their personal body odour from what’s wafting from these walls. In this close proximity – closer than in most every other bathroom I use on the road – everything about them bothers me: their fatness or flabbiness, their overall lack of hygiene, their obvious absence of fitness … their possibly decaying insides that are a direct result of too much sitting still all day and evening, and eating fat-fused, calorie-laden excuses for food.

As I leave the bathroom, I perform a deep round of fully inhaling and exhaling for the first time in up to 10 minutes. I try to put this brief experience out of my mind as quickly as possible, with the realization that I will stop here again and again, because it’s super convenient … and because I can take pain, damn it.

I usually stop at this travel plaza on my last night on the road, roughly an eight hour drive from home and a well-cleaned bathroom that’s mine all mine. On the rare stops here on my way down south, I lament that I’ll have to deal with similarly abhorrent facilities for the next four days. My only saving grace is that they’re larger and more well-ventilated, as is the case with washrooms in most roadside rest areas.

Lastly, I present the bathrooms that may be the worst offenders. They’re located in many of the small factories and warehouses that I visit. There, the only salvation is when it’s a one-person deal and you can suffer in peaceful isolation. You have to try very hard to ignore their dirt, grime, grease and various forms of industrial residue. And the smell … well, it can range from rancid to musty to rotting to ‘I don’t even want to fathom a guess to what might be causing that stink.’

In many of these nightmarish loos, you have decrepit faucets that don’t full turn on and off, soap dispensers that often fail to dispense soap, well-stained toilets, toilet seats with pee splotches on them, and the ghosts of a thousand or so clean guys like me who only wanted a decent pot to piss in, and thought it was the least they could expect.