Meeting New Friends, or Fun With HazMat

Yesterday was a fun day.  I delivered the last of my tomatoes in Taunton, Massachusetts and get caught up on a little sleep.  "BZZZZZ!" goes the noisy Qualcomm, several times over as my next assignment comes in.

Pick up a load in Nashua, New Hampshire.  Ok.  Pick up the rest of the load in Wilmington, Massachusetts, a whopping 26 miles away.  Ok.  Deliver it to Winchester, Virginia.  Ok.  It's HazMat.  Uh, ok.  I guess that's why it paid $1.48/mile to the truck even though it originated in an area notorious for crappy freight rates.

I accomplish the pickups with little fanfare (though the locals there sure do swear a lot.  not because they're mad at me, but because it's punctuation to them) and zip off to the great unknown.

After I get onto the Mass Pike, I start feeling insanely hungry.  No problem, I've got a fuel stop in Sturbridge, I'll just eat there.  At that moment, I see the Westborough Service Plaza ahead and they have a d'Angelo's, and a Philly cheese steak is sounding mighty good.

I pull off and park (who is the dumb shit that designed the truck parking here??  do they have any clue as to what size a truck actually is?) , run inside, and get my grub.  While going back to my truck, I notice another Prime truck parked out front that looked like I should know it somehow.  So I sneak up on it and grab the number (69035) and note that it is REALLY familiar and I have a hunch as to who it belongs to.

I go back to my truck, fire up the ol' laptop and aircard and confirm my suspicions.  It belongs to TNet and DrJoe, newly annointed Prime drivers from the Pumpkin world.  I forget my food, run over to their truck lest they drive away and squandor this historic moment, and start banging on their door.  Hmmm... the only answer is this dog inside barking and generally trying (failing) to be threatening.  I decide to wait it out.

Sure enough, a guy comes out of the plaza with the "What the hell are you doing around my truck" demeanor and I stop him dead in his tracks asking if he is Joe.  I introduce myself and it's just a party from there on.

Very, very nice people.  And it was fun to be a stalker, if only for a little while.

Oh, and I delivered the nasty HazMat this morning, too.