...well,it's different from "Saturday" anyway. It's someone else's turn to use that anyhow.

I took a load of piling to Point Marion, Pa. Monday. It's on rt.88 just across the Pa. line a little ways from W.V.,near Morgantown. Yeah,one of THOSE jobsites-you had to pull down there,back down a hill to the crane right on the riverbank,then since there was ankle-deep mud everywhere they had to pull you out with another truck after you got unloaded,then you had to back up another hill and onto the bridge while they stopped traffic for you to get out. I had to go from there to Macedonia to load,so I went up rt.88 north to rt.21,then west on 21 into West Virginia. 21 is a pretty good road across there. It runs into 250 and I took 250 to Moundsville,then rt.2 north to the interstate. First time i'd been on that part of rt.250 in years-about 27 or 28 in fact. I saw the "Thelma and Louise" turn I mentioned before was a 15 mph curve and the grade was 11%. The curve has been widened since then,i'm pretty sure. And I don't think the guardrail was there. And I know the trees weren't up over the guardrail then because it just looked like open spaces ahead when you were coming up to the curve,and the road just looked like it ended,right there. And I think it was at least a 20% grade then...and I don't think it was paved ( now i'm kidding ) I took a picture of the curve with my 35mm I keep in the truck,but haven't got it developed yet.Hope to do that today and get the picture on here.I don't have my scanner hooked up,but I can take a picture of the picture with the webcam.

After that journey I went to Triadelphia,W.V. with a load of beams. Delivered to the West Virginia department of highways shop. After I got unloaded I asked the guy that signed the bills if they ever went down rt.250,like from Moundsville to Fairmont. "Oh yeah,all the time" he said."They didn't send you that way did they? If they did,boy you got *%#@ed! That's not a good way to go in a car,much less a tractor and trailer...'course we go on lot's of worse roads than that,-"(he liked to talk,wish I'd had longer to chat with him) . I said "oh no,I didn't come that way-I went across there in 1980 or '81 and said I wouldn't go back across there bobtailing- I was just wondering if it was still bad and those tight turns were still in Cameron and Littleton,turns I could barely make with a short wheelbase cabover Mack with a 42' trailer". He said one town,Cameron I think,had changed things and he wasn't sure about the other.I only remembered the one town,and don't even remember the name of it,but like Bollweevil said it took all the room that was there to make that turn. I came into town going south,and to stay on rt.250 I had to make a left turn right in town and the road (street) was narrow,pole on every corner it seemed,cars parked on all sides it seems. He said " well ,you must remember the hard right turn onto the bridge at the bottom of the mountain,that was a hard turn to make,a 90 dgree right onto a narrow bridge at the bottom of about a 2 or 2 and a half mile downgrade-lot of trucks wrecked right there.Lot of truck drivers got killed on that road-looks like a short cut on the map,or their dispatchers would send them that way". No,I didn't remember that turn onto the bridge at all.The two things that stuck with me was the curve coming out of Moundsville and that left turn in that town. I mean '80 or '81-that's 27 or 28 years ago any way you look at it,and it's hard for me to remember what I did last week sometimes.The road atlas shows 250 as a designated truck route today, but unless something's changed I just don't think I could get across there if I wanted to now,driving a 42' long Peterbilt pulling a 48' spread axle trailer.

These pictures (pretty bad-I really need to hook my scanner back up,but I usually use the digital camera ) show the curve going north on rt.250 heading towards Moundsville,the 11% 1 mile sign,Moundsville down below after the sharp curve,and a load of the coils I load at I.D.S. in Macedonia,Oh. all the time for Roanoke,Va.

As with the steepness of a hill,the pictures don't really show how steeply the road drops away to the left in the pictures-I was going to take a picture of the septic tank truck in front of me after he went around the curve to show it,but he pulled over right in the curve and stopped,so I went around him.

I did look at this spot on Google Earth and it shows everthing very well,especially if you rotate it around until you're looking at it from the north,then tilt it towards you-awesome!