other dog

what a day-went to the eye doctor this morning...she said everything was looking about the same,which is good. "Ramblin' Man" unloaded the load I brought in last night,which is good. Jobyna and I stopped by the Food Lion in Rustburg on the way home,where they had T-bone and top sirloin on sale.Which is good. We got a few groceries,I picked out a great looking top sirloin steak from the reduced rack,and told her to pick out any steak she wanted,and i'd cook it when we got home.She picked a nice T-bone,one I started to get for her myself. When you decide to do steak,which we don't too often,it's nice to pick the one you want,right? That's good. She likes hers a little more rare than I do,like so rare a good vet could get it back on it's feet,so I put my steak on the grill first.I was using the little small round grill with three legs because I was only doing two steaks,and when I attempted to adjust the draft on the bottom the whole grill tipped over,dumping the great looking top sirloin on the ground Very bad. She said "i'll take it inside and rinse it off,it'll be ok". But it had dirt in all the nooks and crannies,so I gave it to the dogs. I was mad as #*!! So I went rummaging through the freezer and found a pack of cube steaks,defrosted them in the microwave,and was going to grill them when the kids from next door came over,being about 3,4 ,and 5 years old. They wanted to play with Otherdog ( the beagle,not me),then they wanted to go inside,then they wanted something to eat,so we got a package of hotdogs out of the freezer and I cooked them ,along with the cubed steaks. Then Jobyna sprayed some "Off" on the little boy's legs and he commenced to squalling,saying "I'm gonna tell!",then ran home. The little girl was crying because she had to go. So I wrapped up 5 hotdogs ,kept 4, (I dropped one of them on the ground too!) and Jo took them next door,and all is well now...until I found out mom next door is a U.Va. fan,and i'm diehard Va. Tech. I told Jobyna I'd just leave her steak in the refrigerator,get another one tomorrow,and we'll still enjoy a nice steak dinner together...which is good. sorry,best picture I could come up with today...

I thought they said on the local tv station this morning that they weren't going to make any Macks in Dublin anymore,and they were going to move it back to Pa

crap! I was trying to put a link to Toga,Va. from google earth. I've done it before,but this ain't right... don't even have a delete button on this...it's over there off the screen somewhere-stupid computer! just disregard the previous entry.

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?> <kml xmlns="http://earth.google.com/kml/2.2"> <Placemark> <name>Toga, Virginia</name> <open>1</open> <address>Toga, Virginia</address> <LookAt> <longitude>-78.63346300000001</longitude> <latitude>37.493798</latitude> <altitude>0</altitude> <range>1000</range> <tilt>0</tilt> <heading>0</heading> </LookAt> <styleUrl>http://maps.google.com:80/maps?q=Toga%2CVa&sll=38.9594,-95.2655&sspn=119.526,360&output=kml&ie=utf-8&v=2.2&cv=4.3.7284.3916&hl=en#default+nicon=http://maps.google.com/mapfiles/kml/pal3/icon60.png+hicon=http://maps.google.com/mapfiles/kml/pal3/icon52.png</styleUrl> <Point> <coordinates>-78.63346300000001,37.493798,0</coordinates> </Point> </Placemark> </kml>

glad you cleared that "wogmar" thing up-could easily be changed to "wogmat" or even "wogmap". Pass that on to Kathy for Paul.

sounds good,i'm gonna give that a try!

I actually saw Pink Floyd before,in Raleigh,N.C. Did I mention that before? Oh,that many times huh? Roger Waters had left the band by then of course,but everybody else was still around. By far the best concert i'd ever been to. "The Very Best of Yes" is one of my favorite CDs too. Too bad if I can't make it to Watts open house-I was looking forward to buying you a hotdog and a pepsi Paul.

yes,i'm sorta-kinda surprised anyone else even made the Jethro Tull connection! Well,now I have a problem-I just got a flyer in the mail today from the annual Toga benefit. They alway had it in August before,but this year they decided to have it later so it would be cooler,even though it's not usually much cooler around here until about the middle of October. The date they picked was September 13th. I'd hate to miss the benefit,the second annual one was for my wife and another woman who also had cancer. My wife had no life insurance,and it was a tremendous help. I said I wouldn't miss one from then on,and I haven't. Of course that's the same day as the Watts Mack open house and truck show,and I'd hate to miss that too,especially the chance to actually meet one of the greatest living Americans,a.k.a. Paul VanScott

well don't forget your hard hat,safety glasses,and steel toed boots then. ...and better make sure nobody else does either,just in case...

no wonder you're up way past your bedtime...sorry,but I think they've left you. Probly just forgot you in all the excitement ,and you've been standing there all day with your bags packed,waiting on a call

yeah,I can tarp it,hadn't thought of that...no problem.

huh? I put a straight pipe on the mixer too,mainly because I couldn't find a 4" muffler in the state!

I'm gonna try,if I can get myself near the area and can find somewhere to park a Peterbilt,but I can't say for sure yet.

Wow,Bernie Mac passed away-he was 2 years younger than me! Don't get to watch much TV,but I saw the Bernie Mac show a few times,and it was great! He always thought the kids were trying to get over on him,and he'd outsmart 'em,and the kids always thought he was tryin' to get over on them...sad to hear anyway. Took some pictures yesterday-I went down to the apple tree to pick some apples. They're not ripe yet,but Jo wanted to try cooking some.I managed to pick 4 or 5 before I had to run for my life-hornets everywhere! Eating all the apples! And this pear tree was loaded-it had so many pears on it they broke the top of the tree off,along with several limbs. Now you can hardly find a pear. But those hot peppers and tomatoes are doing well,eh? (that's Canadian)

yes,better-but that doesn't mean you couldn't drive the Mack to the store or movies! How cool would that be? It'd be awesome,you'd be the envy of all your friends!

yeah,I love that sound! A guy that lived down the road from me in Appomattox had a Ford pickup with a diesel in it,and I don't know what he did to the exhaust system but he changed something,maybe put the turbo kit on it,but the first time he drove by the house I was in the back yard and ran around to the front because it sounded like a V8 Mack was coming up the road. As i've said here before,Eddie Moore,who worked in the shop at H.H.Moore's but was not kin,had 2 F-models with V8 325s and nothing H.H. had would stay in the same county with them,not even a 400 cummins...especially the one his son Al drove,which was turned up to the max-he's the one that used to pull off on the ramp at the bottom of North Mountain on I-64 and wait for the rest of us to go by, then catch and pass every one of us before we got to the top,when we were hauling wood chips to Covington. He had a straight pipe on that truck,turned straight out,that wasn't much higher than the top of the cab. Of course we had the window down because AC hadn't been invented then. I've been a V8 Mack fan ever since.

http://www.bobthebuilder.com/au/index.html Bob can fix anything

Bob the Builder-what I get for pickin' at Paul I guess

There's nothing like a V8 Mack! straight pipes a must!

I took a van load-actually part of a load, only had 5,600 lbs. and the trailer was about a third of the way filled-to an Amish stove shop just out of Ashland, Ohio. The address said it was on rt.545 so, I could either go through Ashland on rt. 96 and go north on 545 or, stay on 250 up past Bailey Lake and come back south on 545. I opted for the latter so I wouldn't have to go all the way through town. As usual,I picked wrong. The place was easy enough to find,but it was on the right and I had to back in the driveway off the road. Since the driveway was angled in the way I was headed it would be nearly impossible to blind side in with a 53' van,so I went to look for a turnaround plce. Ended up going down to rt. 96,turned left,and had to go all the way into Ashland before I could get turned around. By the time I got back another truck was there parked in the road,waiting to back in.I didn't want to park in the highway,so I kept riding north on 545 until I got back to 250,then went back into Ashland to 96,then back to 545 and turned north again. By the time I got back this time the other truck was just pulling from the dock to close his doors.I wasn't going to make another lap around Ashland so I waited in the road for him to pull out. It was not a high traffic area.After I got unloaded with hand pallet jacks,and getting two crates reloaded to take back to Lynchburg because they weren't done right,I headed down to Vinton. Didn't really look like there was any good way to get from Ashland to Vinton,so I just took the direct route. Didn't see any low underpasses listed in the road atlas so I went down 13 to 256 to 664 to 93 to 324 to 160 to Vinton. I even had directions to this place-"look for a stable in front of a white farm house" But again,I found it with no problem and they even had a big gravel lot with plenty of room to back up to the dock.The place was called Ashland Stove Company,and the place in Ashland was Shrock Stove This was a really neat operation here. A man and a woman was on the dock soldering some kind of boxes together,but they put 3 of the boxes at a time in a rack,painted some acid or flux on the seam,then tilted the rack back so the seam dipped into a thing like a trough that was filled with molten solder and the solder would stick everywhere they had painted the flux on. Then they'd turn them over and do the other sides. Then a little girl who looked about 10 or 11 would put them in a large sink and rinse the flux off then set them on the dock. Then she'd put a plastic handle in between two tabs on each end of the box,stick a piece of precut threaded rod through it,put a nut on each end and tighten them with her little wrench and a box ratchet. Everybody there was working except the dog,I didn't see him doing any work,but he was there,not sleeping in the shade like some dogs do. There were 2 little girls about 4 or 5 years old riding scooters back and forth the whole time,on the dock,between the buildings,in the buildings-just room-a-zoom-zoom the whole time I was there. Even the boy loading the trailer would ride the pallet jack like a scooter down the slight incline to the next building to get another pallet,and there were several near misses with the 2 little girls' scooters,but no crashes. The trailer was almost full with this load,and I had 35,000 lbs. I slid the tandems up behind the landing gear legs like a Swift truck on the way up so I could go across 60 to Charleston,and left them there and came back the same way. When I went around the 15mph. curve at Chimney Corner I looked in the mirror and saw dust,smoke,rocks,gravel,asphalt,and concrete just flying! The bumper on the back of the trailer drug the pavement all the way around the curve-it's a tight hairpin to the right but drops down steeply too. Didn't hurt the bumper at all,I don't think it plowed the road up either. I backed the trailer to the dock in Lynchburg last night,dropped it and bobtailed home.

i'll try to remember that

wonder if I should paint it orange and white with the gold stripe,or go with the red and brown?..I think i'll go with the orange and white.

I couldn't run much harder than I am already,done got too old and tired.At least I get a little more done in the summer because i'm solar powered and start getting sleepy when it gets dark.

me too,no contest

I'm at home...early...on Tuesday this time. I've been to Conneaut,Ohio and back to Richmond from Follansbee,W.V. with a van load,now i've got another van load going to Ashland,Oh-home of the late Tim Richmond-with a return load to pick up in Vinton,Oh. Only thing is,the load in Vinton won't be ready until Thursday,so it seemed better to me to lay over at home tonight and deliver in Ashland Thursday morning,rather than deliver tomorrow and have to wait until Thursday to reload. I'll only have about 6,000 pounds on. Speaking of 6,000 lbs,I came back from Follansbee across rt. 250 from Moundsville to Fairmont,W.V. Had 26,000 lbs. on though. A great adventure nonetheless-first time i'd been across there since 1980,when I was driving an F-model Mack,with a 300 and 5 speed.I said at the time I wouldn't do it again bobtailing, but...