How did a 50-something,nicely brought up mother from London, England end up driving an 18 wheeler across The United States? It turned out to be considerably more complicated than one would imagine. However, adventures are adventures and hiccups are where the stories lay…
What would make a fifty-something, well brought-up mother suddenly decide to go trucking?
It’s the right question and, like most good questions it had answers both simple and complex. From ‘it sounds like fun’ through ‘it’s a normal immigrant job’ via ‘well, earn more money in a truck than I could having a Master’s degree’ with a detour along ‘I’ve driven ambulances and stretch limos, if I would like to get bigger it’s either a truck or even a plane and this course is cheaper’…none of these reasons quite encapsulated everything.
And these were merely the rationalisations for the much vaguer pull towards the massive beasties that I’d been watching on the highway ever since emigrating from the UK to Canada. There seemed to be no rationalisation however for the other vague pull, a lifelong dependence on doing things merely because they’re just a little strange.
Adding to my list of reasons that it appeared to be a great angle for a book on trucking helped a little when explaining to individuals with no imagination, however, not much.
In fact, I hadn’t predicted fright when I breezed into Tri-County Truck Driver Training one afternoon in 2008. I simply wanted to understand what it took to become a lady trucker. I wanted to observe the USA, how hard can it be?
Of course there is a bit of a distinction between understanding how to handle a 75-foot, slow-moving guided missile and dreaming of receiving payment to see the continent; and actually earning a living. Spending 14 hours daily smelling of diesel. My first job was taking trailers filled with mail from East to West. Team driving across Canada’s endless prairies and over The Rockies, and sometimes getting lucky enough to return home via Texas. That Lake Effect Winter Storm was just one of our countless weather-related narrow squeaks. North American trucking can be quite the escapade.
I’ve been almost arrested in Baltimore, sick as a dog in Tennessee, terrified in Chicago, Dallas and Detroit and dug from the snow twice in one night in Alberta. I’ve made friends in Virginia and enemies here at home. And, given half a chance, I might probably forget all about how impossibly strenuous it is and head out again to drive 18 wheels over the horizon.
This entry was posted on Wednesday, February 22nd, 2012 at 3:16 pm and is filed under Antidote.
