Sunday, June 22

Philadelphia, Pa.

12:30 p.m.

We hit the road at 9:30 a.m., and we needed to make good time. That meant no breakfast, no shower and no coffee. It was painful, I will admit. When we got to south Philadelphia to drop the load there was only one problem. We didn't want to use the portable potties outside the warehouse where we were unloading so we asked if we could use the ones inside. A young security guard told us truckers aren't allowed the use the inside restrooms, company policy. Apparently truckers are outcasts in a lot of places. Sheila said they can't shop anywhere but Wal-Mart or eat anywhere but fast food restaurants because no one will let them park their trucks. It seems like drivers are forced to live life truck stop-to-truck stop with few options.

3:30 p.m.

Carlisle, Pa.

$3.89 - unleaded

$4.39 - diesel

It was far past my regular lunch time, but we finally stopped for a shower and a bite to eat. There was a long line for the shower, so I waited in a room full of pay phones and washer machines. Big men with tattoos and bandannas and cut-off T-shirts sat around me and every now and then my nose would curl up from the strong smell of body odor. When I finally saw the shower, I was a little nervous. It seemed clean but the sheer traffic in these small moist rooms made me skittish.

After I was cleaned up, I met Sheila in the Wendy's and we talked with a truck driver from Georgia who had a pony tail and a pot belly. He seemed lonely and walked us out to our trucks when we left. Even after he got into his cab, he kept his eyes on us till we drove out of site.

6:00 p.m.

Ugh. I am so frustrated. After long discussions about what my handle on the CB would be (for non-truckers a handle is a name you give yourself for talking on the radio) I cannot get a single trucker to talk to me. I decided to call myself Bama Girl because I am from Alabama and it sounds hick and sweet. I thought it would get truckers to talk to me. But things have gone like this: "Breaker, breaker this is Bama Girl. Is anyone out there?" Silence. Sheila thinks the rejection I faced on the CB today is due to the economy. Usually there are trucks lining the highway, but today there are none in sight. Diesel prices have caused companies to take trucks off the road, she said.

In order to pass the time, we are talking to another Covenant driver on the cell phone who called Sheila because he was getting sleepy. He likes to do character impersonations and I was practically on the floor of the cab laughing. There isn't much else to do when you are stuck in a box.

7:30 p.m.

Lexington, Va.

We stopped at Berky's again for dinner last night. It is the only place to eat an actual dinner along this route, according to Sheila. After we ate, Sheila went back to the cab to read, but I hung around inside the truck stop to talk to drivers. I saw drivers who were riding with their children watching television in the lounge and others just hanging around trying to find conversation. The attendant, a short girl with a perm, said most of the regulars she used to see throughout the week are gone, off the road. Sales at Lee-Hi Travel Plaza have plummeted. They use to make $10,000 on a single weekend but now they are only pulling in $3,000, said Mamie Arter, an attendant who has worked at Lee-Hi for five years.

Monday, June 23

1:30 p.m.

The trip was starting to wear on me. The hot sun coming through the front windows and the sloshing and jolting around was making me feel sick. I laid in a bunk for most of the morning hoping the feeling would pass. By early afternoon we stopped and got our first meal of the day, Krystal hamburgers. Sheila walked Clara Belle and then continued on to a fuel station outside of Greenville, S.C., where we were going to shower.

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