Tuesday

Getting back to Dutch Springs to pick up the truck is always an interesting experience. Leave San Diego before the sun comes up; fly all day stuck in crappy seat Siberia waaay in the back of the plane somewhere. If everything goes right, you’ll land and get to the truck just in time for rush hour traffic on Route 22 and sit there doing less than 15mph for an hour. This trip however, had a few surprises:

1. The storms that seem to be following every event made another appearance, and delayed the tiny Canadair RJ flight. We sat for an hour at the gate with the door closed, then we sat for 30 minutes at the end of the runway, then we had to go back the gate to get more fuel to fly around the storm when it finally passed the airport.
2. Try and find a taxi at Allentown Airport…they aren’t there…ever. It takes at least an hour to get one.
3. Kevin and a few of the Dutch Springs staff were still on-site when I arrived, and had pulled the truck out beyond the fence so I could drive away even after hours.
4. They also had an alternate route suggestion that took me down a few smaller streets but would ultimately avoid the traffic on Rte 22. And get me to highway speeds more quickly.

These are all very good things since it was now 7:30PM and I was exhausted. A quick check on local hotel rates for the night confirmed that I was indeed driving for a few hours to find a reasonable hotel rate. So with the trailer inspected, and a big thanks to Kevin I was underway. At about 10:30PM the lucky coincidence came together – a hotel with the lowest rate (in the Poconos in summer, and yes it was the 4th hotel I’d tried) and there was someplace to park the DOG Truck (that a rookie like me could actually back into without causing damage to the surrounding area or the DOG Trailer. Oddly enough, despite the late start I’d made it the same distance as the year before, albeit on a different highway and leaving a lot later, clearly the new truck can out pace the original truck. Still though, the challenge was to back the trailer into a space, near the hotel, in the dark…glad I insisted on the backup cameras once again (and I bet the other drivers were similarly pleased). 14 ½ hour travel day…check.