Life on the Road – Trucking News Blog

We live in a world of pin numbers, passwords, excessive fees, anti-depressants and Cialis, iPhones and Droids, divorce, unfairness, discrimination, incivility, excessive complacency, international uncertainty and bureaucratic stupidity. Today on Oprah, her guest was a high school quarterback that decided to become a transsexual and then a lesbian. Last night on the Discovery Channel a three year old girl with no face was profiled. That is what we’re watching on television.

We exist as part of a global piss contest between little boys with big toys consistently trying to control how we all live and what freedoms we have. We don’t see people, we don’t shake their hands or look in their eyes. We text, E-mail, tweet and Facebook trite little messages about what everyone else is doing, but nobody really communicates. CNN today terminated its senior editor of Middle Eastern affairs, a 20-year veteran of the network, Octavia Nasr, after she posted a Twitter message saying that she respected a Shiite cleric that died on Sunday. He had routinely denounced the United States and supported suicide bombings against Israel. We all need to be extremely mindful of what we say because the First Amendment not longer exists. Facebook, FYI, is illegal in China.

So drivers, with that said, and to deal with all that and what truck’n OTR entails, you better start taking care of yourself. I’m not going to tell you how or what to do, what to eat or how much to exercise. That’s totally up to you. If you want to buy cheap toxic cigarettes at the truck stop, please be my guest. There is nothing I can do or say that can stop you. If you don’t start taking little breaks every few hours while trying to meet those ridiculous deadlines to get those pallets of widgets delivered on time so they can sit in the warehouse for the next five years, go ahead.

One of our contributors said in a previous post that you’ll be dead at around age 61, if you don’t start to do something to take care of yourself. So don’t. Believe me it’s a hell of lot easier to stay on the track you’re on now rather than switch. Switching takes effort and self control, both of which are a pain in the rear. And since everyone else here in the US is now shopping in the “stout” section, you’ll feel right at home. There are now extra large chairs in hospital waiting rooms and the airlines are equipped with plenty of seat belt extenders. Just remember, if you want to go down the Grand Canyon on the back of a donkey (the 1/2 day trip to Uncle Jim’s Point) the weight limit is 200 lbs. That’s 200, not 400.

7 weeks ago, I couldn’t breathe. Yesterday I did a mile on a treadmill. Today, I took a stress test. If you don’t know what one is, keep eating. It was the second test I’ve had in a month. The first was chemical, this one was on a treadmill. Higher and faster, higher and faster said the nurse. I started to break into a cantor. “How are your knees, Mr. Gruskin?”, asked the tech. I responded, my knees are fine, the rest of me is about to fall apart. “Let us know when you have a minute left in you, Mr. Gruskin.” Why, I said. “That’s when we’re going to inject the nuclear chemical into you.” Jesus. And I hated every french fry and fatty piece of meat that I ever put into my mouth. Damn to hell every time I stopped to fuel at a Petro and got three egg rolls and a bag of M&M’s and a 64-ounce icy Coke two hours after eating  lunch.

Tonight at Cracker Barrel, which is where my wife and I eat the most now, because they have lots of “healthy” dinner choices, I had fish. As a trucker, I cannot eat there while I’m on the road. It’s a parking thing. Well, maybe now I could since I need to get out of the truck and walk, even if it means across a busy road. The fish, by the way, was a lightly grilled trout with plain carrots and green beans. The beverage – ice water. No rolls, no dessert, no butter. Oh yeah, I put a little fat-free honey mustard dressing on my salad. And the results of my latest stress test were “normal.” Normal is a word I don’t hear very often in my life. Normal is good. I need more normal. All truck drivers need more normal.

I have yet to clear the DOT physical hurdle yet. The doctor that I asked to help me out with the whole blood pressure issue disappeared on “vacation” for two weeks. What goes around comes around – I’ll remember her. My BP today was 120 over 69 with a 55 pulse. If I go into the clinic tomorrow and my BP reading is 170 over 100, I could be home for the next three weeks, maybe never drive again. I go back to what I said in the first paragraph of this post describing what we have to deal with in life. As I also said, I’m looking for more normal. Real soon.