Today is Feb. 24th, and we are sitting at the Operating Center in Dallas, Texas. We have been here since yesterday, and it looks like we won't be getting a load out until tomorrow. We had to come here to do our 3 month evaluation. I guess they want to make sure we kinda know what we are doing so they'll be putting us through a few tests.
Tonight we sat in the OC talking with some fellow truck drivers and surfing the internet. I watched the 2 newest Survivor episodes. A few minutes ago I decided to head to bed, so off to the truck I went. Since we forgot to turn on the bunk heater, aka the Espar, it was cold inside the truck.
The Espar heater works, I'm not sure how exactly, but it only works when the truck is off. When you turn it on it takes a few minutes to start up, then slowly but surely it starts blowing hot air out of a vent below the bottom bunk bed. If anything happens to be in front of the heat vent, it will melt, that's how hot the heater gets. It has a temperature control so you can control how hot you want it to be. And it runs off of, well I'm not sure what, maybe diesel because I'm not sure how else the thing works. But the nice thing about it is that we can have a nice warm bunk without having to run the engine. I guess that's what they had to do in the old days, and I guess all of the old trucks still need to do this to run the heat because at night at a truck stop you can hear a lot of engines idling.
So anyway, the thing works pretty good, except for one night in Fargo, North Dakota. This was shortly after we started, not even 2 weeks I think. We were at a Flying J, an older one, but it had a good size driver's lounge. We had chicken wings for dinner, and gotten showers, and was doing laundry. All of this took several hours. We did not think ahead to turning on the Espar heater to keep the truck warm while we were inside. And it was super cold outside that night, like 5 degrees.
So after a few hours I was tired so I went out to the truck to go to bed. I had quite the shock when I got inside the truck, it was so cold that the memory foam mattress was hard as a rock. I turned the heater on and it started working, but slowly. We didn't have a blanket, only sheets. We still don't have blankets, don't ask me why we are just weird like that. (I'm currently crocheting a granny square blanket but at the rate I'm going I'll be done in about a year). After about an hour, hunkered down in the sheet, I was still freezing. My copilot finally came out to the truck around this time, and this was the first and last time we have ever slept in the same bunk together. The beds are small - bunk beds, one on top one on bottom - super twin sized, so they are extra long but not very wide. But that night we needed the help of our combined body heat to keep warm. I think we finally warmed up but I don't remember, I guess I was sleeping...
