You awake from a deep sleep to the sound of your alarm; you wipe the sleep from your eyes and roll over to silence the alarm. You look at the clock and you see it has been nine and half hours since you ended your last tour of duty from the prior days work, you only have thirty minutes until it’s time to do it all again, just like you’ve done so many times before. As you crawl from your bunk and open the curtains you are greeted with the beautiful, serene vision of dusk. The sun is setting slowly over the western mountains. You see many truckers coming in, crowding the parking lot, fighting for that last few remaining spots. For many this is the end of their day, but for you, the night rider, it marks the beginning of another day.
You gather your thermos and walk inside the truck stop; you sit down at a table and order a cup and begin to collect your thoughts. You listen to all the not so discreet conversations going on among the other drivers as they take a few breaks to eat their dinners. You try and keep quiet, because you know that any little disagreement will spark a heated debate. You secretly laugh in amusement at how most of what you’re hearing is all nonsense, and how truckers seem to be experts in every field; law, medicine, politics… whatever the debate is, someone is an “expert” on it. It’s a phrase you will sometimes hear as “truck stop lawyer”, or “truck stop politician.”
You order yourself up something small for dinner, maybe a sandwich; you don’t want anything to heavy that may make you sleepy to early in the night. You sit and listen to the busy chatter of dinner time all around you, dishes clanking in the kitchen, people talking way to loud on cell phones, “expert” truckers having not to subtle debates with each other. This is the typical scene of a truck stop restaurant. After your meal has arrived, you down it quickly; as the time to get going is quickly approaching by now. You pay the cute waitress and leave her a few extra bucks for being sweet and calling you “hun” and “darlin’” and all that stuff, out here you don’t get a lot of female interaction, so these little things make your day.
You walk back into the store and fill up your thermos with the night’s coffee, as you pull down that lever on the coffee maker you hear the rushing sound as the liquid starts to swirl and fill your thermos, and you smell that wonderful aroma that you love so much. You head back out to the truck and open the hood and turn on all the lights and flashers to make sure everything is in order for your journey this evening. You close the hood and hop back in the truck, you reach down and turn the key to the on position and listen for that beeping sound, then you crank it the rest of the way over and feel that sweet vibration as the cab rocks side to side slightly and finally she fires up. You listen to the purring of the motor and smell the fresh diesel fumes, you are ready to ride!
You reach down and press in the air brakes knobs, listening for that familiar hiss of the air going through the lines; you put it in gear and begin to roll out. Some lucky driver shows up at just the right time to take your spot, you feel good knowing that you helped that tired driver find a safe place to park for the night. As you turn onto the on ramp and head for interstate you start grabbing gears one after another and you hear the marvelous roar of that big motor as you begin to pick up speed, you look out the mirrors as you place your blinker on and see your fellow drivers moving over to let you on the highway. You reach up and turn your CB on for the night, and give thanks to the courteous drivers for allowing you to merge onto the highway. You reach your cruising speed by this point and you got the truck in tenth gear and are rolling off into the night, the sun has finished setting now and the sky is lit by a full moon and all the beautiful stars of the distant skies. The traffic is starting to thin out now from the typical rush of the daylight hours, with each exit you lose more and more traffic as people and big trucks jump off searching for a place to spend the night. But you are one of the few, the special breed of drivers, you are a night rider! You’re only love is that night sky, the lonesome rumbling of your own wheels in the silence of the night and the glow of the chicken lights illuminating the highway on all sides of your rig as you roll on through the darkness.
This is where I fell in love with the night, while working for Jamestown Transportation; I had a 2005 Freightliner Classic XL, with the name “Flight 837” painted on the sleeper and the hood, this was my baby, just me and ‘ol flight 837 and the midnight sky over the desert southwest.
She was cherry red with chrome lettering, loaded with chicken lights and chrome from all sides, man she was beautiful! The best part was rolling through the night and looking in my mirrors and seeing the glow of my chicken lights illuminating the empty lane beside me. You reach down and grab a big chug of that black coffee and reach up and turn on your stereo that’s tuned to your favorite XM music channel, this is what it’s all about the freedom of the open road. You approach your first major city to pass through, it’s just after midnight and you glide right on through town, never lose a gear.
Unlike your fellow drivers you passed at the last truck stop, which will be coming around about 5 am and start piling on the highway with all the local people headed to their 9 to 5 dead end jobs. They start their day off with bumper to bumper traffic, and an hour later they make it to the other end of town finally and still have to deal with traffic all around, and angry, inconsiderate drivers all day long, people weaving in and out of lanes and such, you never know what some of these people on the road are going to do next, but you don’t have that problem now, it’s just you and highway out here, along the way you pass a smokey bear in the median sitting in his car with the lights out. You cruise on by and he doesn’t budge, you wander if he is still awake at all.
As you roll on for about five hours you decide (or that thermos of coffee) that it’s time to hit the next truck stop, you see the exit approaching, you step on the brake and feel the powerful roar of the jake brakes engage as it quickly reduces your momentum and you glide graciously off the ramp making a lone roar all the way to the bottom, breaking the total silence of this little mountain town. You reach the stop sign at the bottom and turn right and drive into the truck stop, you pull up into the fuel island and park, something that would raise a lot of anger in your fellow drivers during the day time, and may even start a fight, but nobody cares now because the only other drivers around are parked off to the side and they are fast asleep. You grab your thermos for another round of go-go juice.
As you pull the door open of this little mom and pop café you hear that distinct chime of a bell hanging above to let the clerk know you’ve entered. You look over at the clerk and she greets you with a smile and a “good morning”, you smile back and return the greeting. You hear the slight sound of country music playing overhead; you head straight for the restroom to relieve yourself of that thermos of coffee you consumed in the first half of your shift and walk back into the store to get another round for the last half of your shift. As your fill your thermos with the sweet aroma of another fresh (or somewhat recent by this time) pot; you feel a little rumble in your stomach and decide to grab a pastry to go. You climb back in the truck, fire it up put ‘er in gear and drive away, nobody outside will ever even know you were here. You’re rolling back down the freeway again with just the sight of another big truck with lots of lights going the other way every once in awhile. The CB radio is pretty quiet for the most part, not like during the day time when it’s filled with want to be disc jockeys and the Rambo’s all threatening to whoop each other. The silence is broken every once awhile by another lonely trucker trying to say something silly to stay awake, or a few drivers running together passing by and chatting to pass the time away.
You reach up and tune your satellite radio to the overnight trucking show, but after a short while you realize this is nothing more than an electronic dining area, much like the one you were in at the beginning of your shift. A bunch of “expert” truck drivers with all the solutions, and a lot of them with invalid, uninformed complaints which amounts to nothing more than adults whining, you’re not interested in listening to this for very long so you switch to coast to coast am with George Noory for awhile and listen to peoples ghost stories, and how they were abducted by alien life forms and flown off in UFO’s to distant galaxies, only to be returned with sore behinds. Not very believable, but it is certainly entertaining for a few hours.
As the break of day starts to rise over the eastern horizon your body takes it’s natural toll and tells you it’s time for bed, you start to get sleepy but you just keep driving you got only a few more hours left, you finish off that second thermos of coffee and crank up your favorite tunes on the stereo. Finally you reach your destination for today and again you pull off the ramp and rumble your way to the bottom, as you pull in the truck stop you have full access, all the trucks have left to go on their way in the day time and you pick a spot and pull those air brakes, you’re tired and glad to hear that familiar sound of the air popping and you look out your window and see a puff of dust scatter around your truck as you set the air brakes, you close your curtains and hop in bed and drift off until it’s time to do it again. That’s the end of the day for the “Night Rider.”
Copyright Richard Goon (2009)
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