We got a rare chance to actually go through Midland on a load last week. We had taken a load from Louisville, KY to Arlington, then got an offer for one from Arlington to El Paso. That took us straight down I-20, which was great because we had enough time to call Josh and Heather and Jason and Tamara and have dinner with them. Heather and Tamara told me they’d been comparing notes and had decided that Josh and Jason are a lot alike – hmmm, go figure. I had to ask the girls if they planned what they were going to wear, because they both had on really cute blouses that were the same style. They laughed and assured me that they didn’t intentionally coordinate their wardrobe just for my benefit.

We had some good laughs, especially while the guys were trying to fill out the “Build-Your-Own-Burrito” cards at On the Border. It’s great to watch them laugh and was good for us to get out of the truck for a few hours and spend some time with them. When we left, I told Jim how that few hours with them did me a world of good. It was the same feeling we had about a month ago when we got to have dinner with Jonathan and Ashley for his birthday, then went back through San Antonio a few days later and had dinner with Doug. Jason and Tamara are working out the details for the contract on the house they are buying in Odessa. They have some really neat plans for it, and I can’t wait to see how they fix it up.

After we unloaded in El Paso, we took another one from there over to Hobbs, NM. Now, I don’t much care for Hobbs – never have – but the drive over there was nice because it took us through the Guadalupe Mountains and past Guadalupe Peak (the highest point in Texas) and McKittrick Canyon. We’ve camped and hiked in that area several times, and even climbed Guadalupe Peak with Troy and his Geology class a few years back (don’t worry, Troy, I won’t tell the “Thong” story! (You can pay me later!) :0)

Anyway it was a nice drive, then we went back to El Paso to wait for another offer. Well, we found out that El Paso is not much better than Laredo for getting loads out of. In fact it’s worse. We ended up waiting for two days without any luck, but we were able to get over to the DPS and get our Texas driver’s licenses back. When we went to Indianapolis for training, they required that we get our CDL licenses in Indiana, so we had to take several tests, including the one for the Indiana operator’s license (you’d think it would make you feel 16 again, but somehow the excitement just wasn’t there! J). We also had to take the general knowledge and air brakes sections for the CDL. At the time, they told us that if we wanted to get our Texas licenses back, we’d have to retake the CDL in Texas and that we couldn’t get the same DL number back anyway.

Now when you’ve had the same ID for 23 years (30 in Jim’s case), it’s hard to give up. It felt like losing a part of your identity. Besides, who wants to memorize a new driver’s license number after all those years? He called the DPS office in El Paso, and they told him that if it had been less than a year since we got the Indiana licenses, we could still get our old Texas numbers back. Plus, they told him that since it had only been 3 months since we’d tested for the CDL, we wouldn’t have to retest. If we’d known that, we would have done it before now. We’re official card-carryin’ TEXANS again!! YeeHaw! It felt funny to hand someone our Indiana licenses anyway – just made them question our accent, I suppose, and the customs guys at the border may have become suspicious. J The only thing I regretted was that the picture on the Indiana license was the first good one I’ve ever had on one! Ain’t that just the luck?

After giving up on getting a load out of El Paso, and experiencing the negative effects of the pollution floating over from Juarez, we took an offer for an 800+ mile empty move to Tulsa, OK. That’s the longest empty move we’ve ever made, but they help you pay for it, so it paid off when we got an offer for a load going from Tulsa to Eau Claire, Wisconsin, near Minneapolis. We were just here a couple of weeks ago, but the trees have changed so much in that time. I just can’t quit taking pictures of the beautiful orange and yellow leaves.

We have really been blessed in missing all of the severe storms that have been popping up around the country this week. We listen to CNN and The Weather Channel on the XM radio, and it seems like they are always having severe weather some place where we just left. The Lord has really been watching over us out here on the road.

We delivered that load and are now on another one from Nichols, Wisconsin to Cherokee, Alabama. It’s a beautiful sunny day with nice cool air. We’ll see what transpires from there! Love and miss you all.