I'm sitting in the Pilot at exit 12 on I-19. It's interesting to note that the exit numbers on I-19 are in kilometers, not miles. It doesn't matter all that much to me since I'm only concerned with exits 4, 8, and 12.

I'm here because I delivered my load yesterday off of exit 4, in Nogales. It was seven barrels of paint going to the Ford plant in Hermosillo. Those seven barrels weighed a little over 38,000 lbs. They weren't your ordinary barrel.

If I was going to our yard in Nogales, I would take exit 8, but that exit is closed until 2011, so I have to use exit 4. I don't exactly know where are yard is because the Pilot is so much better and they don't lock the gate when they go home at night.

I am sitting here because my dispatcher is trying to find me a load going to Washington State, where I live. I'm supposed to be home now, but there seems to be a problem finding a load going to Washington from anywhere. When I was in Sioux Falls last week picking up cut up dead pigs. I was supposed to deliver that load yesterday morning, but over the weekend it was decided I would not be able to deliver on time so I swapped the dead pig meat for auto paint. Interestingly, I delivered the paint at the same time I should have been delivering the dead pigs.

So, I sit in Rio Rico wondering why there are no loads going to Washington. Have they closed the border? Maybe it's just trucks from our company that aren't welcome. I don't know.

All I know is that I'm in Rio Rico, again, and I want to go home.

I kind of wish I hand ruby slippers, but I don't want to go to Kansas, either. I was in Kansas Saturday night. I had Chinese food in Dodge City. No, I didn't see Matt Dillon or Miss Kitty. There was an east wind Saturday afternoon. The aroma from the feedlot east of town filled the air with the pungent odor of cow shit and piss. A west wind brings in the aroma of the feedlot west of town. A south wind brings the aroma of the two slaughter houses south of town. North it's just a lot of wheat, which doesn't stink.

Early Sunday morning (early as in the sun wasn't up), as I was driving down US-54 out of Dalhart, Texas, I was able to experience one of the biggest feedlots I've ever encountered in my travels across America. I don't know what is worse, the smell of the shit or the smell of the piss. All I know is for about a mile the air reeked of contented beef.

Oh, an interesting thing happened while I was driving along I-70 Saturday afternoon. I was just minding my own business when the air conditioner started spewing the eye-watering odor of feedlots, but all around me there wasn't a single beef. Soybeans, yes. Milo, yes. Wheat, yes (well, harvested wheat). But, no squatting beef doing number one or two on their supper. Then, suddenly, a beef hauler passed me. I smelled the truck coming up behind me. That's gross!

Did you know a beef will stand in a pond of water drinking that water while pissing or shitting

in it? I've seen them drinking from a pond when one of their compatriots is no more than two feet away doing a number two in the same water. For something we eat regularly, beef have horrible toilet habits.

I think it's going to rain, again. Yesterday evening it rained. The desert is green.

I wish I didn't have to be in Rio Rico wondering if it was going to rain.

I wish I didn't have to wonder what I was going to eat at the Wendy's in the Pilot tonight. Last night I had a chicken sandwich and a side salad. Maybe tonight I'll have some ground up dead beef on a bun. I hope I'm not here tonight.

I sent my dispatcher a message saying I had been captured my aliens and was held against my will in Rio Rico. He sent a message saying he sent the aliens to talk to me.

I want out of here!

Now!