I went to work on Tuesday and drove up to Hermiston, OR, for a delivery in Pendleton Wednesday morning, which I made but was and hour and a half late because I missed my turn because I relied on Gatesian reality and not the directions I received from my company, but it was a nice drive through some pretty countryside, albeit not with a 53 foot trailer following my down the one and a half lane road that bicyclists really like because it's a nice ride through some pretty countryside.

Luckily, there were no bicyclists out at 06:00. There was just a lot of dark air hanging around obscuring my vision. According to Gates, I wanted Garden Ave. I came to Golden Ave and thought, "Okay, Garden Ave will be next."

NO!

I should've gone with Golden. If there hadn't been so much dark air, I might have seen the Coors sign. I didn't. I, also, didn't use the last possible place to turn the truck around and followed the little one and a half lane road that, by the way, had the proper yellow stripe down the middle of it. It took me 45 minutes to drive 15 miles before I found a place where a 53 foot trailer could be turned around. I was probably 5 miles from the freeway and could've gone on if I things couldn't get worse, but things had already gotten worse and I didn't want to compound my problem by possibly coming to a 13' 6" underpass when I have a 14' trailer.

So, I deliver the beer and head up to Selah, WA, to pick up a load of apples headed for Puyallup. Then I go home for the night.

Yesterday, I took an empty trailer back over the mountains to Selah and dropped it at the apple warehouse. I then went down to Yakima to retrieve another empty trailer at a repair shop, and dropped it at the apple warehouse. I hooked to another trailer and waited for it to be loaded with 20 tons of Galas. I delivered that trailer to the distributor in Puyallup last night.

And, I'm home, again.

This is nice, except I ain't making no money doing 650 miles in three days. I wasn't given a load last night, so I don't know what I'll be doing today.

I'm working on the new book tentatively titled, "Chartreuse." It's going slow, but not so slow that I'm afraid of losing it. I'm on the third chapter. It's not going quite according to plan, though. That's to be expected.

Kevin, the brain damaged kid, is growing on me. Well, this is his story, after all. Initially, I planned to have the other characters' narratives tell Kevin's story. That was a great idea, but I ran into situations where Kevin does things vital to the story where he's the only character involved in the action. To convey those situations needs Kevin to be a little less brain damaged than initially conceived.

So, Kevin gets a few more lines.

Then, there is the problem with the number of murders Kevin will commit. Initially, he was going to kill four, but now I'm thinking he'll only do two. Nick, the bad kid, kills everyone else. There's no problem there. What I need is the possibility of a judge, or jury, depending on whether or not his case stays in juvenile court, finding Kevin innocent of the crime, or to have diminished capacity and be convicted of some lesser charge.

If he's found innocent, there's a scenario he will go live with his uncle on a small island in the San Juan Islands in Washington State. If he's found guilty of something, he ends up in an institution of some sort. Either scenario leads to Kevin meeting his nephew thirty-five years later; unless he ends up in a life-term facility, in which case the story comes to an abrupt end before it gets out the door.

Well, I better go get cleaned up and see if I have a load to pick up somewhere this morning. Hopefully, it will be something other than a load of apples out of Selah.