Two and a half million people?

Toronto, Ontario. Yea, that is what the sign said on the Toronto sign off the highway in Canada when I arrived in Toronto, Ontario on Wednesday night, July 18th. I had to do a double take when I saw the figure. The rest of the cities I passed by had figures like 30,000, or 190,000, or 130,000, but the 2,480,000 number on the Toronto sign just blew my mind. All I could think of was wall to wall people, stacked on top of each other. Now I am really curious. How many people are there in New York City?

This was the second time I had been in/through Toronto, Ontario since I have been driving for Schneider, but I did not notice the population sign before.

I did stop at a Service Area near Woodstock and ordered one of their Baconater combo meals. I used my debit card since I would have gotten my change in Canadian dollars if I used American dollars to pay for it.

I have to say that I don't think there are any nice Custom's agents when returning to the US. The last time and this time I returned to the US I was treated rudely but I kept face and smiled and was very polite.

The Canadian agents have always been nice to me. Why are the US agents always so rude?

Wind Generated Electricity

This is a picture of windmills that generate electricity. This particular group of windmills are located just inside the Illinois state line from the north. I took the picture from a rest area called, "Willow Creek". These windmills are showing up across the country where there is a lot of wind on a regular basis. The generators are as big if not bigger than a semi truck with a trailer attached. The generator is the section in the middle of the windmill. This should give you some perspective on how big the blades are on the windmill. I saw a group of these windmills when I went through Wyoming on my way to California last year.

Reverse Imaging?

Did they paint the truck orange and then tape off the labels and paint it black, or did they paint it black and add orange labels? As I mentioned in one of my previous blog entries, there are all colors of Schneider trucks even though the main color is Orange with Black labels. I thought this one was interesting though, since it appeared in reverse color.

What is your average day like?

An excerpt from a newsletter sent out from my financial adviser reflects the following:

"Based on interviews with about 13,000 individuals, the Bureau of Labor Statistics recently reported that the average weekday for persons employed full-time and who worked on that day included: 9.3 hours working, 7.6 hours sleeping, 3.0 hours doing leisure and sports activities, and 0.9 hour doing household activities. The remaining 3.2 hours were spent in other activities, such as eating and drinking, attending school, and shopping."

This obviously does not include the truck driving work force who work 14 hour days and have only 10 hours to eat, sleep, shower, and then do what ever other activities they have time for. I am told that the expected sleep time for a driver is at least 4 hours mimimum out of the 10 hour break, so if they sleep more than 4 hours they lose time for other activities. I normally sleep at least 5 if not six hours.

Goes back to that old saying, "If you snooze, you lose".