Elk chops anyone?

Ahhhh, the life of a long haul trucker…

After a few days at home working on Roger, it was time to head out and make a few dollars, so Tavish booked a “quick” out and back to Pittsburgh. 3 days and we'd be back home for the weekend.

Off we went at 2am to load in Denver, unaware of the shenanigans that were about to unfold.

About 4am, Roger was brutally attacked by a vicious gang of elk on the highway, and while he won the fight, it wasn't without some scars. One of the elk, a big bull, narrowly missed our deer smasher bumper and instead carrleened off the door, ripping the exhaust off the driver's side and putting a big ass hole in the sleeper.

The car next to us, also travelling 75mph, cleaned up what was left of the carnage and we never saw him again.

I grew up on MacGyver and after a little head scratching was able to cobble what was left of our exhaust to dump out the bottom on that side to try and minimize the noise and fumes and off we went once again.

It wasn't until a little later, near the Nebraska state line when we were coasting to a stop on the side of the highway that I found out the impact also dislodged the fuel sending unit in the left tank, rendering the gauge useless. Our “1/2 tank” of fuel was actually dust.

Two hours of siphoning of fuel into a vitamin water bottle later (and a new fuel filter) and we were back under way to the nearest fuel station.

14 hours on the road and we'd gone about 200 mi. This was going to be a long trip.

The rest of the eastbound trip was fairly uneventful and we finally made it to PA a day late, unloaded and ready to head west.

A quick 3 hr jaunt to load in Columbus and we arrived at the shipper to find it fully engulfed in flames. Uh oh.

To be continued…