Hudson was rescued by B.O.N.E.S. from a bad situation in Limington, ME. After the gentleman called 911 (and subsequently passed away), the local ACO found 20 dogs living in squalid conditions.
B.O.N.E.S. took most of them and found them new homes. Overall, Hudson was in very good shape but when he had his physical, they found a serious mast cell tumor in his nose. As much as possible was removed.
B.O.N.E.S. wanted to find a wonderful home for Hudson and we did. John is a long-haul trucker that had lost his beagle companion of 13 years. He wanted a new companion. Luckily John found Hudson (or Hudson found John). It was a wonderful match. Hudson reported in regularly, and we share his "Chronicles" on this page.
Hi everyone, we are home getting ready to leave tonight for Houlton, Maine, where we will load a load of wood beams tomorrow headed for Tacoma WA. I hope this trip will be better than last trip.
We had quite an adventure on our last trip out to California. It started off well, we loaded an engine in Wiscassett, ME and then went to Johnston, RI and picked up a couple of dust collectors that were going to San Diego, CA. The engine was going to a waste water treatment plant in San Bernardino, CA. We got to San Diego on Friday and unloaded the dust collectors and headed up to San Bernardino that afternoon. John was feeling generous since the trip out paid well and he had several things lined up to go back home with, so he got us a room for the weekend. On sunday, we were relaxing in the room when things started shaking. John looked out the window and the cars were shaking and the pool had waves in it just like the beach. That's right, we experienced our first earthquake! It ended up being the quake that struck the Baja California peninsula. It felt like the times when we are stopped on a bridge and the traffic makes the bridge bounce, although this was some major bouncing. I am somewhat confused about you humans though, several people asked John what I did, if I sensed the earthquake, or acted funny in any other way. I was sleeping! I was doing what any dog would do. I think you people watch too much reality TV!
The next morning, we unloaded at the WWTP (WASTE WATER TREATMENT PLANT) for all you laymen, and went to Anaheim where John had two machines to load. That evening, John's cousin was in LA for a convention, so they got together and went out to eat. The next morning, we went to Long Beach to load a forklift. After several hours of searching, they found out the forklift was down in San Diego. So down to San Diego we went. Once we loaded the forklift, we headed north to Trona, which is in Death Valley, to pick up our last piece, a trailer mounter compressor. Just north of San Diego, John crossed the truck scales and got the dreaded red arrow to pull around back. He was 2100 pounds overweight on his drive axles. luckily, he didn't get a 2000 dollar ticket, but he did have to hire a crane and move the forklift from the front of the trailer to the rear. Once we got that fixed we headed to Trona to load in the morning. By this point, John had realized that the dimensions on three out of four of the pieces were wrong. The weights were heavier than he was told. This tends to throw off all the planning. We got to the mine the next morning, and guess what, that's right, the compressor was 18 feet instead of 14 feet. The problem was that we only had 14 feet of space left on the trailer. John called the customer in Maine and explained the problem and suggested cutting the tongue of the trailer off and welding it back on back in Maine. The customer agreed to this and out came the cutting torch. John was able to put the compressor on the front of the trailer and he put the tongue on top of the forklift. Once he got everything loaded he was able to use the scale at the mine to weigh out, only to find we were 800 pounds over on the drive axles again. with no option to make things legal, we were off on an adventure to go around all the scales between Trona, CA and Bangor, ME.
I'm beginning to wonder if we should rename this "confessions of a trucker", instead of Hudson's chronicles. Anyway, off we went. We got to Needles, CA at dusk and called it a day. John had found a way around the first scale at the Arizona port of entry. He decided to wait until daylight which was a smart move. We headed north on highway 95 and took a right on the Oatman road, which was marked as a straight gray line on the map. well, it wasn't straight at all! We kept passing signs saying no trucks over 40 feet long. We are 75 feet long and these signs didn't really bother John, since we have been on lots of similar roads before. The town of Oatman was straight out of an old western movie. We drove through town, which had a saloon, hotel, and three people, one of which was cleaning up after a horse, or a really big dog! John was expecting someone to call the state police and report a truck going around the scales, since there wasn't much other truck traffic, or reason for a truck to be on this path, for that matter. A few miles later, we came upon a mine and John relaxed a little, figuring they would assume we were making a delivery there. After the mine, things went downhill fast. (After going uphill, of course) The road got narrower and the curves got tighter. We met a few cars and were able to gert by each other and after we got over the pass, john started to relax because he could see off in the distance the valley floor and a straight road going across it. We were doing fine until one last 180 degree turn. John got tight against the cliff on the right and dumped the air in the front trailer axle to make a tighter turning radius so he could make the turn. Since the turn was at the bottom of a steep hill the trailer axle was in the air and so the rear axle was on the ground, making for a long turning radius. The trailer tires came up against a retaining wall full of sharp, jagged rocks. John had no choice but to run the trailer tires up over this wall and hope the trailer didn't get hung up on the wall. Fortunately, we didn't get stuck, but we ruined two trailer tires and two trailer wheels. The compressor, since it was overhanging the front of the trailer, pushed against the headache rack on the back of the truck and pushed it into the back of the sleeper, leaving some ugly gouges and scratches.
We finally made it out of the "valley of pain" and back on to I-40 and there were no state police waiting for us. We limped into the truckstop in Kingman, AZ and bought a new tire, mounted our spare tire on the other wheel, and proceeded east. The New Mexico Port of Entry was a lot easier to get around, and from there, we took back roads for the rest of the trip home. The rest of the trip home was much more relaxing for John. For me, I enjoyed all of it.
Well, that about covers it for now.
Hudson, the semi-beagle
