On the Road with Kurt Grote

I know some of you had read my blog “emergency” from august of this year. The reason for the blog was that I have had a similar situation myself. While traveling east on I-40 in New Mexico I had gotten very sick, I called the EMT’S for some help. They couldn’t find anything wrong with me, so they told me to head for home. I slept awhile longer and headed out to try and make it home. I got as far as Amarillo TX,. When I found myself pulling on to a shoulder and calling for help. The ambulance arrived and took me to the hospital and the sheriff took Spencer to the county jail. While I was in the hospital they determined that I had a brain tumor. They stabilized me and sent me to Tulsa. The doctors here in Tulsa have put me on some drug therapy to shrink the tumor. They told me, that we would do another MRI at the end of December. If the meds are working the tumor should be shrinking! Today is the 28th day of December and we did are MRI this morning, took the pictures over to my doctors office for him to read! The results came back better than expected. The tumor had shrank ¾ of it’s original size! It’s like I can move on now, start planning things again. I will still be on these meds for a while, but hopefully one day I’ll be drug free again. In the mean time I will continue to drive my Cascadia and do my blogs, that I hope you all read. I will also look forward in anticipation for the building of my new Cascadia, and driving it also!! Until the next truck stop!! you all be safe.

Kurt and Spencer

Hello everyone, boy when I mentioned winter I didn’t realize what a bag of worms I would be opening up! Not to mention just plain being busy! I hope all of you have been just as busy. I seem to think it’s the last effort before Christmas. When I hit winter I HIT winter from all the snow, ice, and sleet in west Texas, to the snow and wind across Wyoming! Of course the wind in Wyoming is nothing unusual for all the drivers that drive there on an normal bases. However I don’t know for sure if its me or the fact that when freightliner built this truck they had all this stuff in mind. The handling of this truck has been flawless! And that is putting it lightly! I dealt with the ice in Texas with a light load only 20,000 lbs in the box. I’m not going to tell you that it didn’t slip and slide because it most definitely. However the way that the truck reacted to the conditions was nothing less than amazing, I’m so proud of this truck I don’t have the vocabulary to express my thoughts. Even at that I ended up going up to Washington state and loading up there. Well first my last fuel up on that run was lake havasu city az. So from there I made all the way up Thu California and in to Washington via hwy 97. if you have never been on or driven this route before I highly recommend that you do so, you will see some of the most beautiful country you will ever want to see! I had made it all the way to Washington made my pick up and made all the way to mountain home id before having to put on any fuel. I’m sure you can do the math on that!! coming out of Washington my gross weight was 80,140 lbs. Here again is where I am very proud of this truck! As I’m going up cabbage, for those of you that don’t know cabbage is mountain that is very steep curvy and dangerous. Going east up cabbage I’m passing trucks!! know I don’t know their weight of course but I would bet not all of them were at gross or over. By the time I got to Wamsutter Wy my fuel mileage was at 6.75!! how about that folks? After fueling up my next challenge was of course elk mountain and Sherman, once again I wasn’t disappointed! For example Sherman is short and steep heading east, the first part of the hill is very steep then just ride after the top! I’m passing other trucks going up nothing below 37 miles per hour I was passing trucks like they were on jacks! I wonder if the truck will continue to improve the more miles that I put on it! Keep reading I’ll let you know. I am now in OK going to deliver in Pryor OK tomorrow and as it stands right now my mpg is 6.35 miles per gallon! I will keep all of you informed on my progress thru out the winter! Until the next truck stop you all be safe!!

Kurt, and Spencer