Worst week in a long time!

Ok in my last post I mentioned that it was -21 outside without wind chill, so I went to work that day and I started out pretty good considering the cold but as the week progressed it got worse. To all out there that have heat in there house be happy that your warm. My house ie. my truck didn't the second night out. Well it did but it was about -30 degrees with 30 to 40 mile an hour winds and my truck temp usually runs about 180 degrees when running down the road and when stopped it goes down to 150 degrees. But on this night it dropped to 130 degrees and that's not warm enough for the engine to keep the heater in my truck up to warming conditions. So with-in an hour my truck started blowing out cool air. I tucked into bed leaving my sock on (which i never do, do to claustrophobia) and that was at midnight. Then about 1 am it was blowing straight cold air, no heat what so ever, but still warmer than the outside temp. So I woke up and put a shirt on and tried to go back to sleep shivering already. About 1:30 I got up and put my winter jacket on and went back to bed shivering. Then 1:40 my pants. Then 2am I woke up and almost cried. I sat there shivering putting on double clothes and a hat. Then 3am I was awake. Get the picture! Until I could legally leave at 10am I really never slept. After 3am I pretty much was curled up in a ball shivering an thinking about starting a fire just to keep warm, and that would have been outside too. So about 8:30 am I couldn't take it anymore and decided to "F" the log book and start driving. At least my truck would warm up. At that time it was -20 and at 55mph of driving down that road that's -62 degrees on the front end of my truck! It warmed up though to 180 but that was the start of other problems for me. Being tired and ahead buy two hours on the log book I drove down the road and then my check engine light started to flash. So I called the shop and an ask what to do. They said find some cardboard and put it in front of the radiator and then also rub this temp gage that keeps my truck running when I'm sitting still to warm it up and the check engine light should go off. So at 8:30 or 9 am I found a truck stop and did that.....tired and very much cold working outside on my truck, installing cardboard. Do you know how frickin hard it is to figure out how to make cardboard stay on the front of a truck. I didn't have any bungees, so I just shoved it between the radiator and the hood and then shut the hood. So a got something to eat and drink and started off down the road again. By the way I was going from Des Moines, Ia to Minot, ND on I-35 to I-94 the US-83. So about ten minutes down the road my truck really got warm with the cardboard installed and I had to pull over an take it out and cut holes into so it could breath, i guess. Again out in the -20 degrees to do that and tired. I cut two triangles into two pieces of the cardboard, and got on my way again. I was never gonna get to Minot at this rate. I still had about 630 miles from when I started at the boarder of MN. So for awhile things where looking good, i made it about the twin cites and to Fargo, Nd where I decided to put and fill my tanks full of fuel. My company only lets us to put $150 in at a time on a Com-data card but I said "f'"it and filled-em full about $250. O well if I got in trouble so what I didn't want to be low of fuel in -25 degrees now at 4:30 pm. So I kept going and about an hour in to driving again I noticed that my fuel gage was already going down. That meant I was sucking fuel out of one tank and the other was froze up. So I called the shop to find out what to do. I did and pulled over at a rest stop and froze my butt off and vented my fuel caps by putting a paper clip in a part of the cap that is spring loaded and raised up and down for venting. Basically I blocked that open using the paper clip and got on down the road, but now I had to keep stopping about every 40 miles to check that fuel wasn't spilling out of the tanks because of too much venting of the fuel. The fuel pump sucks at about 90 lbs of pressures and if you vent some times it will reverse and shoot out the vent caps. I don't know if I explained that right but close enough. So In Bismark, ND it was -17 degrees and by the time I got to Minot the temp raise to a balmy O degrees. I tucked into bed hoping that my truck would stay running, not dumping any fuel, and of course stay warm. That was about 9pm. I slept solid for 10 hours straight without waking up and made it to my delivery at at 8:30. Every thing over night warmed up to 17 degrees by time i woke up, and all my fuel problems where fixed and all was good. But I'll never forget this week or I guess it was really only a day of misery. It might not sound bad, but the stress of not having equipment that doesn't work right and is getting very old and used really stresses me out and being tired too didn't help. Here's a test for you who read this, stay up for 24 hours then have some one flatten your tires before you have to be to work at 8am or whatever and then when you get to work have the boss tell you that your gonna work some over time today and you get no chance to tell the family that your gonna be late tonight, and when you get done at 9pm at night to drive home you run out of gas and have to walk 5 miles to get gas in the rain, then you get home an the wife is mad and makes you sleep on the uncomfortable couch. There is that bad or what! Well, that could stress anyone out, even me, but that's a way to tell the average Joe or Mary out there of what kind of stuff a truck driver deals with daily! Enough said! @blogger.com....bye for now.