CHAPTER 18
(Amber Alert)
When I left PTL I had at least half of a year's income saved up in my piggly wiggly bank. My mother likes to refer to it as "a cushion". Every time I separate from an OTR company I always seem to forget I'm slammed with a double whammy. I'm out of income but also out a home. I knew I had to think fast.
Hotels can charge as much as $250 a night depending on what kind of comfort you were after and I could easily wipe out half a year's income in just two months. Not to mention I would need money for gas and food. Gambling of course too. I knew the logical thing for me to do would be to head way out west or go down as far south as Tennessee if I wanted to fend for my lucky charms. But I knew doing that would leave me with one very big problem. Loneliness. Straying a thousand miles away from my family just to save a few hundred on hotel costs wouldn't make any sense as the savings would all go back into my gas tank trying to visit expensive Lancaster PA where $75 a night was considered a good deal.
My immediate family has a history of being frugal so I tried to think to myself What would Dana Do? (My sister). I remembered years ago when she was going through divorce how she temporarily resided at a hotel in Denver PA for a flat rate of $800.00 a month. That would come out to around $25 a day which was a lot better than driving all the way out to the hotels in Harrisburg PA just to shave a few dollars away from the lofty hotel costs in Lancaster PA. I also realized that staying at the hotel in Denver put me very close to the gym as I desperately needed to get my health back if I wanted to pass a physical and keep on trucking. I also liked that Denver PA put me right smack dab in the middle of the family triangle of addresses. Whether I wanted to visit my sister, brother, or parents, I could visit whomever I wanted to with the traveling distance all equaling to 10-15 miles so Denver PA made most financial sense for me.
I was able to talk the Hotel into staying there for just $200 a week which was good for me as I was quickly learning that OTR truck driving evidently doesn't come with unemployment checks or disability checks. I don't know how the other truckers manage to get their "juice" turned on but I was sensing the discrimination I faced from government services was most likely because I wasn't bringing a wife and kids into the picture. If I was smart I should have borrowed my nieces and nephews and carried them into the career link offices so Queen B would more reluctant to issue my walking papers. I was no sucker. If the payroll ladies constantly had it in for me why would I think the behavior from government services controlling the "Goodies Cart" would be any different? Until they heard screaming children in the background and empty jars of peanut butter getting flogged by a dirty spatula my chances of any love falling out of the sky and into my piggy bank were literally none. That big NBA looking fellow I met at the halfway house sure had the right idea. I'm gonna keep making babies. I wanna have at least ten.
And to think I had told the group I had plans of spending the rest of my life staring at a big grey rock? Smsh! What was I thinking?
Within a week or two I eventually found myself getting into a routine. I would wake up. Drink coffee. Poop. Then I would go to CVS and buy myself a Greek yogurt and check my blood pressure. By 10am I was down the street at the gym. I was quickly learning that my OTR occupation was utterly destroying my hometown reputation as the village people often saw me coming and going away for months. The big hometown rumor was that all these months of being absent was because I was constantly going to jail which wasn't true. It didn't matter much to me because OTR never really gave me a chance to get to make friendships anyways. I longed for camaraderie but at the same time I also basked and reveled in the opportunity that being a lifer in OTR also gave me the joys of coming and going as I pleased. So I ended up paying the extra $10 a month for the black card gym membership so I could do my super mans at the Gyms in Las Vegas as well. I knew I would find myself frequenting Las Vegas quite a bit as it seemed that along the east coast I was noticing almost every week that another steeple was going up to thwart the law makers from legalizing love anytime soon.
I'll never forget the comical smile on the front desk's girl's face (Amber) when I came into the gym wearing a Las Vegas t-shirt that sported a picture of a blond hussy bent over in a skimpy red two piece bikini. Evidently Amber thought it was funny and went as far as to extend both her arms and personally show me the way into the Judgement Free zone. I was out a thousand bucks but Olivia from Sheri's Ranch had put just enough pep in my step to get me going to the gym for a while and momentarily bring my blood pressure down until the bill finally showed up in my bank statement. It only took but a few weeks and eventually I was back to my regular 2 hour workouts at the gym. The machines had sensors and I always got my thrills trying to see just how high I could get my heart rate up to. I enjoyed the euphoric rush I experienced any time I could get my heart rate above 180 with cardio exercise. My best record I ever set for heart rate was 204. I always made a point of not leaving the gym until my t-shirt was completely soaked. I didn't go to the gym to make friends. I went to the gym to handle my business. I liked the afternoon shift because I liked being the only guy at the gym. It was usually me and a bunch of hot spandex soccer moms that drove big SUVs while their laboring husbands pulled double shifts for extra income to buy those 15,000lb Cadillacs to protect their trophy wives from having nut job truckers run them over with the possibility of marring their pretty little Betty Boop faces. I was living the dream going to the gym every day but my piggy bank was living the nightmare!
I talked very little with Amber that ran the front desk. I remembered her from 2009 when I had tried to get a job here. I guess they too thought botched willies and bombs getting mailed to bird doctors would lead to some very unethical workout training because they didn't hire me. But they couldn't stop me from slinging those weights around like the rest of them!
I soon found myself saying something stupid as I would be done for the day and walk out of the gym. I had weird homemade quotes like "Sacrifice my wealth for my health" and on days I felt I didn't quite get it all in I would say "Better to get a shitty workout in then NO workout at all!"
Amber usually agreed. She knew what it was. But I kept my conversation very succinct around her as I was convinced she had inklings of knowledge about my psychiatric mental illness and was furtively trying to exacerbate it in some way. I was convinced one day that she wrote an inspirational Bible verse on a yellow sticky note and talked one of those meatheads into leaving it in the locker room where I would see it. I was getting stronger and losing ten pounds a month not to mention my "retard strength" was really starting to show. I was really making wise time in at the gym and eventually able to live up to my firstly appointed trucker name. Blaker209. I was plateauing at an exact 209 pounds. Technically if the biggest loser competition was still going I would have to declare myself the winner. I went from 260 in January 2016 to 209 in June 2016 and never once needed a trainer! I was SELF motivated. All I needed now was my very own t-shirt that said "The Self Taught Can't Be Bought (Unless You Have Ten Million Dollars)"
But I wasn't off the social grid hook just yet despite my innate jailhouse training. Evidently bringing back my old track body was doing just what my momma had warned me about. It was posing a threat. I could still hear my mother's imploring words of why I needed to take those psychotropic meds that slowed down my brain activity and made me fat. Are you sure Blake? I think you should take this Zyprexa! You're talk makes more sense when you take your meds. Wouldn't you rather be fat and normal?
As my health improved my delirium plagued me more and more. I was convinced Amber was a top secret CIA spy and wanted to know what I planned to use all those muscles for as surely I wouldn't need them to operate my ten speed Trucker Cycle. Was Blaker209 getting in Superman shape because he had plans of moving a dead body?
I do some of my best work in the dark. It was a Friday morning and I knew I would have pretty much the entire gym to myself. I could wend my way over to the back corner with the purple mats and tighten up my abs without everyone staring at me.
Could even kick my legs way high up in the air to work my lower abs without stressing about the winky connoisseurs trying to get free peep shows at Dr. SOB's "Finest Work" from 2004. Things were going rather smoothly until I felt a dark shadow creeping over me. It looked like one of those Matrix suit guys from the CIA! I was being spied on!
I knew I had another easy twenty sit-ups left I could crank out in my set but I was not relishing being spied upon or caught so I took a breather after pushing out another ten. But I was still curious though as to my suited up shadowy intruder. Why had Amber brought this Alphabet looking fellow over into my territory? Would a skinny man in an expensive suit ever opt to work out in a ten dollar monthly gym? This was extremely out of kilter! This wealthy looking fellow taking his lunch hour from the court house does not belong here! Why was he not at the $45 a month Gold's Gym?
The mysterious man never ended up joining the gym that I know of but I was sure I had seen the man before and that Amber could potentially be setting me up. By the time I got back to the hotel I was certain I knew who the mystery man most likely was. I believed this well clad suited man to be Lancaster County's prosecutor! Perhaps it was time for me to take a break from the gym and click a little more on that mousey so I could plan my get away in my ten speed Trucker Cycle!