Saturday, May 16, 2015

I am back and talking about C.B. radios

After a very long hiatus I am finally  back also I just got married and my husband is working for a new company. So after about of month of my husband being unemployed he got a new job and 2 weeks later I am back in the truck with him. All this aside so the first week I am out here on the road I get to see the most impatient, behind the times driver I have ever met. And when I mean behind the times he is so far behind the times that it goes back before he was even born. So the story goes likes this my husband starts pulling up the fuel island. This fuel island like many was packed and we where in a bit of a line. I can't remember exactly where we were at this particular moment, mostly because It is Saturday and this happened about a week ago I would say last Sunday. This moment boggles me so much because of what he said even now I have a need to write about it. So we where about 2nd in line to pull up the fuel island and someone who seemed to be parked in a very awkward spot started flashing his lights and honking at us. Now at this point we could only pull forward and there was no backing up but this trucker well we didn't know what he wanted. So my husband tried to reach him on the C.B. and there was no response. So next thing you know the driver is getting out of this truck to come and talk to my husband asking him if he could back up so he could get out. My husband responded to him as politely as could.( For the record my husband is actually very polite, and as nice as I am I can be polite but when I see morons it sometimes goes out the window so I just kept my mouth shut. ) My husband explained to him that he will be able to move forward in a minute and that he tried to reach via C.B. radio. Now I should mention that was in the middle of night about 10 pm and he is honking his horn. Now after my husband mentions the C.B. radio this is what of course baffles me into insanity. He responds "I am 64 years old and I wouldn't put one of those radios in my truck if you gave it to me for free." He then walks back to his truck my mind is doing loops because I know that the C.B radio has been around for a long time so him being 64 has nothing to do with why doesn't have a radio unless he has been living under a rock his whole life and just peaked his head out in the last year. So lets start with the fact that this man is 64 so he was born around 1950-1951 depending on the circumstances of this birth. So a brief history about the C.B. a.k.a Citizens Band radio. It started in 1945 (so 5-6 years before this buffoon was even born). now I really can't tell you all the technical stuff to the radio that would go on forever, but I can say this it reached it popularity in the 70's when the equipment cost about $147 and the license back then cost $20 in the early 70's and $4 by 1979 and by the way now there is no license. The C.B. has been used by truckers for who know long but it became popular mostly in the 70's, and the man getting out of this truck to ask us to back up would have been in his 20's at the prime of his life discovering what the world has to offer(but of course this man probably lived underneath a rock and never saw a thing.) So that being said this 64 year old man walking to other trucks because he doesn't want to put a device that is 70 years in the making helping truckers communicate with each other for the past 65 years at least has nothing to with his age, it is just pure ignorance, The technology is nothing new but it is useful the radio could have saved him a trip. See I believe every driver should have the radio in there truck to communicate with other drivers it just isn't for spotting the bear traps. Even with today advancements in technology the C.B. is still the best way to communicate, mostly because you can communicate a lot quicker with the people that are actually around you then the phone, where you would needs someones phone number to contact them. The. C.B. is quicker because you don't have to plug in any information it is just another voice on the other side of the radio. Now if the C.B. hasn't become so unpopular it can save a lot of grief when on the road. It would have also saved us some grief, because my husband does have a radio but it is usually off because no one is on the radio ever. It seems people only turn on their radios when there starts to be a traffic jam, and then it could be to late. The other day while going through the Ohio turnpike we started to encounter a traffic jam and at the time we where in the right lane in between two jersey walls. So by the time we turned on the radio to find out that there where two broken down truck in the right lane but the left lane was moving we where stuck. If we had the radio on before hand we would have heard about the accident and not been stuck between the jersey walls for an hour and been at least 65 miles away from the situation. Alas the C.B. wasn't on because mostly all you do hear is static until something bad happens and missed the opportunity. It would also might prevent things like the Wyoming pile up from  happening, So I am encouraging every truck driver to get a C.B. get on channel 19 and have MORE VOICES LESS STATIC.