BARNCA
HalfDork
10/5/11 8:20 p.m.
used to be a plow truck driver for the state of NH on the seacoast.. my route was from hampton nh to portsmouth nh and i turn around at the first exit in maine.. turned around stopped and cleaned the wipers and windshield off.. climbed back in dropped the plow and wings.. started heading south.. next thing i know, i am in hampton.. dont remember driving there.. dont remember anything that i drove by.. by this time i had been up plowing for around 34 or so hours.. scared the livin crap outta me that i didnt remember drivin my route.
I have dozed off and woken up behind the wheel. No one was the wiser for the 10 second nap, seemingly. Except me, naturally. Then there was the marathon 36 hour day I had to pull to get my wife to a funeral in KY, we had to leave at 8pm the night before when I'd already been up since 6am. We got there, checked in and changed, went to the funeral, visited, showed the kids Mom's hometown, got back to the hotel.... and I fell asleep in my clothes.
On the way home from the Tall pines rally one year, I woke up halfway in the ditch, about 1/2 mile from home. I pulled it out, but spun around and backed into the ditch on the other side of the road. I was OK, and the only damage was a broken brake line. It was the beginning of the end of that 87 S10, and the last time I've driven tired like that.
In the 80's, I was working a fair bit of OT during a plant shutdown on the afternoon shift, mostly by myself. I may have partaken in a little bit of the herb before work one day, and that always burned me out. After cleaning and prepping one machine, I washed up at the wash basin, and sat down on a skid of cardboard to take a break. I woke up 4 hours later when someone from the other plant was calling me over the plant PA.
Don't eat, keeps the nervous system on edge and you awake.
That's how I've always pulled long nights and crazy roadtrips.
Lesley
SuperDork
10/6/11 8:23 a.m.
Oh man... I literally have not been home for more than four consecutive days all summer. Bouncing all around time zones. I can't remember where I am most mornings (right now I'm in Korea, last week Maine, week before France, week before that Germany...). I pointed the key at my house last week when I got home.
I woke up on the departure lounge at Gatwick once and couldn't remember where in the world I was. Jetlag sucks.
Several years ago, when the wife was pregnant with our oldest, she had a horrible case of cholestasis that kept her and by proxy me awake all night. I was a diesel mechanic then and working ridiculous hours, up to 70 per week and also training for my first sanctioned fight. Somehow I wound up with a 104 degree fever which, coupled with the severe sleep deprivation, caused some interesting hallucinations.
I met a man who was trying to sell some turtle milk. In my hindered state the logistics involved in milking a turtle didn't occur to me, I just knew I had to have some of that milk...
Two double 18 hour shifts not including 4 hours of driving.
On a lone NJ country road I saw a man wrestling a bear greco-roman style in from of my car.
neckromacr wrote: On a lone NJ country road I saw a man wrestling a bear greco-roman style in from of my car.
Of course, there's nothing unusual about that sort of thing in rural New Jersey.
I have been so tired that I pulled up to my garage door at 3am and the clicker wouldn't work. I pulled it off the visor, kept pushing the button. Right before I got out of my car to go to the front door, I realized my garage door wasn't white. 
Once in college I got pretty frustrated that my key was sticking in the lock of my room. Spent a good 5 minutes jiggling it back and forth and pulling and pushing on the door before I realized I was on the girl's floor of the dorm -in the middle of the night. Don't know if anybody called the cops, didn't stick around long enough to find out.
Ditto, on trying to unlock my house door with a key fob. I've done it so many times that I've been thinking about hacking my front door to make it work.
