Millie's American Truck Simulator Travels

Millennium 🌠

Anyone remember “Millie”, my truck driver persona? How’s that for an HH deep cut?

Anyways, I’m having kind of a hard time at the moment, and I’m wishing I were elsewhere, but it’s impractical to drive in real life right now for various reasons, so I’m driving on my computer instead.

I adjusted the position of the “seat” to make it feel like I’m a child so small I can just see over the steering wheel. 😁

Millennium 🌠

Today’s trip: Spokane, Washington to Santa Fe, New Mexico

The sun begins to set as we make our way towards Boise.

Carrying on through the twilight down Idaho State Highway 55

It’s 11 PM by the time we reach Boise, and I’m ready for bed. We just gotta make it to the truck stop on the far side of the city!

Around about half an hour later, we find ourselves at the ARON truck stop off the Broadway Avenue exit of Interstate 84.

Tomorrow, we’ll get our truck serviced before departing, but for now, it’s time for a good night’s sleep.

TO BE CONTINUED

Millennium 🌠

Millie’s ATS travelogues traditionally concluded with a so-called “'80s song of the night”, but that was more Carly Robin’s deal than my own. Robin’s not here right now, so I’m just going to post a song I know she really likes.

Millie’s '80s song of the night is “Your Love” by The Outfield!

Edit: I know I have, like, superhuman hearing, and most people wouldn’t even be able to notice this, but it’s funny how there’s a conspicuous cut when the looped guitar intro goes into the shorter intro from the album version.

Imicow

Millennium 🌠 this cut is, uh, quite audible
no superhuman hearing necessary

Millennium 🌠

Monday, 9:30 AM

As I’d previously promised, we’re going to stop at a service station for some repairs before we get back on the road.

While we’re here, I may as well show you the inside of our truck. Isn’t it cozy?

The guitar kept in our sleeping are was, of course, requested by one @Carly Robin Ravenswood.

With that out of the way, it’s time to get back on the road. Interstate 84 to be, exact. This helpful and not at all overwhelming or confusing assortment of signs will guide the way.

I won’t lie, there’s not a lot to see for this leg of the trip. We’re basically going to stay on I-84 for a few hours.

When we reach the junction with I-86, we keep right to continue on I-84 eastbound.

Utah state line!

A small plane has apparently made an emergency landing on the Interstate. Let’s stay to the far left lane for everyone’s safety.

It’s about 2:30 PM when we reach the junction of Interstate 15 and Interstate 80 in Salt Lake City. We’re going to follow I-15 for now.

About an hour later, we’ve reached Provo, where we depart I-15 onto US 6.

Have I ever mentioned that I have a phobia of wind turbines? If this were real life, I would not be having a good time right now.

There’s this odd stretch near Price (both in game and in real life) where US 6 esentially becomes an undivided 2-lane freeway. There’s nothing inherently wrong with that—it meets all relevant engineering standards—but it is a bit unusual.

What do you suppose this poor sucker did to get himself pulled over?

Around 7:00 PM, we join Interstate 70, a highway that has sentimental value to me in the real world by virtue of passing through my hometown.

We don’t stay on I-70 long, though, as we’re quickly off onto US 191.

Also, highway signs are way bigger than you probably think they are.

As we reach the town of Moab, the sun has begun to set.

This is slightly cheeky. The devs included a “tourism billboard” advertising the game’s Kansas DLC.

The sun begins to set over US 191.

Unfortunately, that’s where I have to cut us off this time! I would have liked to have carried on to the next rest stop, which is only a few more miles ahead, but I’m having bizarre technical difficulties: A huge black void forming around flashing lights that slowly swallows the whole screen. Graphical glitches in realistic 3D video games have always been a phobia trigger of mine, so I’m going to set this aside for the time being until I can do some troubleshooting.

That said, I’ll leave you with another of Robin’s favorite ’80s songs. Millie’s ’80s song of the night is “Oh Sherrie” by Steve Perry!

Millennium 🌠

Imicow I think you and I are both exceptionally observant of such things. If I played this for my mother, she wouldn’t be able to hear the cut even after I pointed it out to her.

Imicow

eh, true, my mother would never notice it either

Millennium 🌠

Well, now the game won’t start at all. 😕

I’m gonna try uninstalling it and reinstalling it.

Millennium 🌠

So…it seems version 1.54 has some known performance issues on ARM macOS. Which I guess makes sense, since it’s an x86 game, but it’s disappointing. The dev team has issued a few small updates already and it looks like they’re looking into fixing the larger problem.

So my choices at this point are to either roll back to version 1.53 or to wait until the next major update.

The only disappointing thing is that both of those options will mean cancelling the currrent job and having to start over. So, uh…one moment, please!!

Millennium 🌠

The bad news: I had to cancel that trip before we made it anywhere near Santa Fe, which leaves this thread with a disappointing start.

The good news: Rolling back to version 1.53 seems to have fixed my graphical and performance issues, at least for now. I drove around Los Angeles for about two in-game hours and everything seemed OK.

When I get bored later tonight or tomorrow I will start a new job and we can start our little travelogue over again.

In the meantime, please appreciate this hilarious accident in which I backed up out of a wrong turn without looking, hit a cop car with my truck, and sent it flying to bash into a Dodge Charger in the adjacent lane.

please give me a CDL in real life I am a responsible driver

Imicow

at least it was only a cop car

Millennium 🌠

The guy in the Dodge is probably not too happy with me, though.

I also love the blue car that came up behind all of this and just stopped in the middle of the road. Because what the hell would you do in that situation? Call the police? The police are already there!

Millennium 🌠

Now that we’ve rolled the game back to an earlier version, we’ve had to reload a much older save file. Effectively, we’ve found ourselves abruptly transported to a different location in both space and time.

(Side note: I strongly suspect an executive at SCS Software pressured the devs to rush out version 1.54 before it was quite ready so as not to delay the release of the Missouri map expansion DLC that requires the newer version. Here’s to hoping they work out the issues soon.)

Los Angeles, CA to Seattle, WA – Day 1

Sunday, 2:30 PM
Los Angeles, CA

Anyone want to go to the Pacific Northwest? Well, too, bad, I do! And I’m in luck, because the Kenworth dealership here in LA has a shipment of trucks bound for Seattle! I hope they won’t be offended that I’m hauling them with my Western Star and not a Kenworth…

Take a good look at the LA skyline, friends, ’cause we’re not gonna be here long!

The route from Los Angeles to Seattle is a pretty straightforward one: We’re just gonna stay on northbound Interstate 5 for a long, long time.

I suppose, given that we are driving not one but four trucks at the moment, we should take the signed truck route.

Interstate 5 as it exists today largely follows the path of long-since-decommissioned US 99. This is one of the few places where the two routes diverged. This stretch of the former US 99 is now California 99. We’re going to stick with I-5, however.

We’ve got quite a ways to go to reach Seattle, but for now, let’s just appreciate the beautiful Sunday evening sunset.

No ’80s song this time. I’ve decided we only get an ’80s song when we stop to rest for the night…which will probably be the next update.

Millennium 🌠

I had forgotten I had come up with a…creative way to shorten the company name “Millie’s Freight Transport”

Millennium 🌠

Picking up where we left off! It’s about 7:30 PM on Sunday as we roll past Buttonwillow, CA on Interstate 5.

Aw, man, I feel sorry for that poor truck driver. His day is probably ruined.

Nice try, my mans. I see you back there. You’re not gonna get me like your buddy got that other guy.

It’s about 10:30 PM, and we’re getting kind of sleepy, so we’ll be briefly departing from Interstate 5 onto California 152 to find somewhere to stop for the night.

Heh, another SUBTLE “tourism billboard”.

And so we find ourselves at a “Fusion” brand truck stop off California 152 just outside Santa Nella, California. It’s 11:00 PM on Sunday and we’re settling in for the night.

We’ve probably got at least another day and a half to go before we reach Seattle…how far will we get tomorrow?

TO BE CONTINUED

Millie’s ’80s song of the night is “We Belong” by Pat Benatar, 1984.

This one I actually picked out on my own, unlike most of these, which are gonna be @Carly Robin Ravenswood’s picks.

Millennium 🌠

If anyone was curious, almost all of the in-game truck stops do, in fact, correspond to truck stops in the real world.

The “ARON Travel Center” where we previously stopped on Broadway Avenue is Boise is, in the real world, a TA Travel Center on Broadway Avenue in Boise.

Likewise, the “Fusion Travel Center” off CA 152 outside Santa Nella where we’re staying tonight corresponds to a Petro Travel Center off CA 152 outside Santa Nella, though I can neither confirm nor deny whether we are staying there tonight.

When the game was first released in 2016, it didn’t have nearly this level of verisimilitude, but subequent revisions have made it more and more realistic, and my autistic self is here for it!

Chihaya Anon

Your truck is really cute, Lennirin!

Millennium 🌠

Thank you!! The old was was pink, but this one is metallic pink!!!!!

Millennium 🌠

Los Angeles, CA to Seattle, WA – Day 2

Monday, 9:00 AM
Fusion Travel Center
Santa Nella, California

Yawn Well, I’m glad we’ve had a good night’s rest! Time to get back on the road…

As mentioned previously, we’re going to be sticking to Interstate 5 all the way to Seattle.

…Or, well, that was my plan. It looks like I-5 is closed due to an accident. We’ll have no choice but to take Interstate 580 from this junction.

Thankfully, our detour is pretty simple. We’ll just be taking I-580 to I-80 eastbound, then rejoining I-5.

Our new route takes us right through Oakland, so I guess we’re doing some California sightseeing this morning.

Onto I-80.

California, both in game and in the real world, has some delightfully convoluted highway interchanges.

Oh, hey, this route takes us over the Oakland Bay Bridge!

…which is, of course, a toll bridge. Mildly annoying, seeing as how our intended route was free.

Alright, here we go! We’ve finally made it back to I-5.

Everything should be smooth sailing from—huh?

you have got to be kidding me

OK, let’s not panic. This isn’t as bad as it seems. We know it’s only the ramp to I-5 that’s closed, not the highway itself. All we need to do is stay on I-80 eastbound, get off at the next exit, then get back on I-80 westbound to head back to the junction with I-5.

It’s just a shame that this adds another two hours to our travel time.

Alright. OK. No more nonsense. We’ve finally made it back to I-5.

We good? We’re good. Whew.

It’s about 7:00 PM The sun is beginning to set in the western sky and I’m starting to get tired.

As luck would have it, we’ve been instructed to stop at a weigh station facility…which happens to have plenty of space reserved for overnight parking!

And thus concludes the exceptionally frustrating second day of our little trip. We didn’t even make it out of California.

Hopefully tomorrow we won’t face quite as many (literal) roadblocks.

TO BE CONTINUED

In commemoration of the frequent detours and turnarounds we’d had to make today, Millie’s song of the night is “Stand” by R.E.M., 1989.

Stand in the place where you live, now face north
Think about direction, wonder why you haven’t before