<Lots of potential spoilers!>
<Episode 1>

Later. Hours later. Nobody gives Dimitry any credit for the fact that he’s the one driving through the night scouting out a new jobsite. Mud everywhere. It’s cold. Nearly ran out of fuel. Soaking wet after he put the FJ40 nearly completely under water earlier, and now turning off onto a track that looks like it’s never been driven on, more of a footpath than a damn road. And there’s only going to be complaining about how tough everyone else’s life is tomorrow. Even though they get to actually sleep at night, someplace dry, with coffee, and maybe some vodka. ♥♥♥♥ them. Really.

He clicked on the diff-lock as the mud suddenly took a serious turn for the worse. 1:37am, and still no end in sight. His head whip-lashed back in his seat as the car hit a rock that he hadn’t noticed.

The sky turned orange, then a blinding yellow as our hero carried on his scouting drive. Word of a locked D-series truck at the nearby lumber yard needed to be checked out. And anyway, no-one had garage parts and he’d yet to find where they’d been stored by their predecessors, so before anyone else could do anything, it was all on Dimitry’s shoulders.

Just keep driving, old man, and don’t let your eyes close. You know they say – old truckers never die, they just close their eyes at the wheel... The seriousness of that statement jolted him alert. The grizzly trucker squinted his eyes into the dawn as he sprayed water at his windscreen and tried to wipe the mud away. Mud smears in barcoded stripes across the windshield. No help. The D-series truck looked good – didn’t have any workshop supplies on it though.

It was about then – 7:35 in the morning to be exact – Dimitry decided to call it a night. He parked his car in the shade just beyond the lumber mill, tilted his chair all the way back, took his shoes off and put his feet up on the dash, such was a logging trucker’s life. He closed his eyes, drifting off to an easier life, easier times.

He woke when the heat in the cab became unbearable. It’s either freezing cold or boiling hot here. He stumbled out of his truck, pee’d in the bushes, and got out his camping stove to make himself a strong coffee and bowl of oats. The coffee tasted like the mud that he’d smeared across his face hours earlier.

He drove.

As night fell for the second time, Dimitry was getting towed out of the mud of a field. Who the hell decided it was a good idea to put a watchpost in the middle of a sodden field of crops was anybody’s guess. But the local farmer had pulled him out, and now, as darkness settled around him, he continued his scouting.

Sometime in that second night Dimitry felt the crunch of his diff-lock being torn apart against the hard surface of the dirt road he was on. Definitely a sign of the need for some sleep again, he grumbled to himself. And with that our hero had completed a full 48 hours in his trusty old landcruiser, and still hadn’t finished scouting out the construction site.

This was going to be a complicated project – there were roads everywhere, but proper bad condition. The trick here is going to be not breaking axles on the big trucks. Haven’t even finished scouting it yet. Haven’t even got a garage to call home for the next few weeks. Our hero pitched his little one man tent in the grass next to his truck. “Our hero”, who the ♥♥♥♥ thinks he’s our hero!? Who even know he’s out here!? Slept 4 hours in 2 days! Nobody’s wondering about him, except the team of kids who drove his trucks, and they’re just wondering what the hell is taking him so long. And the suits at head office waiting for a status report. They just say – get this done by then, and he gets it done. No-one gives the slightest ♥♥♥♥ how much work goes into pulling this off.

His back ached from the thousands of rocks he’d bounced over in the last 2 days. As he lay in his tiny tent, he could smell burnt clutch and break pads from his truck. He still wasn’t finished the damn scouting mission. And as soon as that was done the real work had to start. “Our hero” – ♥♥♥♥ that – angry thoughts stopped him from getting any decent sleep as tossed and turned in his sleeping bag, having arguments in his head with all the people in his life. There weren't actually many people in his life, and none that cared the slightest about Dimitry. Eventually sleep won the battle, and darkness came, and morning, and then the third day ...

The thing with bouncing over rocks – the first time you do it, it kind of gives you whiplash. You neck gets thrown back in your seat, you worry that you nearly broke your neck, and you’re a little bit more careful the next time. The 500th time you bounce over a rock, you’ve been clenching the muscles in your neck for literally hours on end, except, you’ve still missed a few, which literally bruised your neck muscles, and give you a kind of drunk, head-spinning headache, and still there’s another rock in front of you, so you stiffen your body for another blow, lean into the direction of the punch, and take it, mostly in the neck, but eventually you hurt basically all over, just another punch. Wait, there! Smack!, and then as you’re coming off one rock another one jerks the landcruiser (and your body,) in a completely different direction.

But watchpoints are done! As the sun turns the world headache-yellow at daybreak on the third day, “our hero”, the fool - Dimitry, realises that he’s finished scouting. Now just to get to that truck with supplies, and then to head to the garage for some proper sleep, and hopefully a vodka. Oh, but the team will need orders before that. Anyway, still got to get to that truck. Drive. Fool. It's only just beginning.

...