Friday night I went o bed around 9 am. Before I went to bed I "footed the board." This means that I put myself at the bottom of the board. My rest cycle was supposed to start at 7 am on the 4th, and I wanted to have the 4th off. I woke up at 11:30 and called "crew call," and it said I I wasn't projected to go out within the next 24 hours. "Great!" iI said to myself. "I'll have the weekend off." I went back to sleep and the phone rang at exactly 12:45 am. I was called for a baretable. I guess every other joker "footed the board" so they could get the holiday off, too. I got maybe three hours of sleep. At least it was a light train. We had all emtpy spine cars. It was going to LA. They ran us pretty good. Sometimes they run baretables good. It might be because somebody needs to load the empty containers. They brought us to Dagget and told us we would be relieved there. We were surprised that the outbound came out pretty quickly. "No open containers, " I said, and I wished them a happy 4th. We got the to the hotel after they had stopped serving breakfast. Just the same I had a couple of pancakes and some scrabled eggs. I went to bed. Despite the fact that I had barely slept the night before I couldn't get to sleep. (I've had insomnia since childhood). After a few hours I got up and got a burrito from Fuzzy's. I still couldn't sleep. I watched President Trumps speech and the fantastic firework show. After that some joker was shooting off fireworks in front of the hotel! Finally it stopped and I got maybe one or two hours of sleep. I got called for a nice small Q train at 12:35 am. On duty time was 2:05 am. "Great!" I said. " We will get on the train and go to Needles, and I will be off for three days," I said. When I got in the van I saw that we had been swapped to the H BARTUL and I was mad! I got to the depot and the terminal manager said that the yard crew was putting it together.. That was good. We had to wait over an hour for them to finish. We got in the van and went out to our train. Our head end was under the 1st Street bridge. It was a big train. Over 11,000 tons. We had 148 cars, 3 motors on the head end, 1 in the middle, and 1 on the rear. They ran us pretty good. We were outside of Needles at 9:30 am. They were doing one hour "spacing" for trains going to Winslow. We came in and got relieved around 10:30. Due to the fact that I have worked 7 days in a row I have 72 hours off and I won't have to go back to work until late Wednesday morning. I can use the rest. I have attached a picture of the 6731, our leader. I hope you got to spend the 4th with your family/friends. On the railroad there are no holidays. I may not be around for the next 250 years but I'

m sure the U.S. wil still be here. GOD BLESS THE USA!