WHATCHA GONNA DO?

The day started with such promise and then quickly took a turn that we didn't expect. But let me start at the beginning. On Sunday, we were enjoying our nice relaxing drive south, looking forward to our showers in Corning, when the beep of the QualComm interrupted our thoughts. "oh oh".... on a weekend that can mean only one thing........somebody needs a load re powered. The message was a quick "call me".

Upon calling into dispatch, we were told to go into the yard in French Camp and drop our trailer of frozen french fries destined for Long Beach on 3/3/09 at 10am and pick up another trailer loaded with boxed meat which had a drop in Stockton on 3/2/09 at 8am and then Vernon, CA on 3/3/09 at 10am. Hmmmmm, not much of a difference in the dispatches, but who are we to question.

We high tail it into French Camp and on the way I realize that our pickup is there. On top of that, we should arrive by 3pm and wouldn't it be nice to go to my Mom's house for showers and hopefully a nice home cooked meal? A quick phone call to Mom confirms that my assumption that she would be willing to cook for us was correct, and we now have a plan for a nice evening. We had also made plans to meet up with Craig's parents on Monday on our way down to the LA area, so everything was working out good.

Then comes Monday morning. We arrive at the receiver in Stockton, CA well ahead of schedule and check in. They tell us they will call us when our dock is available. Two hours pass and we now know that meeting Craig's parents will be out of the question time wise. With much regret we call and have to reschedule a visit with them. A call into customer service tells us there is some discrepancy with the purchase order numbers, but that they are working on it. Three hours, four hours, five hours pass and still no word. We can't really complain, since 8am we are getting paid to just sit and enjoy the cold, rainy weather, not to mention watching not one, but two big trucks get stuck in the mud along side the road way. They both made the day of the tow truck driver who responded to both calls for help. Craig made the journey up to the guard shack to check on any progress, but it seems no one was communicating with the other. Finally at 3pm, seven hours after our appointment, we get a message that our new appointment time will be 8am again on Tuesday morning and that they now have a purchase order number that everyone is satisfied with. Of course the appointment time for our drop in Vernon, CA will have to be changed as well, but as our dispatcher said, "We'll deal with that issue tomorrow after we see how things go in the morning". I'm not holding my breath. I think the odds of this thing still working out are about as good as me finding the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow we were fortunate enough to enjoy late in the afternoon.