A DAY OF SURVIVAL

First off, I had proof that a ransom was paid for my release to my Mother while at the Company yard in French Camp, CA early Sunday morning. That is until I realized that the memory chip was still in my computer and not in the camera. Something tells me there has to be a conspiracy there somewhere. All I know, is that by the time I was about 30 feet from the truck, Craig was already consuming a brownie with a huge smile on his face.

He did manage to pull himself away from his ransom goodies long enough to drive into the Company yard in Bloomington, CA to stage for his morning delivery in San Bernardino. That delivery went well, and after dropping off the pallets he was told to hook up to another trailer in the yard in Bloomington, and deliver the contents near Compton.

Inside the trailer were twenty pallets of freshly dug up Idaho potatoes, all snug in their bags. Their destination was to a produce outfit that according to Craig, was one messed up place to deliver to. At this point in our conversation, I knew it was a good thing I wasn't in the truck. The dock situation was so tight, Craig said he only had about 2 inches to spare on each side of his doors before hitting something. But that would be the least of his worries there. Seems when he checked in, they only wanted half of his potatoes, and he would need to pay a lumper, but that they didn't take a ComCheck. Thankfully, he had the cash on hand to pay the $60, but was quickly dialing into dispatch to see what they wanted done with the rest of the potatoes. After making sure that Craig understood not to move from the dock, they went about making phone calls to see what to do about the remaining potatoes.

A short time later, Craig was told to head to the produce district in downtown LA. Putting his navigation trust into our GPS, who we named "Dot", he was able to roll right to the location of the drop. What surprised Craig, was that the Receiver was a brand new, sparkling clean building, with five open docks, and state of the art flat screen TV's and surveillance cameras. Who would have imagined?

With the potatoes finally unloaded, Craig was given his next assignment to pick up juice in Vernon, CA tomorrow morning at 9am. With that information, Craig headed off to our super secret squirrel parking place in Vernon for the night. The load of juice is destined for Auburn, WA on Thursday. With any luck, I'll get in a quick visit with him when he drives through French Camp tomorrow evening. I have my doubts there are any brownies left from that ransom pay off.