THE GOOD AND BAD OF L.A.

We drove into the bowels of LA Monday morning and the Industrial District.  No wide streets here, and cars lined both sides of the road.  We managed to find our first little "hole in the wall" receiver and eeked out a spot in front of their gate to park the truck until someone showed up.  A little before 7am, we saw a lone car pull up, and a small Japanese man exit the vehicle.  He waved to us as he walked into the office and Craig followed shortly thereafter with the paperwork.

With limited English, he pointed to the dock and proceeded to walk out into the street to aid Craig in his blindside back.  Craig had already told him that I would help out, but he stood his ground on the street, and with what I can only describe as the precision of a white gloved traffic cop in New York City, he executed hand signals to get Craig backed up in one continuous movement as I stood open jawed in amazement at just how perfectly he instructed Craig.

Once into the dock, as he walked by me, I took the opportunity to tell him just how fantastic his help had been, and with a big smile and a bow to me, he quickly went inside and had us unloaded in 10 minutes.  Now that is how a delivery should go and quite the opposite of how our last delivery would turn out to be.

First off, you got to love (not) appointments 8 hrs apart.  Our next delivery was only 17 miles away, so we drove to within 300 yards of the facility and parked.  On the off chance that they might take us early, Craig went ahead and walked to the guard who kindly told him to check back in at 3pm.

 Now, the only thing that would make this day work for us, is if we could get in a 8 hr break so that we would have hours on the book to get the heck out of LA after our delivery.  In hindsight, we didn't need to worry, as 3pm rolled around and we were told that the container our product was going to be offloaded into hadn't arrived yet from the docks.  All I can say is thank goodness for our broadband card and the Internet.

Finally, around 5pm, after squeezing into a dock which left no more than an inch or so to spare with the doors of the trailer open, we were being unloaded.  Happy to be free to leave, we had another 90 minutes of commute traffic to endure before we finally arrived at the company yard in Bloomington, CA and a well deserved night of sleep after a very long day!