12/6/07

It was a simple knock on the side of a truck, nothing more. There was no sinister motive, no apocalyptic underpinning. A simple knock. For the driver inside the truck, it might well have been the end of life as we know it. After tossing and turning through the night, as he is prone to do, he had just managed to reach that state where our most fanciful desires and our darkest fears intersect in the vivid landscape of our dreams. KNOCK, KNOCK, KNOCK. The sound tore through his eardrums and flung the driver back toward an awakened condition. To him, it was no less startling than an air raid coming to some remote village of some far-flung nation with which a superpower has achieved a quarrel.

Peering out his window, toward the south, the driver saw the horizon. It was a virtual rainbow of color, beginning with the deep dark orange and progressing through the various shades until it reached the equally deep indigo of the pre-dawn Florida sky. The driver wasn't sure just yet of where he was or what was happening. In his groggy state, he searched for more clues. His shoes were on the floor beside his bed. His blanket was half on the bed, half on the floor. A television rested on a shelf, high above his feet. The space around him, while not uncomfortable, was indeed small. He was in his truck. This tiny bit of familiarity brought a correspondingly tiny sense of reassurance. But where was his truck? He staggered toward the front of the cab, all the while trying to ascertain the nature of his predicament. Through the driver's side door, he saw yellow shipping containers. Through the right, he saw a tan stucco wall. The wall was plain and nondescript, save for a band of green running the length of the wall near the top. He was behind a store, or so it appeared. The surroundings were at the same time foreign and familiar. He had awoken behind numerous stores of a similar type, but still it was if this one was entirely new.

Just then, he spotted the shadowy figure of a man outside the driver's side of the truck. As the figure drew closer, he was able to see that it was a young man of fairly large build. The driver's eyes began to adjust to the surroundings. He noticed that the young man appeared to be of Cuban descent, although he might just as well have been Puerto Rican or Dominican or any of the ancestral lines beginning in Latin America. The young man had a neatly trimmed goatee, kept very thin. The thinness of the goatee was not lost on the driver. Perhaps it was a simple fashion choice, but he suspected that the man's youth was the more prominent factor. On a subconscious level, the driver surmised that the young man's whiskers had not yet reached the level of maturity and fullness that those of an older man may possess.

The young man was most certainly the source of the knocking, but what did he want? Sliding his feet into his shoes, the driver slowly assumed a position behind the wheel of his truck. As his right hand wiped the sleep from his eyes, the driver reached for the window knob with his left hand. Before he had the opportunity to roll the window completely down, the young man spoke. "What's up?" he queried. What's up? What's up? This was a useless statement in the driver's quest to identify his particular state of affairs.

About that time, things came suddenly into focus as the last vestiges of dreamlike mental wanderings were cast from the driver's mind. He noted the presence of bolt cutters in the hand of the young man. He noted the faint hint of light from around the edges of his trailer's rear doors. He noted the bills of lading sitting patiently on his dashboard, waiting for their chance to be put into use. The driver was at his delivery point and he needed to pull forward so that the mysterious young man could cut the seal from his trailer. The clock read 6:15am and it was time to go to work. He placed his left foot on the clutch pedal, his right on the brake. He pushed, firmly but in a controlled manner, against the buttons that would supply his brake lines with air pressure. He reached down and turned the key. His day had begun...

Sorry about all that. I think these damn audio books are getting to me. So yeah, I got going a little early at the first drop. Then it was about ninety miles to the second one. The tight backing that was mentioned in my directions wasn't so bad. The setup was the pain in the ass. I had to jack the trailer to the blind side in order to direct it toward the dock area, then jack it back to the left in order to hit the dock. No troubles.

I got a good news/bad news deal on the beer run. I am getting rid of it tomorrow, not Saturday, but I have to pick it up at midnight tonight. I might head over a little early, but it's a draft load so I don't imagine it will be ready much before 11pm. Then tomorrow morning I'll make the next pickup and head west.

So, where I thought today would be mostly wasted, it won't. I need to get some laundry done and clean up the truck a bit, then try to sleep for a while. Cheers.