Weekend Warrior
Ever since I was a kid, I relished the weekend as a time when I could retreat even further than normal into my own mind, whittling away hours drawing, writing, recording radio shows and playing games. To this day that hasn’t really changed. I never really envisioned myself as one of those weekend warrior types who gets his hands dirty wrenching on the family truckster, weeding the garden and painting the siding on the house all before lunch on Saturday. But this weekend I found myself doing a fair bit of those kinds of tasks, and in truth, it felt pretty good to get them done. And I didn’t even have to get up at the crack of dawn!
The first thing I should mention is the GTO. It’s finally here. It was, in fact, one of the first things that got done this Saturday morning. After a leisurely breakfast accompanied by an episode of The Rifleman on RTV, I started steam-mopping the kitchen floor and was just wrapping it up when the guy from Omar called. Omar Auto Transport, that is. You might have followed the saga of my vehicle shipment from our old home in Florida to our new one in Texas, and surmised from my posts that it wasn’t going quite according to plan. In fact the transport was by now almost two weeks behind schedule, with Omar getting more and more difficult to reach by the day. The end was finally nigh, however, when the truck driver called during my mopping routine and advised me that he was 20 minutes away, with an expected arrival time of around noon.
The driver, being from south Florida, didn’t have the world’s greatest grasp of the English language. I advised him that the streets of our community were pretty small and that he would be best advised to meet me in the parking lot of a local shopping center about a mile down the road. With the rendezvous point arranged, I got in Apple’s Mazda and headed down there to wait. About five or ten minutes past noon, after seeing no sign of the truck or my GTO, I received another phone call from the driver. He was outside our community and complaining that the streets were too narrow to fit the truck into. No, really? Isn’t that why I asked you to meet me elsewhere? I guess he didn’t understand me. I tried to get him to tell me exactly where he was, but he apparently wasn’t understanding that either, so I just fired up the Mazda and headed back the way I had come.
In the end, I didn’t have much trouble finding the truck. It was parked in a striped zone in the middle of the parkway outside our community. This was exactly how the guys loaded up the car in Florida, too — in the center of a six-lane highway. (And yes, it was the same guys, too.) Down there, a constable from the local sheriff’s department showed up with a few choice words for the trucker, none of them very nice. Our parkway is significantly smaller and less heavily trafficked, at least, but I couldn’t help looking over my shoulder regularly for any sign of the Texas P.D.
I Knew It Would Work Out As Soon As I Complained
It looks like my rant from a few days ago has been nullified — my GTO was picked up in Florida today by the auto transporter. Yeah, the same one that I originally hired. It all came together at literally the very last minute, but the courier managed to get somebody over to pick up the car with only hours to spare.
I won’t go into details about the actual process of loading the car, but it’s currently on its way to Miami, where it will be loaded onto another truck for transport to us here in Texas. There’s a lot of handing-off and switching-up during this whole process, but it sounds like I can expect to receive the car next Friday or Saturday.
Frankly, when I wrote my original rant about this process, I hoped that exactly this would happen; in fact, it further inspired me to write it in the first place. So many times it seems like I’ve complained about how everything was falling apart, only to have it work out at the very last minute (long after it seemed like it was a lost cause). It happened when I got my HDTV in 2002 and when I had my Formula 350 shipped to me in 2003. And now it’s happened again. I used to feel stupid when this happens, but now I don’t care — so long as everything works out, who cares if I look like an ass.
Now, hopefully the GTO arrives undamaged and on time. If it does, none of this roller coaster ride will even matter.
