Go easy on me fellow Minions. You’re lucky I know how to write
One Friday I was given three deliveries to make from the big smoke to a popular coastal town. Total round trip roughly 1000 Furlongs (200 km or 104 miles). I was fully loaded and departed just after 12. Peice of cake, no?
First drop off at a building site (still in the big smoke) there was a bit of stuffing around but nothing to bad. The traffic being the biggest issue but it's the city. What do you expect? The second drop off was in the 'burbs right near the highway and it promised to be very easy. I'm unloading and the people helping me were talking to each other and I'm not a part of the conversation but one thing grabs my attention "Cruise Missile". WTF? I hit them up for information and all I get is that "Trump" launched missiles into Syria.
Now, my normal driving entertainment is podcasts. Joe Rogan, Sasquatch Chronicals, Mysterious Universe, Monday Morning Podcast (Bill Burr). So I don't get breaking news. A little stressed and another delivery to make I finish up and tune into a news station. Information is sparse. Yeah, I get it. Trump launched missiles into Syria. Is Russia retaliating? Are nukes sailing in the stratosphere as I drive?
My stress is building. I'm in a ute with a delivery to make. I'm on the highway aaaaannnnnd GRIDLOCK. F*** F*** F***. I'm sans updates, I can't check my smart arts phone for updates I'm 100% dependent on MSM which like anyone with a brain doesn't trust.
As you all know. 1000 Furlongs at 500 Furlongs an hour should take about an hour to drive on a highway. Yeah, nah it's Friday afternoon and we're headed for the coast. After 4 1/2 hours I get a call from where I'm supposed to make the last delivery. "Where are you?" I said "Please wait, I've been on the road since 1 to deliver this to you. I'm at x" Now we're talking 2km - by car. Yeah it took me 45 minutes! He was angry but what do you do?
Unloaded I headed home. Are we at war? I'm none the wiser as I had no cell access at my delivery. Traffic home for some 'effin reason was bad as well. Well the reason was roadworks. Who in their right mind drives to the big smoke on a Friday? Let's inconvenience them!
All in all it takes 8 hours to travel 200 km
And that, my friends is why I hate traveling. What was I going to do 100 km from home with only the clothes on my back and what's in my car? On that day I had a wad of cash and a few tools.
Quick addition. The day after my wife and I flew out of Christchurch, NZ the place got trashed by a huge earthquake. By the skin of our teeth we missed being in a really bad situation. A foreign country, our cash spent and nowhere to stay. F**king awesome.
Yeah, nah. 50km from home is about as far as I want to go. Home is where my Gats are. Home is where my family know to look for me. Home is where my preps are.
Yep, unless money making work takes you out of your A.O. Stay close to base camp. Vacation or weekend? Stay home relax there or work on things there. Shopping or such excursions? Keep it all in a get home, walk home reasonable radius, J.i.c. There will be large percentages of casualties due to exposure to risks outside the wire.
ReplyDeleteCharlie lives outside the wire!
Deletehmmmm, I wonder what he was saying, I don't speak the language?
ReplyDeleteHe's from Oz. They speak less American than the brits :)
DeleteI do apologise for being inarticulate.
DeleteShorter version. The day Trump launched missiles at Syria (after Ruskies rattled their sabres) I was a long way from home with no preps apart from a wad of cash (the float)). To make matters worse I was forced to drive further from home and couldn't get updates. Then to make my already awesome day better traffic was an absolute nightmare.
Interesting tidbit I did not know. A Furlong is 1/8 of a mile OR 201 meters. So my 30-30 is good to go for just shy of 1 Furlong. You have been warned bad guys
Is slang inarticulate? I think most would argue not.
DeleteDivide by 8 then multiply by 5 to get kilometers from miles.
ReplyDeleteor 5/8
IOW, 50 miles is about 80 kilometers, a little more than half.
I was a krankenwagen driver (ambulance) on the autobahns in germany for a spell and learned how to do the conversion in my head, at 135 mph. (or 220 kph)
Once, I was driving a brand new 1976 Oldsmobile Metro Ambulance on the Nurnberg autobahn at night with 2 surgeons and a nurse in the back while a female patient was passing kidney stones and screaming at the top of her lungs.
(Ever seen a kidney stone? I have. Nasty. Black, the size of a BB and has 100 fish hook barbs all over it. Now imagine that thing coming down your piss hole. Yeah, you'll scream too.)
So the head surgeon is telling me to "go, Go, GO!" and I'm pegged out at 145mph and out of nowhere a Volkswagen Beetle passes me like I was standing still.
5 miles from the Nurnberg hospital I hear a thump and all the lights come on on the dash. WTF. I didn't let off it, kept going. Pulled into the ambulance bay at the hospital and suddenly the hood blew up and the front end was on fire. As the employees yanked the gurney out the back and the surgeons and nurse scurried for cover the ambulance was engulfed in flames. The engine was glowing red hot. I covered it in purple K from the extinguisher but it was too far gone.
The fan belts had blow and the water pump seized so the engine cooked off and torched the fuel line and tanks. I did as I was told, by the 2 captains, the surgeons, "Go Go Go!", but I was still issued an article 15 for misappropriation of military equipment but the sentence was suspended for 90 days. 78 days later I PCS'd to the states (Fort Campbell). I was 22 years old.
A VW Beetle? Were you going downhill?
DeleteDoes it matter? I was doing 145 and it passed me.
DeleteI was told long ago that US Beetles would not go over 90 mph. The german version of the Beetle was named Jeans. Yeah, a little confusing at first.
I think you were stationed for a spell in germany right?
The word germany is an american concoction that doesn't exist over there. In the middle 70's the country was named Federal Deuschland Republik. Spelling may not be correct, been a long time. Germany also has 1 more letter in the alphabet, it sort of resembles a capital B.
Like this: Bahnstraße
2nd from last letter, don't know if that will copy well.
I was stationed in Hawaii, then Korea. I'm sure the hookers in Korea beat the ones in Germany. So I have no regrets, other than being with the 2nd ID. Bunch of humpers, with the Provost being up the base commanders ass. Gott damn officers. Were was I? Something about I thought it was against the laws of physics for VW's to pass the speed limit.
DeleteI used to drive a beetle. It was a bit of a death trap. I did have a full anecdote of my time with it however the comment got eaten by blogger. Long story short it nearly burned out twice & didn't handle wet roads
DeleteOh yeah, I used to drive ambulances as well. Just not a beetle ambulance. I wasn't cut out for the occupation though. Something about injured / dead kids was what the psych evaluator said.
Used to work for a guy that was a burned out dude with one of the major private aid relief agencies. One natural disaster with dead kids too many. Gotta be bruising to the soul.
DeleteYeah, ask reginald denney (l.a. riots truck driver-victim) how stuck in traffic during game time can suck badly. Learn from history, always repeats itself.
ReplyDeleteMoral of the story. They pay you HOW much to deliver in the hood?
DeleteI remember when that happened. Deeply disturbing
DeleteHindsight being 20/20, I think that event empowered the Blacks more than any PC agenda or Obammy presidency ever did. Gawd help us, little Timmy.
DeleteLos Angeles loot-burn festival of 1992 live feed video is frequently on utoob. I enjoyed it from 60 miles east, on USAF active duty at Norton AFB. It smelled like when you throw a bunch of plastic garbage on a hot campfire. Roof Koreans were admirable, and the State of California has been suppressing effective weapon ownership and ammo availability ever since.
DeleteI never did get much info on how many looters were killed or how many people were "lost" (SSS) in the excitement.
pdxr13
Blacks are victims, so there couldn't have been any victims of other colors. Move along, cracker, nothing to see here.
DeleteNo need to apologize for your writing style or content, sir – that was a great article! It was both an excellent accounting of a firsthand experience and a fine cautionary reminder to us all. Thank you (and Jim) for sharing it with us in the blog.
ReplyDeleteIt was also interesting timing to hear from someone in your part of the world. Last night I couldn’t sleep because a damaged ligament in my knee that insisted on letting me know it was still not healed up yet. While I was keeping ice on it I passed the time listening to shortwave radio. I got a very clear commercial broadcast signal just under the 30 meter band (surprising since the conditions up that high have sucked lately). The announcer was talking about construction delays on Highway 1 near Linden. She had what sounded like a British accent but not quite so I was not sure where that might be. British Columbia? Newfondland? A short time later she announced that the station RNZI in New Zealand. Amazing that the signal would carry so clearly to the central United States but the conditions were just right for about 15 minutes…
Your story really resonated with me since I’ve known that feeling many times. For 10 years, overlapping the turn of the millennium, I was an engineer with a company that sold equipment to semiconductor fabrication companies (“chip fabs”). Most fabs are located outside the United States so it was necessary to travel to China, Malaysia, Japan, Korea, Germany, etc. There were also times it was necessary to travel domestically to one of the big cities on the coast like Palo Alto or Boston. And since that industry is so crazy it was not uncommon to be told on a Friday afternoon, “Hey, I need you to fly to Tokyo (or Shenzhen or Munich or wherever) this weekend.” There was always the pucker factor when you were there that you could be stuck that far from base if things went ballistic. When I left there and took my current job I told them during the in interview that I was done traveling and that someone else could go instead. Since I had some rather unique skillset they agreed, and I stick as close to base as possible these days. Being 50 miles from home when things turn ugly is unpleasant but doable. Being 5,000 miles from home in a different culture on another continent is quite another matter.
Its only a short cold swim to get back over to Alaska :)
DeleteOr a walk...if you're willing to wait until the next ice age ;-)
DeleteWhich might not be too darn far away.
Delete