Meeting day

     4:15 up and out of the house, out of the yard a 4:45 and on our way to New London. My first thought of the day, as I am staring at the back of Marcelino's flatbed, which is loaded with material, "I hope there is a fork truck on site to unload this truck." The contractor is suppose to provide a fork truck, and had told me last week, there would in fact be one on site Monday, yesterday. With all my preparations yesterday, phone calls and emails, I had forgotten to ask the simple question, "is there a fork truck there?" Something Marcelino may regret as he is unloading the truck by hand, while I am in meetings most of the morning.

     So trucks are loaded on the ferry, breakfast, emails, write a "to do list" and a chance to write in my blog. Yes Dan, I am making good use of my time on the ferry ride over (not all of us though)

but, as I walk the boat,  I can't help but become a little nostalgic. Most of my friends and family know, there is no place I would rather be, than on a boat, on the water. So, I can't help but think of friends , family and most importantly, my wife. As I write though, and announcement comes over the speakers, it is time to disembark this ferry, and head over to our next ferry ride. Orient point to the island. Hmm, I need to back my truck and trailer onto the ferry. My truck and trailer is 41 feet long. This should be interesting.

     Like a pro, 41 feet long, 8.5 feet wide, backed on a ferry with three other vehicles already on it. It's all done with smoke and mirrors I thought, which brought me back to a memory I hadn't thought of in years, of Day and I. Early in our relationship we would frequently travel to key largo with scuba instructors and students who are hoping to get certified. This trip I remember we drove down in a van towing a trailer. Day was driving when we decided to stop for lunch. She attempted to back the van and trailer into a parking space but gave up and asked me to do it. I did, with little effort and she asked how I had done that, as if it were a magic trick, my response, "with smoke and mirrors baby, smoke and mirrors." Mirrors referring to the side view mirrors, of course.

     Again, Day tells a great story, just takes a while to get to the point. Hopefully your attention span is a little longer than mine though. The point is, this job will be difficult for myself and the office, and I need to keep my head out of my ass. Life always gets in the way of work, your personal life that is, and work gets in the way of your personal life.

     So, we make it to the island at 10am, that is a five and a half hour commute, and as I feared, no fork truck to unload Marcelino's flatbed, and as Marcelino feared, he had to take care of it himself because I would be in meetings. Well, with little complaint and some help from the excavators, Marcelino made short work of it, as usual.

     I would imagine some of you are asking, "what kinda meetings do construction workers have?" The same as you, but we can swear in them. Pre-con meetings, safety meetings, foreman's meetings, sub contractor meeting, the list goes on and on. What did we accomplish today? We (PVC) does not have all their paperwork in, submittals, MSDS sheets, bla, bla, bla, and they have not begun excavating, which means, we are not starting tomorrow. There you go, 5.5 hours down, a two hour meeting, 5.5 hours back. Try again on Thursday.