Written by Guy A. Thomas (Aramithaus Compostela).
As I was finally getting a half day’s rest and looking forward to a full night’s sleep, it happened. It was 8pm and I was in my hotel room finishing a hot cup of sleepytime tea, lying in bed starting to doze off into lala land when I heard it. That little sound from your phone, you know the one, a text message. My first thought was, I forgot to silence that thing, dang it. My second thought was, just ignore it. It can wait till morning, I’m not expecting anything or anyone. As I lay there half conscious, I sense something though, uncertainty. Against everything I want, which is silent, beautiful sleep, I reach over and look. Damn it, even without my glasses on I can see it’s from my boss. That’s not good. He isn’t just checking to see if I am tucked in and comfortable. With a heavy feeling of dread I put on my glasses and checked what he sent. It simply says “I may need your help tonight”. I had a glimmer of hope that it would be a false alarm. Only one way to find out, I called him. And that’s where my night went in a completely different direction. He told me a truck with a shipment headed to Florida hit a deer in North Carolina and he might need me to bring them another truck. Ok… not what I was wanting to hear as I’m in bed in Washington DC. So I ask him who and he tells me. He says he will get more info and call me back one way or another. As soon as we hang up I call my co-worker who hit the deer, first to see if everyone is ok and what’s the situation. He tells me everyone is ok, the deer excepted of course, and that a tow truck was on the way. It was right at that moment I knew I was up. I started rubbing the cobwebs out of my eyes and thinking about what I needed to grab and do for this mission. The boss called back 10 minutes later and confirmed what I already knew. I packed a day pack with stuff and headed down to the lobby while calling an Uber to meet the boss at the shop for further instructions and to make sure I take everything I need. A little over an hour after I got the first text I was in a truck and headed south. They were about 4 hours away at first report, then 10 minutes into the trip I got a status update and they were being towed an hour or so farther south, to Fayetteville NC. Yup… that’s how these things usually go. Only one thing to do… suck it up buttercup… this just turned into a full on mission. I punched the address in the GPS and now I am almost 5 ½ hours away. Fortunately my drive down was uneventful, just the way I like it. Music blaring, singing at the top of my lungs, making the best of it. I showed up at 3:30 in the morning, exhausted and realizing I am in a city I have never been in before with no place to go and no plan from that point forward, alone as my co-workers drove off continuing their mission. I had 2 immediate choices, stay in the truck, locked in a repair yard until morning when the employees show up or get locked outside the gate on the side of the road in the middle of the night with no plan and nowhere to go. Easy choice, a couple hours of sleep in the truck while I figure out how to get back to DC in the morning. I had 3 choices, plane, train or automobile. My first instinct was a train, I take them all the time commuting to DC from Jersey, plus I don’t want to drive anymore. I just want to ride and mindlessly look out the window. I look it up and the first train is at 12:30pm, that’s gonna leave me 4 or 5 hours of waiting and then I noticed it doesn’t get back to DC until 8pm. That blows my whole day off. Next… I don’t want to fly, even though I am TSA certified and security is usually a simple pass-through, airports are a pain in the butt and I will end up far from where I actually want to go. And when I looked I had to make a connection, that definitely puts it off the list. Automobile it is. I check a couple car rental places and book a car for 8:30am and I fall asleep. Not much sleep, nor good sleep mind you, though sleep all the same. At that point I will take whatever I can get. My phone rings at 7:45am and it’s the rental place. As I figure out my ass from my elbow I hear, nothing available until 12:30. Yup… again, that’s how these things go. I do some quick math and I know that the place I need to drop the car off at closes at 6pm. I am 5 ½ hours away under perfect conditions. I-95 cannot be counted on for perfect conditions. Option out, back to planes or trains. A quick mental refresh, train it is and be resigned to not being back to my comfy glorious bed until 8:30 or later tonight. It is what it is as they say. So here I sit in a small coffee shop on main street Fayetteville, NC, down the street from the train station patiently waiting as I reflect on the night. Patience and resilience deployed and strengthened. Life on the road… gotta love it.
Addendum…
I didn’t see this one coming and boy I am happy it did. When I got on the train I ended up sitting next to a true Southern belle from Savannah GA. She seemed a little nervous and her Southern charm just flowed out of her and we started a conversation that lasted all the way to Richmond VA where she departed. The part that put this over the top for me was, shortly after she and I started talking another Southern belle from Charleston SC sitting across the aisle from me chimed in and suddenly I found myself sitting between two wonderful women discussing how the color olive looked with our skin tone and how hard it was to find good wallpaper for the dining room. They were absolutely charming and wonderful. When the conversation turned to Revlon number 4 lipstick and I was fully engaged, I thought I might be in the Twilight Zone. This was an awesome convergence of sleep deprivation, good company, an open mind and spirit allowing the moment to be amazing. I never got their names and it doesn’t matter, the moment, the energy and the spirit of life was pure magic.
Until next time my friends… Peace