Home for Christmas

Just as it was with Thanksgiving, Christmas will be spent at home with family. Maybe a lot of people take that for granted, but we don't. For us, it is a special treat that we are very thankful for.

We made our delivery in Hudson, North Carolina. Next we picked up in Bluefield, West Virginia. That pickup was a complete nightmare and we wanted to just say forget it, but the load was taking us home so we kept at it and finally got it on the truck. The problem was the weather.

The drive to Bluefield was tricky. Snow covered roads, freezing temperatures and mountains did not make for a pleasant drive. We made it to our pickup location and found that the location we were picking up in sat on top of a hill. To get to it we had to drive up a twisting blacktop drive uphill. I made the attempt up but didn't make it very far before the truck started spinning out and slid back down.

Back down at the bottom of the hill which happened to be in a high school parking lot, we tried to figure out how we were going to get up there. Because we were several hours early, there was no one around to talk to. We decided to head over to a local grocery store and wait in their parking lot until morning and we were hoping that when we drove back over we would find that someone had been by to clear the roads and lay down some salt.

Of course, things didn't go that way. We drove back over only to find that there was even more snow on the driveway. We didn't make another attempt to get back up. I called dispatch and told them our situation. They advised us to wait while they contacted the customer. In the meantime, one of the employees showed up and saw our truck. She came over and we let her know that we couldn't make it up the hill. She told us to sit tight and when she got up there she would figure something out.

She took off up the hill and made it about 3 quarters of the way up before her car started spinning out. She kept trying but could not get the rest of the way up. She ended up backing her car back down the hill and parking it. She then climbed the hill on foot and made it up.

Next up was another worker in a mustang. We thought there was no way he would make it up, but he floored it and didn't let up and somehow he did it. He parked at the top and started to walk into the building. He hit a patch of ice and his feet flew out from under him and he landed flat on his back. I know that had to hurt!

We kept sitting there waiting for someone to decide what to do about getting us loaded. Eventually the first lady started heading down the hill towards us. She made it halfway down, lost her footing and rolled the rest of the way down. At first I was worried that she was injured but she sat up and started laughing. She got up, dusted herself off and came over to tell us that they had made a decision to bring the freight down the hill in a humvee and load us where we sat.

Long story short, a group of them got the job done and after a few hours, we were finally on our way. Heading south and away from the snow. We made the delivery uneventfully in Ft. Stewart, Ga and then continued on home to Florida for Christmas!

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!