Thursday, July 30, 2009

A Long Day

What a long day. I woke up this morning at 4:00 am to be ready by 4:30 so that Dick's Sporting Goods store can start unloading. At 4:30 they get there, but first there's a storage trailer parked at the loading dock. OK, so now I have to disconnect from my trailer and hook to it. Pull it out from the dock and drop it somewhere in the parking lot. Hook back up to my trailer and dock it. As for the load itself, come to find out that only 2 pallets are loaded. The rest of their order is stacked on the floor. 500 packages have to be unloaded by hand. Well 2 1/2 hours later, they finally get it done. Off to store #2.

Store # 2 was just 16 miles down the road. I get there and same thing; there's a storage trailer in the dock. OK, so now I have to disconnect from my trailer again and hook to it. Pull it out from the dock and drop it somewhere in the parking lot. Hook back up to my trailer again and dock it. Well they only had 300 packages to unload so it went a little quicker, but by only 30 minutes. Off to store #3.

Store # 3 was just 13 miles down the road, but again there's a storage trailer in the loading dock. So I disconnect from my trailer and hook to it. Pull it out from the dock and drop it somewhere in the parking lot. Hook back up to my trailer and dock it. They had even fewer boxes to unload. A mere 240 packages. YEA! Oh, but wait, they only have one person to unload them. I offered to help, but the company does not allow outside help.

OK, fine. I'm hungry anyway. I also had previously looked up some Geocaches and there were 4 in the mall area. One was just 178 feet from the dock I was parked at! I grabbed the GPS'r and headed off. I found the close cache first, an easy light post cache. Then I looked for a McD's around the shopping mall but don't see one. Mostly because I can get a sweet tea to go also! But no McD's. But there is a Bob Evans and they serve a pretty good breakfast too.

After eating, I went for another Geocache in the shrubs near Bob Evans but couldn't find it. Then I moved off to the next cache and found it. After signing the log I headed back to the truck. Just after logging the 2 cache finds at Geocaching.com, I noticed another older couple headed for that light post. It was obvious to me they were also Geocachers. I went over and introduced myself. They were in town from Washington State and had been caching for about a year.

Anyway, after they found the 2 caches I had found, we went in search of the other 2 caches. First the one I had yet to look for and then the one I missed. We said our goodbye's and then I headed back to the truck.

Finally, 4 HOURS LATER my truck was unloaded and I was ready to move on. But now in reverse order. I had to pick up the stores returns and take them back to the Distribution Center in Indiana. So I pull my trailer out from the dock and drop it in the parking lot. Hook up to their storage and put it back. After hooking back up to my trailer, I arrived at store # 2 and back in to the dock. Fortunately it only takes 5 minutes to load the returns on. I pull my trailer out from the dock and drop it in the parking lot. Hook up to their storage and put it back. After hooking back up to my trailer again, I arrived at store # 1 and back in to the dock again. They load their returns and shuffle the trailers again.

Now it's 3 PM and I'm finally ready to head back to Indiana. It's 482 miles and I know I won't make it tonight. But I atleast want to get to the east side of St Louis so I won't have to deal with rush hour traffic. 284 miles later, I find a rest area in Illinois and pull over for the night.

So that was my day today. And oh by the way, I did make a quick stop at a McDonald's halfway across Missouri for a burger and my large sweet tea. That's it for now.

Goodnight.