Home for Christmas

We got home 2 days before Christmas and had some extra time to shop and prepare. On Wednesday morning, Starla and I went to breakfast with our very good friends. We had our Christmas gift exchange and a lot of laughter and good times.

On Thursday, Christmas Day, it was just Starla and Bill P and Pops and I. We lounged around, exchanged gifts and then had a ham dinner.

Toward evening, Bill P's kids came by for a visit.

Friday was the day that we had set aside for our family get together. I cooked and cooked. Our son, Frankie and his family came first with Tom and Sophia shortly after. Then Drew came and he brought his friend Lindsey with him. We had a full house, 14 in all. 

What a wonderful time. A mother loves having all her kids together. The only thing better than that is having them all in church.

We played a Christmas trivia game. You picked a question and answered then picked a wrapped gift from the basket. We played until everyone had a gift. Then we unwrapped them all at once and had to wear our prize for pictures. It was fun.

Then we all went outside for a family picture. We sure missed our grandson, Derrick, who is in Africa on a mission for the Army, but he made it into our family picture with the help of technology.

It was my most favorite day in a long long time.

Now it's Sunday already and we are getting ready to go again. 

The countdown is on. Our final year in this job. We promised ourselves and our family that we would only do it for 5 years. We plan to give it up at the end of 2015 unless God supplies us with replacement jobs before then. We do have our feelers out already, so who knows?

Vermont

The first picture is in Maine, the rest are Vermont.

After our Boston trip we had a delivery in Maine. I love that drive. It is so pretty up there especially the Portland area. Of course, we always watch and hope to see a moose. I really want to see one so bad. But we didn't.

Then we got a trip going from Maine to Burlington, VT. So we took every rural road for 300 miles to get there. Every 10 miles or so we would see signs warning us to watch out for moose on the roadway. But we didn't see any. 

The White mountains of New Hampshire are so big and it is so scenic. I really enjoyed the drive.

After delivering there this morning we got a trip coming back to Harrisburg, PA so we drove south through Vermont and then around the southern end of Lake Champlain into New York State. That drive is a lot of farmland and charming little towns. It would be such a great vacation experience to drive around that lake and stop at all the little country stores and shopping places. Well, maybe one day.

Boston

This is a map of downtown Boston. We recently hauled a dangerous hazmat load into the city. Hazardous loads are not allowed to be in any part of what you see on this map at any time unless it is being delivered there. And then you cannot be there between the hours of 6am - 8pm. You can only deliver during the nighttime hours. 

Our load was scheduled for a confirmed 8am!

You cannot under any circumstance be on any bridge except for one and absolutely CANNOT ENTER either of the two tunnels there, with the product that we were carrying.

I cannot give you many details of our load other than it was a very dangerous hazmat going to a gov't building. 

After trying unsuccessfully to get help with our routing by any bridge, city, fedex, or gov't officials, or by asking others drivers,  we took it upon ourselves to just go in using our own intelligence.

So we crossed the one allowed bridge, around the city, and drove full circle around our destination without seeing any loading docks. And now we were headed to a choice of prohibited bridge or a tunnel. So I did the sensible thing and pulled over to the curb and put my flashers on, I am FedEx, right next to a fire hydrant and thought about crying.

Pops called our contact. He got his car and came to us and drove in front of us to the loading docks that we didn't see because they were on a street that was blocked off with cement barriers, for construction. So I had to back around a curve, between the cement barriers around another delivery truck and into the dock that was between a Cadillac Escalade and a giant dumpster.but I did it and that was actually the easiest part of the whole morning so far.

Then while we were getting unloaded, the window washers came and climbed the side of the building to work. Their ropes that they dangled from hung down in front of our truck.

Then a group of women came off the dock and proceeded to stand near the back of our open truck smoking cigarettes. I tried to get their attention but they couldn't hear me so Pops walked over and asked them if they wanted to go boom boom and pointed to our placards. I wish you could have seen the looks on their faces as they went quickly away yacking in their boston accents.

Then it was time to go and the ropes were still hanging in front of me. I was worried about catching their ropes with the truck and pulling them down. So the security officer saw me and held the ropes clear of the truck until I wiggled my way back out of the dock and the barriers.

We were escorted by a federal employee out of the city and could not get away fast enough. 

Ugh! My absolute least favorite city!