I got up early this morning because I wanted to get a nice early start down to Port Everglades and get back home at a reasonable time. Yeah, right.
I got to the truck early enough, no problems there. As I was pulling out of the lot in which I park my rig when I'm home my drive wheels dropped into a shiny new pothole that was not visible due to a water puddle. The drive out of the lot slopes sharply to the road but I have pulled out there many times before pulling a double drop (low boy) trailer with no problem. Thanks to that nice new pothole my trailer came down hard on the pavement. I was seriously stuck.
My tractor was half way across the road completely blocking one lane and I couldn't move forward or back. And of course it was morning rush hour. Total traffic mayhem then ensued. There is a tree trimming crew who also park in that lot who saw what was going on. They donned their safety vests and began directing traffic while I tried to figure out some way to get unstuck.
I tried all of the tricks I know. I tried blocking up the wheels, disconnecting the tractor suspension autoleveling lever and manually raising the suspension beyond normal maximum, disconnecting the tractor and repositioning it under the trailer to change the lift angle, pretty much everything I knew. No luck.
A state road crew truck rolled in after about 30 minutes of this circus and told me he had a pretty stout wench on the front of his truck and maybe it would be of some use. Why not? After a couple of attempts and repositioning the wench truck a few times we finally got the right amount of pull at the right angle to allow my truck to shove the grounded trailer back into the lot and free traffic to move, the tree trimming guys to go to work, and me to stop swearing for a few minutes.
I exited the parking lot from the back drive which is far more level if more of a pain to get out of traffic-wise (especially after some asshole had half the road blocked for 45 minutes). After that everything went pretty well for, oh, I guess about 30 minutes or so. That's when I hit rain and traffic slowed to a crawl. I don't know if you've ever driven in Florida while it's raining but folks here can't drive worth a damn when it's raining. As much as it rains down here you'd think otherwise wouldn't you?
At Ft Pierce I pulled off I 95 to refuel my truck. There are two fuel stops there, right across the street from each other. The first one I pulled into had about half of their fuel pumps out of service and the lines were really long. After waiting a little while I finally managed to get an opening to get out of there and go to the one across the street. No line, got fueled, and got the hell out of there. No time to eat breakfast as the parking lot fiasco had eaten my breakfast for me.
It was rain and slow traffic punctuated with an accident here and there all the way down to Port Everglades. That is of course once I got directions into the place. I had called the number on the freight bills, it was a Miami number. Wouldn't you know it, nobody at that number could speak English well enough to be understood easily. Sigh. After speaking with a few different people with varying degrees of English ability I was finally given some directions but they would have put me in Miami not Port Everglades. Something's amiss. The communication problem prevented my getting any clarification so I decided to just wing it and hope for the best (while expecting the worst).
I then got a call from the person who is actually buying the equipment and paying for it to be shipped to Venezuela. There was a laser system in a case inside the grader that he wanted to retrieve prior to the thing being shipped as he was afraid it would be stolen. His English was far better than anyone I had spoken with in Miami. I explained my concerns regarding the directions I had been given and asked that he get some clarification of exactly where the thing was supposed to be delivered.
I finally got a call back and a lady told me that it definately needed to go to Port Everglades and gave me some directions but they just didn't jibe with where I knew the port to be located. I thanked her and hung up. I then got on the CB and started asking my fellow drivers about where this terminal might be located in Port Evergaldes. I got lucky and a driver had just left there and gave me perfect directions into the correct terminal. Finally caught a break.
I got to the port and after spending an hour getting through port security was finally at the terminal to unload. I got the trailer detached and the equipment unchained while getting drenched. I climbed into the grader and hit the starter switch. Nothing happened. At all. Zip, zilch, nada. Dead as a politician's conscience. Womderful.
I then did my best to explain to the Cuban fellow at the terminal exactly what the problem was with the machine and that it needed a jump. I really wasn't confident that I had gotten the point across at all, but after about 2 hours another Cuban fellow showed up and said "Mechanic...mashine, joomp." Ok, got it.
He had a pair of heavy duty batteries in an array in the back of his pickup rigged with jumper cables and began hooking them up. When he signaled I climbed back in the grader and hit the starter. It turned sluggishly and then nothing. Well, it was some progress anyway. He then left.
After an hour he returned but this time he had three batteries. We tried again and the thing fired right up. Great! I was then able to drive the grader off the trailer and prepare to leave. At about that point the man showed up to retrieve the laser system. I had forgotten about him. While we were talking three men and a sheriff's deputy came over to us at a pretty good clip. I noticed the deputy had his hand on his gun. Now what?
It seems the fellow who was there to get his laser had come through the main port security but had somehow slipped past the terminal security. They weren't very happy. They interrogated him, checked his ID, and the deputy was about to arrest him when I spoke up and told the deputy that I had told the termianl manager that the guy was coming. The terminal manager confirmed this. The deputy then chose to just ream the guy for not checking in with terminal security and let him go. Whew.
The drive back home, still in the rain, wasn't much better than the drive down. You have to get at least 50 miles North of the Miami area before you can even begin to hope that traffic may actually start moving. Until then it's pretty much 45mph traffic on a 70mph interstate.
But I did finally make it home again. Socrates was very happy to see me come through the door. He had been here at home all day alone. It's the longest he's been alone since I got him. I don't think he liked it much. He's still acting all nuts about the fact i'm home again. Nutty cat.
Today was definately proof that Murphy's Law is still in effect.
I'll have a beer or three now.