I made it to the Key West airport right at midnight. I spoke with the fire station captain and told him that I wanted to show him something before I began unloading the truck. He had already been filled in on the fact that the truck had suffered some damage. He looked at it and said "That's no big deal, it could have been worse."
And that was pretty much it. I began the process of unchaining the fire truck and prepping it to be unloaded. While I was doing this the airport Director showed up. He was a nice fellow but having a bit of trouble talking with his new dentures. He had brought me a very nice ball cap with the airport logo on it. It's one of the nice all cloth ones, not the ones with the cheesy mesh.
Once I got the fire truck driven off the trailer I asked the Director if there was some place I could park to get some sleep. He was very obliging and instructed the security officer to lead me to an area outside the airfield where I could park undisturbed for the night. Like I said, nice fellow.
I did get a bit of amusement from my escort, a Hispanic fellow, Cuban, very nice guy, but he was in awe of being on the airfield of an airport. I had dismissed him twice already but he continued to hang around. I knew he had about four hours to drive yet before he could get some sleep and was trying to help him out. I finally asked him why he was hanging around and he said that it's not every day you get to be on the inside part of an airport. LOL I let him stay a while longer.
When security led me out here to where I am now parked the easiest way to get my rig over here was to use the runway. That was a bit of a kick for me. I've used runways a couple of times in the past and it's always fun. I can just imagine the guys in the tower going ape shit over having a tractor trailer on their runway.
Time for me to get some well deserved sleep before making the seven hour drive home tomorrow.