Back in the Freight Business

Since the bike shop business has slowed a little my schedule is about one day per week now, no biggie I still get to wrench on bikes. It's really like therapy for me! Since the crunch on the income (ha, more like nocome) I looked to pad me pockets somewhere else temporarily. I knew several people at UPS so I used my networking skills to land a seasonal job with Buster Brown. This job will do two things to ya; kill ya or get you in really good physical shape strength wise. So far I'm hangin' tough although this has to be one of, if not, the most physically demanding job evvvva! Seriously this is harder than bailing hay when I was a teenager.

UPS and FedX have developed an amazing intricate system to deliver as many packages as they do. The system put me in awe, really. The timely system that moves freight via rigs and delivery trucks with very little room for error is amazing!

The trailers above are exactly what I have to unload every morning while the majority of you all are all snug between your blankies at 4am. So far we are unloading 9-10 of these every morning but will grow to possibly 12 soon with the coming seasonal shipping and Christmas shopping. My share is either 4 to 5 averaging +/- 1,000 packages per trailer. It's no cakewalk!



Oh yea! There are several packages that look like these when they get to me. This morning there was a huge leak from one carton that leaked across the floor of the trailer in/onto several other cartons so I got to witness first hand how their haz-mat team works. Just like the orientation video, it was handled very well and efficiently. Poor customers packages though. I walked in the UPS building this morning and I saw a BMC box on the end of a trailer......... I know where that was headed! I also made it to Hampton to help get it off the brown delivery truck too, hows that for keeping up with the freight? This is supposed to last until 12/23 then I get released, I honestly can't see why someone would want to make this their living, it's very hard manual labor.

Oh, riding you ask? This past weekend Melissa and I traveled to Tsali for some sweet autumn riding. We managed to roll almost 30 miles together. She's a pretty tough road rider and has taken up mountain biking after road season. She still has alot to learn but if you get her where she can open up her engine she will ripppppp your legs off. We overlapped, criss-crossed and ran double on some trails to get the mileage but she wanted to keep going. She's really strong.

This weekend the collegiate CX season has it's second race of the season at King College right here in our back yard at Bristol. Makes traveling a breeze! They finally separated the classes so I'll only get one leg torn off instead of two by the 20 year olds...

LAter G..........