Double Inversion

This morning I was up at my usual early hour, made even earlier by the time zone difference in California. I needed to get in to the LA area and across to the other side before the traffic became murderous and I'm happy to report that there were no traffic issues.

On the way into the LA basin area the temperature was around 77 degrees. Once I dropped down into the basin itself along the foothills highway (210) it dropped to 63 degrees. In meteorology this is referred to as an inversion: a layer of warmer air above colder. This is one of the reasons LA has smog problems, as the air below is trapped underneath the inversion and can't circulate.

I was reflecting on this when I arrived in Carson, California at the UPS facility near the Port of Long Beach. Basically, this facility takes the 40 foot containers that come in from overseas and break down and repalletize the product for shipment within the US. 18,000 pounds of athletic equipment in the load I was to pick up, for instance.

Here is where the second inversion took place. Only, this was a common Cranial-Rectal inversion, better known as having ones head up ones ass. The gate guards filled out a bunch of paperwork checking my truck and trailer in, but they couldn't find the load. So I eventually sweet-talked them into letting me go inside and talk with someone in the warehouse, and behold! There was my load all ready to go behind dock door 15. Only, my appointment wasn't until 1000 and this was about 0400.

No problem, drop the trailer in back in the yard (not at the door) and take your tractor off of the lot, rather than park it next to the other half-dozen bobtails back there. Find someplace to park on the street and come back in roughly five hours... and we'll do it all again.

I spent my time productively, putting finishing touches on my generic warehouse worker voodoo doll and catching some extra snooze time. I arrive back at the gate around 0830 and the same routine begins again. They still can't find the order, they still have to log my truck in, check my ID, you name it.

Someone is scared up to order the yard jockey to take my empty trailer from the back lot, bring it up front and push it into door 15. Now that they are loading me, I'm sent to the bobtail area in the back lot to wait. At least until they knock on my door and tell me I need to witness the loading. March back up front, witness the loading, march back to truck for stupid form they didn't ask for, march back to dock to sign various paperwork in blood, march back to truck with paperwork and a neato aluminum seal thingee, and wait. Wait for yard dog guy to go grab my trailer from the dock and bring it out back.

I could go on, but why? Eventually I was freed from the asylum and made my way east along the first leg of my trip back to Omaha. I stopped tonight in Kingman, Arizona and plan on driving to Tucumcari, New Mexico tomorrow.