My Friend Jose in the Land of Absolutely Nothing

At our stop in Santa Fe, we were supposed to meet up with one of the installers for the storage systems. His name is Jose and I've actually met him once before (when he cut the top of his finger off ... I'll explain that later). Since his company's primary client is said storage systems, he meets up with Jose every time he has to deliver out this way.

We arrive at the specified location 20 minutes early. No Jose. We wait for 30 minutes, no Jose. He calls the home office and Jose gives us a call back. We're at the address on his paperwork, but the 13,000 lbs. of stuff is going to a NEW office just outside of town.

Jose comes and gets us and leads us the rest of the way.

(He has friends like this all over the country. There's Skeet the lobsterman in Maine. Phil the storage system guy in Denver. Tommy the straight truck driver in NYC.)

Thankfully, there is a pallet jack and fork truck on site. The 500 lb. skids are stacked two (sometimes three) hight and he has to use load bars to get them from the top row. Every time I see this operation I think, "Boy ... Doc Rock, my high school physics teacher, would love this real world example of the power of a fulcrum."

13,000 lbs. later, we're on our way to Carlsbad. Roswell lies in between and NOT MUCH ELSE. In fact, it's 270 miles of essentially NOTHING. It would have been a good time to update this blog, but as I mentioned, NOTHING includes no wireless signal.

Before we leave, Jose makes a nice promise of the fact that it will be green chile season "down here." I'm expecting little old ladies selling bags of green chiles along side the highway, just as they sell bunches of roses for $1 a dozen outside of Cuernavaca. He is picturing roadside taco stands.

Both of us are disappointed. No old ladies. No taco stands. And no one here to unload this freaking truck. Wait one more time today.

OK, back to the cut-off finger. I know you're dying to know:
Unloading skids from the truck. One is long and narrow and heavy and the forks have to go in the narrow end. Of course, the skid is HEAVY and the forks are short, so the load is tippy. Jose jumps up on the end of the skid to provide some counterbalance so the forklift driver can get the skid off the truck. Once the skid is clear of the truck, the forklift driver lowers the forks.

Being raised in a "safety environment", I know this is wrong. It looks wrong. It feels wrong. But I'm not going to be some naggy wife reminding people I don't know to follow appropriate forklift procedures. I'm not OSHA.

And just like that it happened. Jose's finger got stuck between two pieces of moving metal as the forks came down. Yeah ... blood spurted in this nice half circle spray pattern for farther than you'd think. First he tried to brush it off. Then he decided it might be best to go to the hospital.

Today he told me I was bad luck. Again. With a smile, of course.