Micro-Fiction

Courtesy Allison from:
http://www.snippetsfromsuburbia.com/?p=550  

Who put water in my cooler? I had a strict grocery list Thursday morning of, beer, chips, and granola bars. There was not going to be room for anything else, besides I had money and could always buy food when I got there if I needed any. Beer, ice, Beer. That was the most efficient way to fit the most beer in the cooler. It only held two thirty racks but we had two extra packs under our bags. Three whole days. Seem hardly enough but we wanted to be prepared. We stopped at a store where the clerk knew us by name. “A handle each? You guys must be partying.” “It’s not a party, it’s an experience.” We both said in our own ways. Another hour on the road led us by a firework store. “Um yup,” “We have to stop there.” Being careful to save enough money for food and gas home we spent the last of our dollars at that little store. “What’s the coolest thing we can buy for $28?” he showed us to a back room where he said. “You have to be very careful with these, they recently became illegal and I have leftover inventory.” “Oh of course” We said, trying to act clam but we were looking at each other like “this is so awesome.” We left full of excitement as the weekend had just gotten that much better. 

We arrived and the place looked alright. We didn’t know what to think. “It’s Thursday night and there’s already ten other people set up here.” “I heard it gets packed around 5 PM Friday.” Our spot was on the river, right up front, prime territory. We unloaded the truck and drank some beers as we set up the tent. The population had doubled by the time we were finished setting up. “Good thing we got here when we did. Our friends are lucky we saved them spots.” Thursday was relatively quiet; we had a nice fire going, about ten of us catching up. I woke up feeling like I had slept on rocks. It didn’t matter it was forecast to be 80 and sunny and the smell of bacon was in the air. As more of our friends showed up so did hundreds of other people. The trip from the river to the cooler became repetitive. Two at a time was more efficient. “Who put water in my cooler?” I said around three PM. Realizing now my mother must had packed them before we finished packing. Pushing the water to the side I reached for more beers until they were gone. Around midnight came the choice of cold water or warm beers. Warm beer wasn’t bad by that time in the night. “Hey man! Remember those fireworks we bought?”

The Art of Food Delivery

            I have been in the delivery service for over seven years. The more experience you have the less it becomes a job and the more it turns into a hobby. You learn things about your delivery area that is often overlooked by most people. Since you are out on the streets tens of hours a week you know where every pothole is in the road, the fastest ways to get from point A to point B, who lives in almost every house, what the inside of their house looks like, what pets they have, what cars they drive, and the list could continue on. The advantage of experience turns the work of “I have to find this address” to “I’m driving to Mike’s house, I wonder if he fixed his boat yet.” As I said before it is an art. When I first started I studied maps in my free time and now know every “trick”. Delivering is not for everyone. I have seen many people attempt delivering only to fail when they think they can rely on a GPS. Usually they will end up twenty minutes outside our delivery area looking for a road that is right down the street or taking fifty-five minutes on five deliveries that should take twenty-five minutes because they drove to the houses in the order they typed them into their GPS and not the most practical way. You MUST learn the roads. It’s hard enough with duplicate road names in your own delivery area (I can think of six). I myself despise the use of a GPS and have never used one for delivering. We call these people Tom Tom’s and they are usually bad drivers.