Canals, Cars, Cargo, and Coincidences…

There has been a lot happening in our world lately, but I don’t have time to go into all that just yet. Instead, enjoy a short story from my morning…

Today I drove down to Portland to see an Audiologist. She injected silicon into my ears (weird experience) to make an impression of my canals, which I shipped to JH Audio in Florida. That company will, in turn, create a molded set of in-ear monitors for me. I had to ship the impressions 2^nd Day Air in order for them to get there by Monday.

There is your back-story.

As I was driving down to my appointment, I was on I-5 just coming in to Portland, so it was pretty slow going with all the traffic. It didn’t seem like the time for rush hour, so I postulated that there might be an accident ahead. No big deal; I left with plenty of time to get to my appointment. Contemplating the day before me, I began to consider my options of either FedEx or UPS for my shipping needs. I started imagining scenarios where the carrier’s shipping truck gets in a wreck and all of its cargo is thrown all over the highway, which would undoubtedly delay my package from arriving on Monday. Literally as I was mulling over this scenario and which mail carrier would be more reliable, I heard a loud crash. Looking in my rearview mirror, I was shocked to see a lady in a maroon Volvo involved in an accident with none other than… a FedEx truck. Now, we were in traffic so we were only going about 20-30 mph, so it was merely a fender bender. No injuries, and no strewn packages. I imagine the FedEx packages were delayed at least an hour from that simple automobile navigation error though.

Needless to say, I decided to use UPS. Was it a sign? Maybe. Was it a coincidence? Maybe. Interesting.

Side note: there was an accident that was slowing down the traffic, as I had hypothesized. Oddly enough, one of the vehicles involved was another Volvo. Good thing they are the safest cars on the planet, because it appears that bad drivers drive them.

Other side note: why is it called “Shipping” when the cargo is transported in planes or trucks? The next question that begs to be asked is “Why is it called ‘CARgo?’”