[Seen across a mostly-barren field, a big grey pickup truck is towing a really big trailer with a forty foot long, mustard yellow container on it.]
… okay, it actually showed up weeks ago, but I’ve been SO BUSY just trying to 1) build a house, 2) shove stuff into the container in a way that makes sense, & 3) SURVIVE that, err, I haven’t managed to post here. Like. Ever.
BUT CONTAINER.
Truck Dude called Morgyn, like, five times on the way down, keeping us updated on traffic & such excitements, so we knew he was on his way. I’d cleared a path for him to drive on, mostly by driving Cecilly over it ten or twenty times a day util the ground was kiiiiind of smushed down. We knew where we wanted the container. We really, really hoped we had the path beat down enough that Truck Dude wouldn’t get stuck.
(SPOILERS he got stuck)
But! This was before then, & we were filled with hope.
[A closer view of just the container, still on the trailer. Big letters in the center say “MSC”; in smaller letters on the left, “Mediterranean Shipping Co”.]
I always love watching people operate big machinery.
[A closer view of the back end of the pickup and the front end of the trailer, which is now tilted slightly upwards. Truck Dude, a vaguely Hispanic-lookin guy, stands just at the left of the shot.]
… even when the ground is iffy & causes the container to start slipping off the side of the trailer funny.
No, it didn’t fall _off_, but Truck Dude hadda do arcane things with chains & the tippy bit & the winch to get it back on the trailer right. Mostly.
THEN he got stuck.
[The container is about halfway off the trailer, which is tilted high to slip out from under the container.]
See, the way you get the container off is you tilt the trailer ramp up some, then you let the winch lower the container some until the end is on the ground, then you sort of drive out from under it, tilting the ramp up more as you go to let the very last bit of the container neatly settle to the ground.
Except when the ground is soft as crap, you drive off of the neatly compacted tire tracks I spent a lot of time making, & thus you get stuck with the container still halfway off the trailer.
There was cussing. There was flailing. There were frantic phone calls. I had to tell him three times that no, my van didn’t have four-wheel drive, & there was NO way I could pull him out of ANYTHING without getting stuck too, look I’d try it if I thought it MIGHT work, but it wasn’t gonna.
Eventually he just lifted the ramp until it was at the right angle for the container to more-or-less fall off the end without going bang, hit the gas vigorously, & basically flailed his way out from under it.
… I’ve seen worse. Hell, I’ve _done_ worse. Truck Dude did not, in fact, pull a Crazy Ivan at any point in the process.
& now we have a container!
She’s Mediterranean (okay, the company is) & her insides are a lovely deep brown-red, the color of dried blood, & so we have named her Lucretia Borgia. Mostly we call her Borgia. Sometimes Jasper calls her Borg.
I didn’t get any pics of her actually in place the day she arrived, what with One Thing & Another, but here she is, several days later:
[Borgia stands proudly in the sun. There’s several feet of shade on her leeward side. A folding table with tools sitting atop it sits up against her. Several pallets are also leaning against her, along with various other tools & detritus.]
Pics of the inside later — we already have a kitchen set up! We can cook! It’s AWESOME.
