As newlyweds of six weeks, Robert and I had a harrowing driving experience picking up my personal effects from the port of Philadelphia. We drove the 150 miles from Arlington to Philadelphia when we learned the shipping would cost more than the 8,500 mile trip from New Zealand to Pennsylvania!
But Philadelphia greeted us with snow, ice and slush as we drove through city streets to complete paperwork at the shipping line office before going to the shipping terminal. The gate guard at the terminal was hostile towards our Honda wagon and waved us out of the container truck line. Our unlikely transit vehicle was only granted entry when Robert got out of the car and showed him our paperwork.
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Service was also denied at the shipping clerk’s office. Robert couldn’t see over the counter so he called out, “Is anybody there?” The clerk replied “no.” Not so easily deterred, Robert took his cue from other truckers getting service. He slammed down our papers on the counter above his head and gruffly stated, “Shipping order to be picked up.” The result? Immediate action.
Ordinarily, trucks receive shipments by backing up to the warehouse loading bay. We drove right inside. Surrounded by rows and rows of floor-to-ceiling shelving filled with boxes, we had no idea how we would find my shipment, let alone get them it into the wagon. There were no workers in sight—until Robert got out of the car, revealing his stature. Suddenly, workers appeared from all corners of the building, convinced that Robert was a movie star or one of the millionaire real estate twins who were the same height and age as Robert. Their assumptions provided all the help we needed to locate and load my shipment into our wagon.
Our ordeal at the terminal was almost over—or so we thought. I was driving towards a warehouse opening when Robert yelled, “STOP.” I jammed on the brakes just before launching off the loading bay ledge. The whiteout of the continuous snowfall made it impossible to tell that this way out was for the birds.
Disaster averted, I backed out the warehouse entrance on level ground, and we started home. After only travelling ten miles in an hour-and-a-half, we pulled off the highway and found a motel. Then we learned that not everyone had escaped disaster that day.
The snow blizzard had also hit Washington, D.C. and Air Florida flight 90 had crashed into commuter traffic on the 14th Street Bridge before sinking into the Potomac River. Seventy-eight people were killed. Within a half-hour of the plane crash, three more people died in a Metro derailment on the Blue/Orange Line.
If Robert had been in DC that day, he could have been in the traffic on the bridge the plane crashed into, or on the Orange Line going to Ballston Station in Arlington. God’s hand surely protected us.
This post was adapted from my book,Pass Me Your Shoes: A Couple with Dwarfism Navigates Life’s Detours with Love and Faith, which sells at Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Books a Million and other retailers.
2 replies on “Disaster Averted”
Love it.
Thanks Sandy.