Spoke Too Soon!
My apologies in advance for stealing from J.R.R. Tolkien and the fact that no dragons were involved (then again, maybe there were . . .), but it wouldn’t be much of an adventure story if shit didn’t go south every once in a while. Join us to find out what I’m talking about.
Now, I’m not much of a superstitious type. Yes, I’ll knock on wood and I believe that it’s something more than coincidence that I can win (or do) something dozens of times in a row but the minute I put money on it I can’t (but that’s just a lesson to keep my money in my pocket and just do things for fun). But even during my soccer years I realized that you get as many good calls in your favor as bad calls (my only red card came from my favorite ref in a game where I scored a hat trick - and it came 20 minutes into the game), it didn’t matter whether I put my left sock on before my right sock, or whether we won or lost the coin toss at the beginning of the game. I came to believe in the adage that people can often make their own luck (no it wasn’t luck that I was there when the goalie dropped the ball, he dropped it only once out of 10 times and I did the running to be there all 10 times). It isn’t really luck, its the rewards that can (but not always) flow from hard work, belief and a little bit of risk taking.
And I’ve lived enough to know that things happen in the world - good and bad. Sometimes they are related (the pain I feel when someone dies is directly related to how much I loved them and the joy they brought to my life - I wouldn’t trade the one to ease up on the other), but many times not. Perhaps most times not. And sometimes things are totally outside your control and there is absolutely nothing you can do about it (people have far less control over their lives than they think - yet at the same time, they do have control of how they respond to events). Things happen and life goes on. Or you figure out how to keep it going on.
Take this past Thursday morning for example. It was early morning and Ann and I were at the dining table having our morning pot of espresso before heading out on our morning walk. Ann was reading the latest news from the previous day’s afternoon (we follow US news, and the afternoon news happens when we’re heading to bed, so we have to play catch-up every morning). I was skimming through my e-mails because that’s often when folks send me business materials - near the tend of their work day.
Ann starts commenting on the latest Trump idiocy of the day and my eye sees an e-mail from Janina, who works with the company managing the shipping of our household goods. Expecting to see an e-mail that they have finally found a company to deliver the household goods from the port in Portugal to our residence I click open the e-mail and start reading.
And it was just like in the movies . . . Ann’s voice starts fading off in the distance, and my focus starts zooming in on the words in front of me. “ . . . our carrier for this shipment . . . just advised . . . fire . . . repair plan . . . contingencies . . . .” WTF! Stop skimming, start reading: “Hapag , our carrier for this shipment, has just advised that the vessel in which our container was loaded experienced a fire on 07/29. Per carrier, vessel is at the port of Balboa and a repair plan and contingency measures are currently under review.
I don’t have too many details right now such as damage extent, but will keep you updated regularly as information becomes available. I wanted to let you know as soon as possible. Please let me know any questions you may have.”
Just like in the movies, the world around my iPad started re-appearing, and I realized Ann was still speaking.
“Ah . . . Hon, the ship has had a fire!” “What!”
Questions we may have . . . duh! As it turns out, after a couple of days there are a few answers, but not as many answers as questions.
This is the movement of the Cap. Jackson over the past 24 hours. As you can see - at anchor, following the flow of the tides (thus the circle).
Which means she’s not located in the port at Balboa, but off-shore just outside of the main queue to get through the Panama Canal.
Friday we got word that it was an engine fire that was contained to the engine room and no crew were harmed. No word on whether any cargo was damaged, but I’m assuming not (and what could I do anyway?). The rough game plan is that cargo will need to be loaded onto another container ship. Which of course will result in a delay to delivery of our household goods.
I guess when I said September 2, I spoke too soon. As for the engine fire, maybe a dragon was involved?!?