Driving The Shuttle

The destination for now was just number in an avenue that was about an hour and a half away from where I was. Working at a local dealership as a lot attendant has proven to be to a certain point exciting, the reality is that most days things are dull and routine but once in a while you get an asigment that is a little bit out of the ordinary, at least for this lot attendant.

I was given a task of going through some stacks of paper to identify some codes and numbers and what not but it just so happens that just yesterday my eye glasses fell to the foorl and the frame brolke. The easy solution was to go to the pharmacy  and buy me some reading glasses so I could function, visualy that is. So... I tried these glasses that made everything far very clear for me and I could read letters easily if they were a decent size so I bought them and went to work.

Fast forward to today and me being given the task, turns out the letters in those papers were so small they blurred out so I told my manager that it was going to be a problem for me to read them. He then assigned my co-worker the job and I got to cover for him a a shuttle driver.

So at 3:00 p.m. I hear that I need to pick up a couple from out of town in Maricopa and to bring them down to the dealership as their truck was ready. In the meantime I drove some customers to their house and picked up another one which made my departure for Maricopa late. It was 3:30 p.m. when I got on the freeway.

 I had heard of the town of Maricopa but had never been there so I entered the address on my phone's GPS and started blindly following the instructions which to date have only failed me once and not by much. The round trip was to be about 110 miles and in heavy traffic I just hoped I would make it back before closing time which on this day was at 6:00 p.m.

Took me forever to get there, not knowing the destination made it for a long trip. It took me almost an hour and a half to get there, of course I was driving in the middle of rush hour. As I took the last turns in some dusty desert roads in the middle of nowhere I saw a man at the end of the street and I hoped he was the person I was picking up.

Yes, I was at the correct place and the man politely asked me to wait for a little bit as he went inside to call his wife. Poor guy was getting nervous as it was getting late but I assured him the trip back would be faster since we could use the carpool lane, I said we might make it back by 6:00 p.m.

Turned out the couple were Canadian here on vacation, their future plans are to become "snow birds" as they are tired of the cold British Colombia winters and long for a warm place to spend their future winters. They drove their truck with their trailer which serves as sleeping quarters and to keep them company their   two dogs made the trip with them., this is how they do their vacation.  They told me that Maricopa offers plenty of space for their horses and dogs to run around, they have lived all their lives in a simple country way and so for them the city is a place to stay away from.

So many stories were swapped in this one hour commute and when I finally delivered them at the dealership we fell like we had known each other for some time. Both the man and his wife thanked me and told me they appreciated my safe driving. They said it was nice to take the scenery without worrying about reading maps or taking wrong exits. We shook hands, said good bye and they went in to see their advisor to pick up their truck and I went in to punch out to go home.

Somewhere in Maricopa
Images borrowed from the Internet