The backpacks are cursed!

by kegel on 4 April, 2013

“We don’t know where you parcel is” the post clerk is telling me. It’s a brisk sunny Tuesday morning in Manhattan and I’m leaving the city in 9 hours to catch my plane that will eventually take me to Madrid, where I’m meeting Jakob.

“What do you mean you don’t know where the parcel is” I ask? I have a delivery notice and a tracking number. Isn’t the point of tracing parcels to know where they are? The last piece of equipment arrived from England a day before and I just need to pick it up from the post office. A trivial task, one would think. One hour in the post office and two hours on the phone later and still no parcel. It contains our backpacks, in which we are supposed to carry all our equipment as well as food for one week in the desert. I am rather anxious to get my hands on it.

We start to believe that the backpacks are cursed. Inov-8 was supposed to send us two backpacks, but only sent us one which was too small for the event. Jakob bought another one and it broke. We were promised new and larger bags which never arrived. So finally we decided to buy new once and now we can’t get them.

After some more phone calls and no parcel, I decide to go over to the post office again and not leave the building without it. I’m certain it is there somwehere. Armed with the delivery notice I enter the building. My vivid imagination immediately plays up a scene where the NYPD is called to the scene because of a rainman style lunatic refuses to leave the post office without his parcel.

I’m waiting in line to speak to the customer service supervisor. It’s now only 2 hours left until my departure. There were only two people in front of me, but it still takes ages. A lady turns up and asks me if she can just jump the line as she has a very short errand. I’m telling her my errand is not short, but rather urgent. Still undecided who should go first Nancy and I started chatting and I tell her my story. She in turn, tells me of a friend of a friend who swam in the Arctic sea, about a ancient race through the Middle East in the footsteps of Abraham and about her lost parcel and said something about the parcel pickup window. This piece of information makes me curious as the clerk who was helping me for an hour didnt say anything about it. I walk over there and hand in my delivery notice.

The man behind the counter looks at the notice, looks at me and ask me if I was here before. Unconcerned about all the cursing his co-worker probably did over my annoying calls l I retell him the story from the morning and how anxious I am to get my hands on my parcel. He is looking in the computer, in the space where parcels for pickup are stored but turns his head and says he cant find anything. I mention that the parcel was sent from the company Wiggle and it contains two backpacks, so its not very small. He goes and looks again and to my amazement comes back with a large parcel! My backpacks! Joy! I have not felt so happy since I was first delivered to this world. My delivery notice had the wrong tracking number and the parcel was in the wrong place, but my hero had remembered seeing the name Wiggle on a large parcel! I told him I would buy him champagne if there was a bar in the post office. He shrugs it off in a formal manner only a dedicated government employee can do.

I dance out from the post office, thanking Nancy and restraining myself not to give her a kiss. I walk up 3rd Avenue in the sunshine with biggest smile on my face. Sahara, here we come!