Why Don't You Knock It Off With Them Negative Waves Moriarty

If you’ve seen the movie Kelly’s Heros with Clint Eastwood, Telly Savalas, Don Rickles, Donald Sutherland, and Gavin MacLeod (you know, the captain from the Love Boat), you know this quote. Imagine this, Donald Sutherland (Oddball) sitting on top of a tank during WWII and talking to Gavin MacLeod (Moriarty) eating some cheese and sipping some wine. What does it have to do with fishing you ask? Thursday I was waiting for a delivery from Cabela’s. Waiting and waiting and waiting. UPS tracker said it was out for delivery and there were some things I wanted for a fishing trip on Friday.


Late in the day, UPS tracker said it was delivered on Thursday 3/3 at 1:14pm. I happened to be on my roof, cleaning the flue for the wood stove and I didn’t see any UPS truck make any delivery. Aha, UPS delivered it to the Post Office (they do this sometimes) and I can pick it up there first thing Friday morning and have what I need for the trip.


Friday morning at the Post Office, 8:15am (before they open) and knocked on the pickup door. “No, no package for you from UPS”. OK, where is it, I wonder? Now I’m getting irritated. I’m half way to the lake and my options are: return home and tract the shipment, or continue out to the lake. What do you think? I went to the North Shore of Camanche Lake.


Drove out to the day use area and parked right by the lake.

(See: http://californiadreaming-shoreman.blogspot.com/search?q=camanche for pictures)


I set up both rods with Power Bait and pulled out my lawn chair. I wasn’t planning on a lot of strenuous fishing, just soaking up some sun and maybe catching a fish or two. Four hours later and still no fish in sight, although people on both sides of me were catching one every so often. OK, negative waves from the Cabela’s delivery were everywhere. All those negative waves going around, no wonder I didn’t catch anything. The more I thought about it, the more pissed I got. I decided to wrap it up, go home, and find out where my delivery was. It was Friday and if I didn’t do anything soon, I’d have to wait until Monday to check.


I got home, looked up the number for UPS Customer Service and called. Electronic answering and won’t let you speak to a human until you’ve given the electronic “person” all the information it requires (pissed level goes up three notches). Finally after five minutes of yelling “Customer Service Representative” I finally get a human. Explain everything and give her all the information AGAIN (pissed level up 2 more notches) she says that according to her information, the two packages were delivered to my address on Thursday at 1:14pm (pissed level up 2 more notches). I explained that the packages were NOT delivered to my house because I was on the roof cleaning the woodstove flue and NO UPS truck came to my house. Told her I wanted the phone number for the local UPS facility and was told they don’t have that phone number (pissed level up one more notch). The only help she could offer was a trace on the packages and it would take from 8 to 11 days to get an answer (pissed level up 2 more notches). By this time I was yelling at her for a supervisor.


Had to explain everything all over again to the supervisor (2 more notches) and told her I wanted to know where my delivery was. Her response was that she would call Cabela’s and let them know the shipment was lost and she would, also, put a trace out on the shipment. I told her that I wanted a call, today, from the local facility and I want to know where the driver delivered the packages. Within 10 minutes, I had a call back from the local UPS facility. According to them, the packages were delivered to a “neighbor”. Why, she didn’t know, but would get in touch with the driver and call me back. I told her that I got a package delivered today and the driver didn’t have any trouble finding the house. She said that the driver that delivered the packages on Thursday was not our usual delivery driver.


She called back at 4:30 and told me that the driver had delivered the packages to the neighbors, the nice couple in the new house on the corner (where Gold Creek Trail and Wildwood Way meet. They don’t meet). There are no new houses in our area. I drove around the area just to see if someone had built a new house I didn’t know about and couldn’t find anything. Called her back and told her the driver was going to have to pick up the packages and deliver them to me. She said Monday was the soonest he could do it.


So you can see where the negative waves come in. I still don’t have my delivery, I’m still pissed, and if that driver delivers my boxes on Monday, you’ll probably hear me all the way across the globe. I’m a Leo or I used to be before they changed that whole astrological chart thing and I don’t get mad (pissed yes, but mad, no), I get even and I have all weekend to figure out how.


There is still next week. Till then, thanks for letting me vent.

Mark