My mother always said

That I could get on a bus, and by the time I got off, I'd have the life story of the person I was sitting next to. But I like meeting people, and hearing their stories. So today I talked to the federal express guy who delivered my signs.

I was the last delivery of the day for him, and his last delivery for the particular shift he's been working. He lives in Valdosta, and drives to Tallahassee to make a "city run" four days a week. They are ten hour days, but often stretch to 12. He gets Wednesdays and weekends off. City drives are hard, because he makes lots of deliveries to places like the Supreme Court, where it is very narrow to back in his truck, which is a semi with a lift on the back. He let me ride on the lift with him. It was fun.

He is 32 years old, and is married to a woman 5 years older than he is. They have two kids, 13 and 2 and a half. The younger one is a girl, and just like her mother. He has an undergraduate degree in criminal justice with a minor in psychology, but while he was going to school, he started working in trucking, and by the time he graduated, was making more driving a truck than he could make in any entry level criminology job, so he just stayed with trucking. He leaves his house in the morning, drops off the big kid at school, and then he heads in to work.

While he was in school, a buddy of his who also majored in criminology, finished school and went to law school. But his friend dropped out of law school and is teaching political science in high school now.

He was particularly happy today, because today is his last day on the shift. On Monday, he's start a night driving shift, that doesn't involve deliveries, just a destination run to drop off and pick up one load and then home again. He thinks it will be better for his family, since he'll be gone at night when they're asleep anyway, and probably up shortly after they get home from school. Right now, he frequently gets home just as they are going to bed. Plus, he's getting a 30k a year annual increase.

His wife wants some new kitchen cupboards and a privacy fence. He likes to work on old cars, so he figures some of the money will go into that hobby, as well.

They just got Blackberries in the trucks, he has to input every stop and then estimate the time he'll arrive at his next stop. Yesterday he was answering it, they often send updates via the Blackberry, and he got pulled over for doing 40 in a 35 zone. The officer let him off with a warning, but the police have been very strict with commercial truck drivers in the city since a DHL driver killed someone here in Tallahasssee recently.

Federal Express is a good employer, they pay for everything, the truck, the gas, the Blackberry, even the uniform. He left my place at 5:15, having been there about 20 minutes unloading 4 pallets of signs into my garage, and estimated that he'd be back in Valdosta by 6:40 pm. He was amused by how happy I was about receiving the signs, and helped me take one out so I could look at it.

Before that today, I went to the Retired Educator's Association's installation of officers. I handed out flyers and told people I was running for county judge. Folks were very nice, and several people said they would vote for me. And I saw a lady there I had met at the Kiwanis Club, and the speaker was someone I had met at a Rotary Club last fall. Progress is always measured incrementally. I think I'll go out to the garage and admire my signs now.