Wednesday, September 29, 2010

The Airlift

This is dedicated to a customer of mine who wanted know know why the hell I has standing in the street that day.

A while ago, nearing the last hour of my shift. It was a Sunday morning, and I have a set routine. Almost all the customers who come in follow one as well. You could almost set your watch by them. About 6am, I was just finishing up my duties and waited by the register for my 6:01 customer to enter. After a few minutes, no one walk through the door. I watched out the window, and noticed absolutely no traffic going by.

I stepped outside for a cigarette, and all I saw was two squad cars parked on the corners about 2 blocks in either direction. After almost 45 minutes of no customers, I had everything completed and even had the shift closed for the day by the time my coworker finally came in. She's usually 20-30 minutes early, but said the cops gave her a hard time to get through to go to work. Sadly, she didn't even ask why the street was blocked.

Finally, it was time for my to leave. I was determined to get to the bottom of what was going on. I stepped outside just in time to seen a group of what looked like tourists, you know the kind, the one's in matching shirts with cameras and fanny pack, on a nearby corner. I walked up to them and asked them what was going on.

"The "father" by the looks of it, turned to me and said, "You don't know, their airlifting an HVAC unit."

"Where at?"

"Right over there," pointing to a nearby 16 story building, "They'll be starting any minute now."

I saw a large truck come through the police line and park near the intersection of my work. I also heard a light thump-thump-thump in the distance and getting louder. Finally, a S-64 Skycrane appeared overhead. At that time, CPD began pushing people back from the intersection. I began walking down the now-empty street and stopped roughly 250 feet back, probably not the safe distance I should have been, but I felt like feeling the propwash. Sadly, the amount of dust and debris it kicked up made me glad I at least had my sunglasses on. I looked up at the lofts above my job to see a lot of people opening their windows at the sudden sound, or even sight of the hulking piece of machinery that was being hauled up. It seemed to be over after just a couple minutes, but seeing a helicopter flying so close to the buildings, only made me want to stay to see if any "mishaps" would prevent me from having to come back to work for a while. Sadly, the only thing to happen was a small pebble cracking one of the smaller, unnecessary windows. 

The S-64 brought down the old HVAC unit, placed it on the truck, then left. The street was reopened, traffic was coming, and everything returned to normal.

As normal as you can call it, at least.


39 comments:

  1. First let me say that going through your blog is already a treat. I worked 3rd shift at a store called WaWa (a chain on the East Coast), and I had encounters of the like. One that comes to mind is the fact these 3 guys would often come in, and it turns out later they were these same 3 guys who would rob stores around the area and also killed 2 people. Oh 3rd shift. Keep the posts coming, its fun to see.

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  2. keep them coming, they are great to read.

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  3. That;s kinda crazy though, who would think such an average job could be so intersting somedays lol

    Keep'em coming =]

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  4. Whoa dude, quite the conundrum. To think something so crazy could happen is just nutty.

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  5. Great post man. Keep in touch... Look forward to more.

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  6. As normal as it gets, i guess so. Great story keep it up, its quite interesting

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  7. hahahah what the fudge

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  8. I got to the part where the father tells you what's going on and for some reason expected this to end with someone being crush by that HVAC unit. Lousy internet, perverting my mind.

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  9. well thats the way the cookie crumbles!

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  10. 3rd shift for life man wandering the streets all night = good times

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  11. How odd.. I don't think I've ever seen a sky crane before! Must've been quite a sight :)

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  12. Woooh... Must've been quiet a moment here... Thanks bro !

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  13. Interesting shift at least you got a really funny story out of it

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  14. its interesting and very odd to say the least

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  15. I'm an avid reader of yours so I'd appreciate it if you headed over to my blog and voted in my poll and stuff =)

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  16. Thats awesome! Cool that you got to see that!

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  17. what an excellent story, you should write books!

    was a good read keep up the quality work

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  18. Open Window? Dust in your face.

    Well, it would of been nice if the HVAC just fell from the sky, but I guess that it's bad mojo to think that way.

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  19. What exactly is a HVAC unit? It sounds like some sort of military thing like an APC etc.

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  20. @Ownage tastes like chicken

    HVAC = Heating, Venting, and Air Conditioning

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  21. wow i love you blogs! but that truck part was unexpectable lololol

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