4 hours of Christmas in February
Do you remember, dear reader, those days before COVID (BC) long, long ago before the age of the not so great Amazon, when only the nice things like computer stuff, books, and rare artisanal shoe laces would come in boxes landing on the front steps? Things like toilet paper were not so rare then. For that, you went to the Walmart or Dollar General for a smaller roll with the feel not unlike a deburring wheel. In this age of COVID, as the Connecticut Slingers Ministry of Public information approves this report, you HAVE to get your toilet paper in a box from Lord Bezos… only to have it stolen from your front porch, Thanks, Corona.
On that cold February day, it really was like a throwback to those ancient days BC when our Sling TSI empennage and wing kits came. The call came the night before to me, Understudy to the Adjunct Logistics Associate in the Connecticut Slingers Department of Moving Things Around. A nice lady on the other end was from the shipping company gave us the details, after which she declared,” He will be there between nine AM and three PM”
She must have heard my eyes rolling in frustrated disbelief.
I gently informed her that it being a weekday, and seeing as how we, like 99.999 percent of the rest of the universe, would be at work, this was still BC, by the way.
“I can have him call you half an hour ahead if it is more convenient.”
Hmm, no thoughtful Rodin pose needed on that one. “That’s fine. “I smiled. “Thanks.”
Advance to the next day. My hands were thrusted deep into the nasty gaping maw of a piece drug testing paraphernalia, tediously assembling a teeny tiny insy winsy little bitty bit of a ferule on to a tube the thickness of the small end of a snail eyelash squashed under the main gear of a 747.
My phone rang.
I dropped my tiny little wrench, peeled off a glove, coated with whatever designer experimental pharmaceutical nastiness and pulled my phone out of my back pocket.
“You’re in the yellow house, right?” a nice happy to be of service voice from what I imagined was a middle-aged trucker, definitely not Santa Claus.
“No, I have my hands in some drug paraphernalia.”
“No I mean, You are the yellow house right?”
“Yes, that’s my house.” I could see where this was going. “Where are you now?”
“I’m right outside.”
Great.
“I asked for a 30-minute headsup.” I protested, as nasty chemical whatever started to dribble out of the teeny little tube.
“Well they don’t tell us anything from the office.”
Great.
Fortunately, he could unload the three boxes into the garage, since my wife was there to direct, and my son, whose big idea this all is, helped a bit while I finished fixing the magic box.
When I got home, the three boxes containing the wing and empennage parts were resting comfortably in the garage, a bit worn and scarified from their journey. The wooden box had a some of the wooden crosses members on the pallet broken, and one of the cardboard 4 X4, glued to the bottom of the cardboard box holding the empennage was knocked off. Hopefully the parts within the boxes would be in yet better shape.
After supper, we sat down to open our presents. Being a bit like Christmas we wanted to open all the boxes. All of them. at once. So, we did. After a few minutes pawing through all the stuff, we resorted to less efficient means of finding out what in the boxes. We did inventory. As with the other Bloggers, at the top of the pile in each box was the Multi colored instruction Legos style booklet with an inspirational photo of Wayne Toddun’s TSi on the front. The inventory list was also right on top, like a note from your mother on a pile of cookies telling you to mow the lawn first. Gawd!
Look at all the nice presents.
Right. The Dickensian task of inventorying. Not quite like teasing apart tar encrusted old rope, but arguably just as tedious. After some piddling about, we ended up starting with the big plywood box containing the wing parts. Picking the parts out one by one, my sons unwrapped the bubble wrap and read off a part number, as I stood over our Sling Instructions Holder, flipping through the finely printed part numbers and descriptions searching for it. The bubble wrap was carefully set aside for popping later.
As for the Rivets, rivnuts, bolts, wiring and all the other little itty bitty bits, they were lovingly done up in strips of bags sealed individually like the way they do bags with the As seen on TV Bag sealer. The strips had labels like “Elevator Hardware” and “Vertical Stabilizer Hardware”. The end result is a long Dr Who Tom Baker scarf of bags and bags of little itty bitties. Each little part of each little bag of each bag-scarf was listed in the excruciatingly detailed list and to be accounted for. We did stop short of counting the thousands upon thousands of rivets.
Fortunately, there was some organization to it with the part numbers having relevantly chosen prefixes and the line items grouped together by component. After a couple of evenings, we had found most of the parts. There were still quite a few missing, and in a febrile fit of frustration I fired off an email to the guys in Torrance. The list was of MIAs inconceivably long, so I started going back over the parts, lowering the Electric Sling Wing Sling, pawing through all the bundles. I ended up finding them in ribs clamshelled together, and as I shucked the ribs off and found the smaller parts, the list of MIA pieces shrank, to none. We had the parts.
Sadly, there were some casualties. The wing rear spar upper skin supports were horrifically ravaged and brutalized during the trip. The photos are not for the faint of heart, however, the damage must be revealed. We shared the Photos with Mssr D’Assonville, who was of the opinion that the damage was manageable. We were reassured.
Brutalized Wing Skin supports.
With inventory complete, we carefully consigned the wing spars and skins to the shelves, and the smaller wing parts to the Electric Sling Wing Sling. Their turn for the Connecticut Slingers Treatment would come in time. For now, more endless toil.
Next: Scrub a Dub Dub