Step by Step, Inch by Inch….My North Face jacket makes its way across country via Pony Express

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On July 3rd, I ordered a North Face rain jacket online.

I had hoped to buy one up close and personal at the REI store in the Fenway, but, alas, they had limited size and color selection. There had been, the salesclerk told me, a run on rain jackets earlier in the week. No surprise there, given that, on Wednesday July 1st, a monsoon had been visited on Boston and its environs.

I knew this up close and personal because the onset of the monsoon coincided with my heading out the door to catch the ferry to Provincetown. By the time I neared the ferry, I realized that my existing rain jacket had shifted from repellant to porous – never a good thing when you want to be protected from the rain, not enveloped in it.

Shortly before I got to the ferry, I stopped into at a Store 24 and bought a roll of paper towels, which I used to mop up my jacket, my hair, and my sandals, which had taken on the consistency of squeegees.

The weather in P-town, if anything, was worse. My friends John and Rolf – up for the week from Texas – met me at the wharf, and we drown-ratted it back to their place to dry off. Fortunately, there was a gas fire, in front of which we hung around eating scones until the weather cleared.

In any case, I knew if was time to retire that porous LL Bean rain jacket.

Why not a North Face this time around?

I ordered it on a Friday, but, what with the Fourth of July, it didn’t actually start its journey east until 12 a.m. on Tuesday, July 7th, when it left a warehouse in Visalia, California, for the Fresno FedEx facility.

Ah, Fresno. Other than its association with raisins, I knew little about it. So I googled. After the city.gov listing, and the wikipedia link, the top three Fresno hits were related to throat-slashing, drunk driving, and excessive use of force by the policd. No such sordidness when Boston is googled. I guess we just do a better job with search engine optimization.

Fortunately for my new rain jacket, it didn’t linger in Fresno.

By 5:11 a.m. on Wednesday, July 8th, it was in Sacramento.

It didn’t appear to be making all that much forward process, but at least there was some movement.

At this point, I began to wonder whether North Face is actually one of the companies that means what they say when they say 5-7 business days once processed. I’m used to LL Bean, where things always come in a day or two. Sure, LL Bean is closer. And, admittedly, they have a lousy rain jacket. Still, I began wondering whether that jacket would arrive in time for the next monsoon.

My jacket’s layover in Sacramento was brief – just 4.5 hours – perhaps enough time to take a look at the state capitol building and say ‘hello’ to Jerry Brown.

On to Elko, Nevada, where, 12 hours after leaving Sacramento, my rain jacket arrived. This is only a distance of 420 miles, so I wondered whether whoever was schlepping my jacket was hitchhiking. But at least the jacket was heading in the right direction. Go East, young jacket!

By the next morning, the jacket was heading through Lodgepole, Nebraska – population 300 and change.

Aha! At last I was starting to figure things out.

Fed Ex was taking my jacket along the Pony Express route.

Well, I’ll be Wild Bill Hickok’d.

The Pony Express is a lot more interesting than Federal Express, and traveling by pony would go a long way towards explaining why the darned jacket was taking so long to get here.

By the wee small hours of the morning on Friday, July 10th, my package had hit LaSalle, Illinois. Picking up momentum, and perhaps with a tailwind, by that afternoon it had reached Rice Township, Pennsylvania.

Pennsylvania! Why I could practically drive down and get it myself. But I was sure that it would reach me by Saturday, so I bided my time.

Rice Township must be a swell place to spend the weekend, because that’s where the jacket languished for a few days.

By this stage, I was just hoping that it wasn’t in some over- heated facility, with the water-proofing baking off of it.

I really don’t need another porous rain jacket.

On Monday, I received glad tidings that the jacket had made its  way to New England – Willington, Connecticut to be precise. Even if they walk it the rest of the way, I told myself, it should be here in a few days.

Gladder tidings on Tuesday. My jacket had slipped through Wilmington, Massachusetts, and was on the truck for delivery. Of course, Tuesday I had to be out for a good cut of the day. Of course, Tuesday, thunderstorms were predicted.

It was my hour of need…

Ah, the race against time.

Before I left for the day, I checked my delivery options. Fed Ex used to have a dandy little option to divert a package to a local Kinko’s for pickup. Apparently not an option “at this time.” This left only the risky option of having FedEx make their delivery when I wasn’t going to be at home. Would they leave the jacket on the steps, on a busy thoroughfare, where it’s pretty stupid to leave a package? Would someone who lives here kindly pick it up and put it in the locked vestibule? Would someone in the building buzz them in as the driver plays buzzing for dollars?

I really hate sweating deliveries…

I left the house, umbrella in hand – why bother with a porous rain jacket – and, as forecast, got caught in a downpour.

The good news? When I returned home, the jacket had – at long last – arrived, and some kind soul had buzzed the FedEx guy into our vestibule.

“When it absolutely, positively, has to be there overnight” – to use a FedEx tagline from back in the early 1980’s, and we were just starting to jumpily realize that everything was time-critical – you might not want to use the North Face standard shipping.

But I’m happy that the jacket has safely arrived.

I should be good for summer torrents for a year or two…