Nick Italiani
In
August 2005 days after one of the largest hurricanes wiped out power over most
of the southern half of FL, Mark Foran aka Champion, a fellow online gamer & I decided to
take a trip to FL to install some rear vision systems on concrete trucks
located around Miami FL area.
The work is easy, a monkey could do this stuff
and the working environment was immaculate, the level of support we were
provided was top notch, we hardly had to break a sweat. The toughest decisions
we made were which 5 star restaurant we would dine in and fighting off the
bikini clad babes who were constantly looking for someone to rub tanning lotion
all over their hard little bodies.........OK all of the above may be a slight
exaggeration, but we were looking at this as a way to spend some serious time
away from the normal business distractions and concentrate on planning the
future of WWG, a gaming development company.
In reality it was about 98 degrees most of the time, with about 95% humidity at night a crisp temperature of about 88 was a welcome relief. The concrete facilities (13 different facilities in all visited) were like walking on another planet, with all surfaces covered with a fine concrete powder or silt about 6 inches deep in places. Every ocean breeze created a white out of concrete powered making breathing difficult and vision near impossible until the dust settled. Wait it gets better, for those of you who do not know it concrete is a very strong alkaline and very very corrosive, so each truck we were to work on was first hosed down with hundreds of gallons of a high concentration acid ash to neutralize the corrosive nature of the alkalin. Most of the coveralls we were wearing were dissolving while were were working on these acid drenched trucks.
Due to the high number of different concrete facilities (13) scheduled for service in a 3 days period, and my totally obsessive nature to complete this task ASAP, sleep was out of the question for me, Mark slept while I drove us from site to site and the only break from work was the luxurious 5 minutes spent at drive through windows as we raced from site to site chasing trucks as they arrives for service. It was during this trip that Mark tagged me as "The Machine", and started the rumors of SNAFU as an unstoppable stone cold machine who does not sleep, does not eat, and is totally focused on the mission no matter what. Truth is I did eat, but he was always sleeping so he never saw me.
Both of us were up at 6:00 am on Wednesday morning, me putting in a long day of work and prep for the trip, he was finishing up on a web site and then driving down from VA. At 2:00 am on Thursday my VA buddy arrived and we loaded into "Pepe" my little mule and headed south to Miami.
12 hours later we pulled into our first site and started work at around 2:00 pm (we had both been up for 20 hours working or driving) after calling our hotel and arranging for a late checking. Later in the evening we again called our no stars, only place we could find in a 4 hour search on the net for hotels, Red &%#$#@ Inn and informed them we will be checking in, just really late, maybe 3 am or later, again the clerk told us no problems your holding the room with a credit card, so it is as good as yours.
After putting in a fun filled 13 hours of play (work is so much fun) we decided neither of us could stay awake much longer and he was no longer laughing at my jokes (45) hours of driving and working is enough blissful enjoyment for one day) so we called our hotel to get directions to check in. Well the class act at Red &%$#& Inn told us there were no rooms available.
In my sleep deprived state, I tried to reason with the manager that we had confirmed the room not only once but twice and they assured me it was held with my credit card and waiting for me. I thanked him for the first class cluster---- and asked him if after abusing us in this fashion he might at least help us find a room, and he laughed and mentioned that there was not a room available for 50 miles.
Well it was now 3:30 in the morning, and our choices were limited, Hari-Kari was out as my ceremonial robes and Japanese dagger were home, FL is flat as a pancake so no high structures to launch your body from, and we were so lost and disoriented any thought of finding this motel and extracting some visceral form of street justice on the pin head who just fucked us on a grand scale was out of the question. Well being the mild mannered, lovable little fuzzball, law abiding pillars of the community we both are, we made the obvious choice......we called the only person we know within 200 miles and hoped against hope when we called they would offer a room for the night.
So I flipped open my phone and pushed the keys with bloody fingers and selected the father of "my favorite teammate" and one of the best guys I have met online or in life................
"Hello Nick, this is SNAFU, your not going to believe this but our hotel bumped us......."
Before I could go into the long and boring story, he said "you can stay here"................................BLESS YOU NICK!
So within an hour or so Champion and I were shaking hands with Saint Nick and 2 minutes later we were both sound asleep.
I woke up 2 hours later, feeling refreshed and ready for a new day (does anyone believe that? Why am I asking you?). Well the 2 hours sleep was true, but I felt more like a zombie stand-in for a bad movie.
I was greeted by the smiling face and generous offer of Saint Nick's wonderful wife offering to make us breakfast......too much!
She and they treated us like family, not even mentioning CHAMPION's long fangs or fear of sunlight for 5 days of us going to work at 12:00 noon and getting in at 4 or 5 am and their hospitality was second to none.
It is a privilege and an honor to have gamers like this in my life, on my staff and in my heart.
Thank you from Sgt SNAFU