How the Bedouin saved Christmas

Twas the (day of the day before) the night before Christmas, and all through the Sinai, many millions of creatures were stirring, but not the goddamn mail truck, it was fucked.  We have some seriously sketch trucks here.  A big part of it is that they simply get the wheels driven off them.  The MFO operates on such a shoestring budget that there is no money to replace trucks with 300,000 miles on them.  There are new things ordered, but they take years to get here.  Some sort of budgetary thing.  The box trucks for the mail runs are just worn the hell out.  A couple hundred thousand miles of desert driving is not the same thing as a couple hundred thousand miles driving in Kansas or something.  It’s pretty rough out here.

Anywho…

So the mail here comes through Israel.  They put it all in a bog box truck and drive it south.  We meet the truck at a certain point and give them an empty truck, then we drive the truck full o’ yuletide goodies southward.  Well, this truck had electrical problems, and when it hit a bump, the lights would all go batshit crazy, and the governor would lock the truck down to 40kph.  That’s 25 mph to you yanks.  That’s not a fun thing when you have to go 300 miles or so.  They shut off power to the system for a few minutes, and the system reset.  They had to do this a few times.  Then, of course, there was the fire.  Wasn’t much of a fire, but it did get them to pull partway off the road to try to find it.  Once they got things squared away, they attempted to pull away, only to have the road bed crumble under them, and end up all wonky in the ditch. 

While we were getting a wrecker spun up to go find them, a group of Bedouin came along with a dump truck, and rescued them.  This saved several hours on the evolution, allowing people to get their gifts on time.  Forget gold, frankincense, and myrrh, Joe got Care Packages, and the wise men rolled off in their dump truck. And to all a good night. & shit.