Cargo

It was a cool, rainy, day last week when I climbed aboard the great ship, Liberty of the Seas, to head to Bermuda for the first time.  I decided to hire a car to deliver me to the ship, as parking in the boarding area in Bayonne is nearly impossible and wildly expensive.  I got to the ship, and boarded in record time, finding my way to my lovely balcony room.  I dropped off my belongings and headed out to the 11th floor where I could watch the ship slide away from the pier.

There is an awesome feeling being on something as enormous as a full-sized cruise ship.  The mere impossibility of it being able to stay afloat never ceases to blow my mind.

From my 11th floor lookout, I spied something even more unbelievable.  Cargo ships, holding train-car containers – seemingly hundreds of them.  For people who have grown up by the sea, I’m sure this is as mundane as watching sharpshooters launch cannonballs to bring down avalanches off the mountains in Utah, is to a Utahan, but to me – it is breathtaking. 

We have all seen shipping containers in our lives, I assume.  Even in Utah, which is completely landlocked, there are shipping containers that have been repurposed for restaurants, offices or homes.   We also see them strung together on old-fashioned Amtrak trains that criss-cross the country.  But to see thousands of them stacked one on top of the other, as in the port in Bayonne, New Jersey, waiting to be loaded onto something that is supposed to float is something else.

Someone actually has a plan for what is inside their shipping container. To think that not only do they know what it is in, but they are anxiously awaiting either receiving it, or getting rid of it.  What is in them?  Electronics?  Books?  Glassware?  Humans? Food? Animals?  Gold? I mean, seriously!  Is this what the saying  ‘A slow boat to China” is all about? Is that even a real thing? I thought it was some random thing to say like “a month of Sundays”, or “Happy as a dead pig in the sunshine.”   Are they bringing vast amounts of goods back and forth across the world on a ship?  When I hear ‘Shipping and Handling”, I never think about a Ship.  I think about planes, semi-trucks, and trains.  But, upon reflection, I guess it makes sense that most of the world’s trade is moved via water than any other way.  It just never even occurred to me.

For the next inexplicable exploration of the subject, someone knows what is in their respective container, and someone else is tracking lots of them.  Maybe all of them.  What kind of Tetris guru is that?  Is it all computer-generated to get them all where they are going? Or is it pen and paper?  Once, it was pen and paper, I’m sure. Is it the FBI? CIA? Is it Homeland Security?  Is it math nerds? Attorneys?  Enigmatologists?  All of the above?

So, I started the cruise feeling teeny tiny in the realm of the hugeness of the shipping industry.  I tried to wrap my head around the difference between a cruise ship carrying 5,000 people, complete with everything those 5,000 peeps need, create, or want (must be several tons of ice cream alone), compared to a ship that is carrying hundreds of heavily packed shipping crates…..but I found it incomprehensible.  Still do.   I’m constantly amazed to learn things that I never knew I never knew!

Right before I left, I got to spend the day with my sweet grandboy.  He was just working on getting some new teeth and spent a lot of time sticking his fingers in his ears and his mouth. He also loves watching toys spin, like a disk that is spun on the floor like a top – that’s the best!  Sweetest little love.  One day, we’ll go on these ships together!