Camp -- A Morning Surprise

An early morning call from my camp director brought news for which I wasn't prepared. Sysco made an early delivery. The food service company showed up at 8:30 a.m. to drop 155 cases of food. It looks like our food was loaded on the tail end of the trailer. The driver told me that he had 14 drops today, spread from Santa Cruz to San Jose. I wander how the holiday weekend impacted scheduling.

Sysco's been early in the past, but never at the crack of dawn. The first year (2002), they showed up at 11:30 a.m. In the succeeding years they've arrived with the food in the early afternoon. So this was a shock when Mike called me on my cell phone.

Fortunately, we had stayed at Jaye's Timberlane Resort in Ben Lomond last night, two miles north of here. I dashed over to Daybreak Camp and had all perishables stowed in the walk-in and freezer by 9:30 a.m. This gave me a chance to unload the food that I purchased at Smart and Final Thursday and to unload my cast iron for outdoor meals. Although our account is tagged COD, the driver departed at 9:30 without check in hand. I still have to make payment arrangements as the checkbook wasn't due to arrive until 1 p.m.

This is something that I've worked at to avoid. Each year as I prepare for camp, I give my Sysco representative a list of delivery needs. (To be fair to Sysco, I haven't talked to her yet today.) I make sure that a Saturday delivery is okay (never had an issue with this), and I make sure that the truck doesn't arrive any sooner than 1 p.m.

I also remind Sysco each year of the bridge and its weight limitations. A 35-foot trailer is the longest that Sysco can send over the bridge, which they did this year. We had one year where it took the driver over 30 minutes to make the turn out of the parking lot onto the bridge.

Sysco's early arrival worked out. The camp that had rented the facilities this last week -- an outreach group from Walnut Creek -- checked out yesterday. So my vision of putting food away while the departing group cooked breakfast and cleaned the kitchen never materialized.

I also found out from the camp caretaker that the last group left a sizable donation for us. It's always nice to give and accept such donations. Each year we leave around $150 to $200 in food behind to the next group. The donation included four crates of milk (over 200 cartons), seven gallons of Costco milk, seven dozen eggs (three flats) and plenty of produce. We'll put the food to good use.