I love tracking with the USPS. When I ship packages, I always follow where they go. When I order things to be delivered, I "appreciate" some of the wild journeys they make. Take that appreciation however you will. One of those is due here this afternoon. Maybe. It's been on an interesting journey.
It started in Durango, CO on the 21st. The first entry is that a tracking number has been provided. Often it means only that the shipper has generated a number. It doesn't guarantee the item has left the shippers location. I've seen that take as long as three days before the package is acknowledged somewhere as having left the shipper's location.
An hour later, to the minute, it is recorded as SHIPPING LABEL CREATED USPS AWAITS ITEM. Impressive progress, right?
In an hour and a half it has progressed to "SHIPMENT RECEIVED ACCEPTANCE PENDING" followed just over an hour later as "PRE-SHIPMENT INFO SENT USPS AWAITS ITEM" which clarifies that the post office hasn't actually gotten it yet. Busy, busy tracker, but all of it gets summed of as a kind of "we're planning to see you."
In a total of nine hours, and 5 notices of progress later, it actually arrives at the post office in Durango, only they describe it as "ORIGIN ACCEPTANCE". Whew! I've been through Durango several times. It's totally charming and scenic, but not very large. Maybe they walked it through town, enjoying the views? Stopped for coffee?
Exactly one hour and 15 minutes later, however, it is "PROCESSED" through the Albuquerque, NM USPS. So far all of this is the same day, March 21st, from 11:17 AM to 9:48 PM. Such a lot of paperwork before action, but when it finally moves, zip!!!
And now it sits. People gotta sleep, you know. But early birds take over and by 5:49 AM it "DEPARTED" Albuquerque. Now we start to see actual progress, not those "we see you" kinds of notices which fill the tracking form. At 11:47 AM it DEPARTED" Flagstaff, AZ. Despite appearances, that actually takes 7 hours, due to a change at the state border from daylight savings time to standard time. Aside from the Navajo reservation which covers contiguous parts of 4 states and thus has chosen to exercise their sovereignty by keeping the AZ part in the same time zone as the other three states through the entire reservation, Arizona does not set our clocks ahead and back. It confuses a lot of people who are used to certain hourly differences and then they change, and change again, twice every year. I long since lost track of how many times I hear,"Oops, I thought you were awake by now, sorry" or it's opposite, depending on which way others' clocks changed.
Note here another shortcut in tracking. It hasn't bothered to "ARRIVE" in Flagstaff, just depart. Heaven help us if it should have disappeared somewhere in there. We'd never know whom to blame. However, it has "ARRIVED" in Phoenix three hours later. Nice drive down the 17.
An hour an a quarter later it gets "PROCESSSED" in Phoenix. It sits overnight. Apparently the processing hit a glitch, because the next morning, a bleary-eyed 2:55 AM, it "DEPARTED" to be noted as having "ARRIVED" 45 minutes later... in Scottsdale. Not Sun City. Nope, Scottsdale. It went north, not west. The zip codes share the first 2 digits, but that's all.
Now we're really having fun. I keep checking on it all day of the 23rd, and the only posting is at 11:00 AM that morning: "MISSENT" from the Scottsdale location. I go to bed waiting in vain via tracking info for it to be sent back to the Phoenix processing center which it would have to go through before being sent out to here.
This morning, the 24th, there were several interesting postings. The first one seemed to be a misguided attempt at CYA. It is now positioned on the tracking chart by yesterday's time code, despite never showing up yesterday on tracking, but claiming that it "ARRIVED" in Sun City at the post office 11 minutes after it was also somehow noted as "ARRIVED" in Scottsdale. It apparently sat in two places yesterday at the same time. Hey, I did not order Schrodinger's cat! My only conclusion is that it was way too big an ass for somebody to cover despite their best efforts.
This morning at 3AM it was again "PROCESSED" through the Phoenix facility. Two hours and 17 minutes later it "DEPARTED" there to "ARRIVE" in the Sun City post office 58 minutes later.Within 11 minutes it was loaded on the mail truck, finally, officially, "OUT FOR DELIVERY" !
Whew!
I'll be looking for it around 1 PM at the house. Unless.......
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