The Travels of the Meandering Package
On September 6th this year I sent a package to my friend Buffalo Bob Holden in Townshend Vermont. I sent it media rate, since it had a book and and a CD in it, and that's the cheapest way to send it. I fully expected it to take a few weeks to get to him. Since I don't pay the full price of first class mail, which would be roughly twice the amount or more than media mail, I expect it to take longer. However, what I didn't expect was that it would take two months and ten days to arrive. Fortunately, there is a tracking number on the package that allows me to see the progress of the package. To say the least, if this package was eligible for airline miles, it could probably take a trip to Europe and back with miles to spare. One other time I had sent Buffalo a similar package- media rate. That one also took over six weeks as I recall, perhaps longer. When he asked his postmaster about that one, the guy mentioned that along the way it had been delivered to several distributi...