Gravity won

"We was expectin' a delivery," Dave said in his wonderful brogue, "bot we din' know it was gonna be an air drop."

Definitely not on plan.

The 42-foot semi delivering our flooring had to swing around on Olivia from Duval -- it wouldn't make it up our narrow street -- but that let us position it to block only one of the four ways out of the intersection during the delivery.

The first pallet of mahogany, all 2,000 pounds of it, came down the lift gate just fine. Dave, Ted and the driver wrestled it on its pallet jack up to the front of the house, where a Canadian tourist had courteously and intelligently parked blocking our gate. We parked the wood in front of the Canadian tourist.

The second pallet -- 3,800 pounds worth -- didn't want to budge. Dave tried to get the driver to split it up to offload. No dice. So they pried and prodded and finally got the thing moved to the lift gate. Then the lift gate broke in half, spilling the load into the intersection.

Some of the goods were damaged, but thank God no one was injured.

The hurt came later, as we carried each 70-pound bundle up the street and into the house. Neyda, our wood lady in Miami, was not amused that her people had packed it that way, and promised to ship replacements for any bad boards along with the stair materials coming later this week.