Thursday, December 10, 2009

Desert Living

It's been a long while since I've updated this here page so I guess I could start with the basics. The move went well. I only fucked up with the truck itself once, and with the trailer maybe 3 times. I saw a huge amount of the country in a span of only 4 days, although a lot of it was under cover of night. I had one very horrible drive, as well as 3 not-as-bad drives, which I shall now detail for my future amusement.

The Move:
Day 1
I woke up ass early on day one to grab the moving truck from the Penske rental center down the road. I was told the truck I received was the newest of all on the lot and, barring one side of the thing, it was in decent shape superficially. I signed the necessary papers, made some small talk with the shop owners, and drove the truck out to begin the arduous task of moving all of my amassed junk from one side of the country to the other. I parked the truck squarely in front of the apartment building, unrolled the ramp, and began lugging junk from point A to point B ceaselessly. You never realize how much junk you've amassed over the years until the fateful day comes in which you need to move all of it. My bedroom, big enough to house my bed and dresser (but not much else), during the task of moving soon took on the dimensions of a cavernous basement. I did not realize I had managed to shove so much into so few nooks and crannies, and the sheer volume of shit began to irk me, provoking me to outright toss the more useless trinkets and baubles into the garbage. Thankfully, I had the assistance of Jim and Nubs, as well as Sadie when loading the truck so it did not end up being as laborious as it could have been, but all in all it was the second worst part of the moving experience. Eventually, after much shoving and shifting, everything was loaded. I bid adieu to my friends, closed up the truck, and Sadie and I made our way back to the rental facility to pick up the trailer.

The car trailer (yes, it deserves its own paragraph):
When we left with the truck, our rental-master told us if we were back before noon they would be there to help us with hooking up the trailer. As unluck would have it, we did not arrive in time. We had to figure out how to finagle the damn thing onto the truck ourselves. We fucked it up once, and holy shit was it scary (though my car was going to end up smashed since the trailer popped off the hitch and started rolling down the slight gradient it was placed upon) but in the end we got it figured out and headed out on the first very long drive of the trip.

Day one took us from Pennsylvania all the way to Tennessee, much of it happening through the night. It was an outrageously long journey, but not especially difficult. Having Sadie in the front to help me stay entertained certainly was helpful. Eventually we made it to her cat-shit filled, somewhat dilapidated housing situation and promptly took our rest to prepare for one of the longest days of my entire life.