Things were working out with the insane, life-altering adventure. The house was sold, the plane ride with baby had gone splendidly, and we’d managed to find the best place to call our new home in a matter of hours. These parts of the whole would surely be the thick of it all, right?
This is where a narrator’s voice enters the chat to prominently let you know, “But this would not be the thick of it.”
While my kid and I spent time with my parents and I secured whatever tie-ups I needed to in SC, LT flew back to Washington to meet the movers and gear up in the U-Haul truck for his big drive with our 2 pups across the country.
But when the day arrived to pick up the U-Haul, LT got the big, bad news that many others everywhere had been getting for the last 6 months.
“Sir, we don’t have the truck you reserved. We don’t have it anywhere. Not here, not one state, two states, three states over. But we’ll give you an alternate truck, the only one we have. It’s about a third of the size you reserved, but I’m sure you can make it work.”
There is a monumental difference in the cargo possibilities of a 26-foot truck compared to a 20-foot, folks.
The movers showed up—not wanting to be there in the first place was the vibe they brought, and immediately began lamenting every 30 seconds that there was no way they could fit anything in the truck. So, needless to say, the much-desired optimism for the whole endeavor would not make an appearance.
While LT begged the movers just to try to get what they could into the truck, he also was calling around everywhere he could to find anything that even resembled a moving truck or trailer to load in whatever wouldn’t actually be fitting into the current U-Haul. The day crawled by as the movers and LT, with the phone glued to his ear, attempted the least fun game of Tetris in that 20 feet of haul space. But finally, he was able to locate another trailer. A 6x12 cargo trailer was sitting pretty a little over an hour north, and after the movers were done and 40 boxes were left sitting out in the open, LT took off. He was completely unsure if the trailer would fit what was left, but he didn’t have a choice. There was nothing else.
The rest of the night would consist of him picking up that trailer, loading it strategically, hooking it up to one of our cars, and dropping it off at a safe location for storage until we were able to figure out when and how to come get it. Then, he had to hook up the car tow trailer to the back of the loaded-up U-Haul and strap on our other car. All this with the futile hope that maybe he’d get a minute or two of sleep before he began the big trip the following morning bright and early.
He was screaming for joy at the top of his lungs when he called me the next morning, giddy at the prospect of finally leaving the chaos behind. He was exhausted but with high spirits, and with 3-4 days of road travel ahead of him, he was on to the next piece of this big, long, seemingly neverending endeavor.
16-hour days were rough, especially with the cap of a 55-mph limit on the truck/trailer combo, but LT’s enthusiasm could not be quelled as he got closer and closer to our new life.
But, of course, things could not be so simple.
One of the tires on the U-Haul blew out in the middle of LT’s second to last afternoon, which was followed by a 5 hour wait on the side of a busy city highway. From that incident on to the home stretch, the final days and hours of the trip were littered with plenty of headaches and slowdowns, but in the end, LT pulled into the drive of the new house, promptly running inside, and falling dead asleep on the floor with our 2 pups cuddled up next to him.
The longest leg of legs was finished. The movers would come in the morning, followed by myself and Stella. For now, all there would be for him to do was sleep. Sleep and sleep and sleep.
The longest leg of the journey was finished.
Well. Until the sequel a week later anyway.
PART 3 COMIN AT YA…