The Incredible Journey: Starting Out

Well, now that we are fairly settled in the new apartment, I suppose it's time to regale you with tales from the road. Let me start by saying that we couldn't have done it without the love, help, prayers and support of friends and family. A HUGE thank you to the brother-in-law and sister-in-law. You guys were lifesavers.

Let me also say that a move of this magnitude should never - I repeat NEVER - be attempted without the assistance of professional movers and at least one full week blocked away for the trek. We covered over 1700 miles in a 48-hour span. There's a special word for something like that - insane. I believe there are laws prohibiting professional truck drivers from covering that much ground in that amount of time. For good reason. Not only are you physically exhausted by the time you reach your destination, but somewhere along the way you have lost all sense of humanity and have become a snarling beast. It's not pretty.

Anyway, we rented our moving truck through Budget and were unable to pick it up until 9:30 Thursday morning. An hour and a half away from the house. And the guy was slower than molassas in January. So we didn't get to start loading until after lunch.

First order of business - the sleeper sofa. This was our first major purchase as a married couple. We bought it with a combination of tax return and student loans about 4 years ago. It was a pre-declawing purchase, so it wasn't exactly in the best of shape. So when the frame cracked as Hubby tried to maneuver it out the front door, nobody was too heartbroken over the decision to transport the dear old thing to its final resting place at the dump (I'm sorry, "convenience center." When I called to ask how late the dump was open I was told "We're not a dump, ma'am") instead of loading it onto the moving truck and having to carry it up a flight of stairs to the new apartment.

We were able to get pretty much everything loaded up by 6:30 that night, giving Hubby and I a chance to head to the dojo one last time. A picnic supper of Bell's hamburgers in the living room floor and a few short hours of sleep on an air mattress and we were finished in Henderson.

We set out at the ungodly hour of 5 a.m. Friday morning, taking a slight detour in Memphis to drop off sis-in-law's truck at their house. And then it was a straight shot on I-40W through Arkansas and Oklahomah all the way to our hotel room in Amarillo, TX.

Highlight of the first day of travel? Our first stop for gas for the truck. See, we didn't think to ask at the time we picked up the truck what kind of fuel to use.

We had this truck: with this gas cap: . So since we saw "deisel fuel only" on the gas cap, we came to the logical conclusion that this truck must run on deisel. So why wouldn't the deisel pump nozzles fit into our gas tank? Because Budget put the wrong gas cap on this truck, that's why. Yeah, that was fun.