Well, we did it. This has not been the most graceful of relocations, but it was a better trip than the insanely long and trouble-laden one last year across the whole country. This one was less than half of it. Hopefully it will also be our last big move.
My dad arrived in Oregon Friday evening around dinner time, which is great because he had an empty stomach. He brought with him an electric drill, because ours in cordless and therefore too wimpy to drill through the frame of the black car to install the tow bar. I finished most of the packing with Jamie's mom while he installed the tow bar. Then we moved everything out into the garage for a "staging area". We managed to cut out a lot of stuff from last year, I was surprised. The black car IS a monstrosity of cavernous cargo proportions, though. Jamie did his magic tetris act and made the entire pile of our worldy possessions disappear into the black car, with only a little bit of overflow into the Camaro backseat, and a bag of doggie stuff to ride in Dad's truck with me and the doggies.
We had sort of misunderstood the timing of plans, or I did, and Dad planned to leave insanely early in the morning at about 2am. We finished loading everything at 1:30am and I woke him to let him know the time, and that we were ready to go and would be going to sleep until he woke up. He slept until 5am and we headed out with hot fresh cups of Dutch Bros. treats. I had chai instead of coffee.
The trip itself was actually very easy from a passenger viewpoint. My job was to keep Jackson settled so that he did not whine, and to see to the puppies at each stop.
We did make a few unplanned stops along the way, though. Soon after we left, maybe 90 minutes or so, we stopped and did a little bit of weight rearranging, to take some heavy things out of the black car and put them into the bed of the truck. Zoomie and Vandal switched spots, no longer riding in style on the bike rack on a black trunk, but strapped rather unceremoniously to the top of the truckbed load. Zoomie's streamers flapped like crazy!
We also stopped after missing what we thought was a dead animal in the road, which turned out to be a chain-binder that we didn't miss. The drive-shaft came loose from where it was secured beneath the black car and we heard scraping noises. Since it was already mostly out anyway, along with the fluid, the drive-shaft was tossed into the bottom of the truck bed also. After that we had no issues.
We were around 400 miles from our destination, I think, when Jamie started to get really sleepy. I had switched to being a Camaro passenger during our dinner stop, anticipating that fatigue would be an issue, and also to be fair with company. It really sucks to drive along by yourself. We talked a great deal, and I successfully kept Jamie awake for another 200 miles, when my dad called a stop because he was getting too tired. We pulled off into a gravel lot by a gas station and slept. Dad stretched across the back seat of his truck. Jamie's driver seat is sort of reclined anyway to keep his head from hitting the roof, so we hung my robe (a nearly forgotten item hanging on the back of the bedroom door like that) in the windshield to block light and I sort of used my pillow to fill the gap between seats while Jamie's chest was my pillow.
We woke up to bright sunshine staring at us from just above the horizon, and continued on our way with me riding back in the truck. There was some chaotic confusion about where exactly we were going in Colorado, but then we arrived, and my family came to see me. We had a wonderful dinner and I met my niece, who was very confused as to why she wasn't supposed to call me Jessie (my twin sister).
I have pictures for later when my laptop comes out of hiding. I had my interview for the St Vrain Valley school district this morning and everything went well as expected. We also have an apartment on hold for us pending the completion of some paperwork including another letter of Intent-to-Hire, since two thirds of us are starting new jobs instead of being able to show current pay stubs. People like to know how exactly you can pay the rent, I guess.
Anyway, I'll talk to you more when I get another chance to write. Bye!
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