900-Mile Weekend

So where have I been, and why have I not been blogging? Well, we've moved. Roughly 900 miles. Here's the short story:

Friday, closed on old house, loaded the truck, and gave away what wouldn't fit. Saturday, drove an hour, fixed a flat, drove an hour, replaced front tires on mini-van, drove a few more hours, got truck stuck, got truck unstuck, found hotel, slept. Sunday, drove, drove, drove. Monday, closed on new house, unloaded truck, threw beds on floor, and slept.

Now for the long and boring report.

Got the truck Friday morning, and got it back to the house, then went to closing, which went fine. If you need a real estate attorney in Birmingham, AL, Courtney Mason (on Valleydale Rd.) is a good guy.

Got back home, and started loading. 8 guys showed up from church by 5pm, and had the house emptied in an hour, leaving us the rest of the evening to load the truck. And it didn't all fit. 25 feet of truck, and we got rid of lots of stuff from our last move, and it still didn't all fit. So a couple of guys got pickup trucks full of stuff, and the folks who bought our house got some stuff. We had intended to drive a ways Friday night, but by the time we finished, it was 10pm, so we headed over to a friend's house and stayed the night there.

Saturday, we said goodbye to our neighbors (and our kids to theirs), and got on the road. Just the other side of Gadsden, our minivan blew the right-front tire. Not a problem. The spare was under the rear, and the tools in the back. No problem. Except, how do you get the spare off of the van? Took me a while, but found a knob to turn to loosen a cable to lower the tire. Start to finish, took about an hour or so. Nope, not gonna get a job on a pit crew.

Looked at the blown tire, and saw where the inside edge of the tire was well worn, and looked at the other front tire. It was showing the same kind of wear, so we decided to get them replaced at the first chance. The next sizeable town was Chattanooga, so we got directions to a Walmart, and found it with minimal difficulty. (Except that driving around a mall with a 25ft moving truck towing a car isn't that much fun.) The Walmart we found had an hour and a half wait, so we went to another Walmart nearby, and got right in, then got back on the road. So by 7pm, we were where we had hoped to be the previous night.

We drove on up past Knoxville, and got most of the way to Bristol, TN (which is right at the VA border), and decided to stop for the night. Well, that meant looking for a hotel. The first exit we took had 3 hotels, so we were hopeful. First place didn't have space for us to park our truck. So we went on.

The 2nd place not only didn't have room to park the truck, but it didn't have room to turn the truck around. (And no signs saying "no trucks", either.) Well, with the two-wheel tow dolly we were pulling, we couldn't back the truck out, either. So we unloaded my car, (the driver's seat was full of stuff that wouldn't fit in the truck), took it off the dolly, unhooked the dolly, turned the truck around, reattached the dolly, put the car back on, and loaded it back up again. Total time wasted: about an hour and a half.

(And the third place at that exit was a dump.)

Back on the freeway, next exit down had a nice La Quinta with plenty of space to park and turn around. (Wife drove in first to make sure, let me assure you.) So by midnight, we were in our room and ready to sleep. The kids were awake the whole time we were wrestling with the truck, which was annoying at the time, but really great since they slept in a bit longer in the morning, letting us do the same.

Sunday was a good deal less eventful. The kids were at each other, but there was room in the truck for one child, which let us separate them from time to time. Son rode with me more than Daughter, but having either of them with me was fun for a while, then less fun as the new (for them) wore off and they got bored. We got into Lancaster County about 8:30pm, parked the truck at our new house, and walked around it a bit, (the builder had left it open for us, so we could do so), then off to my mother-in-law's to sleep.

Monday we did the official walk-through, then went to closing, then to V&S Sandwiches for a cheesesteak for lunch. (Boy, have I ever missed cheesesteaks.) Then back to the house, which by that time was ours. We had about 5 or 6 people come out from church to help us unload, (and bring us dinner), and we were done by about 6pm. My sister-in-law was there to help as well. After unloaded, we decided to save the food they brought for later and went to a diner for dinner. Wife had put sheets on the beds, so we came back from dinner and promptly fell asleep.

So today, I'm at work, and Wife and kids are at home unloading (or, more accurately, Wife is unloading while kids are getting in the way). This is the end of all our problems (I'm just not saying which end).