Big Update Part 2

Woo-hoo! The mother-in-law now has wireless internet in her house. No more Starbucks, public library, or going out in the back yard to steal the neighbor's unencrypted signal!

Okay, from the comfort of the dining room table, I continue the update...

Wednesday, June 30: Our nothing-but-Texas day. We left Van Horn after grabbing a quick breakfast at McDonald's (not many choices in Van Horn, and we wanted to get on the road quickly).

430 miles to San Antonio, with very little along the way. This was the most boring part of the whole trip. The only highlight was a mountain that looked like a breast, complete with nipple. Cristina took a picture of it:


We made it to San Antonio in time for a matinee movie (I told Cristina I'd take her to see Eclipse). After eating a large popcorn during the movie, we weren't quite in the mood to eat, but I grabbed a few sandwiches to-go from Chick-fil-A just in case.

We got to our KOA cabin in Columbus, Texas late, after 11 pm. The cabin was unusual. It was made of aluminum and had a bathroom, fridge, microwave, and TV. Also, the cabin had a standard queen bed instead of the usual full + bunk beds with vinyl mattresses that we expected. It was strange. It didn't feel like a KOA cabin. I hope all the KOAs aren't going that route, because this cabin definitely lacked some of the charm of the others.


Thursday, July 1: We asked the campground owners about a good place for breakfast, and they recommended Schobel’s. We got there a little after 11 am and missed the breakfast buffet. We opted for the lunch buffet, even though it felt a little strange to eat grilled chicken and mashed potatoes for our first meal of the day. Tasty though. The sweet potatoes were too candied for our preference though. Good pecan pie.


Along the trip, our biggest concern was not getting into a spot with the trucks where we’d need to back up. My truck towed our van on a car carrier, which is a platform that the entire van sits on. I can reverse with that, but Cristina pulled the Subaru on a tow dolly, where the back wheels of the car are touching the ground. You can’t reverse with a car on a dolly. And I preferred to avoid backing up anyway. I’m no good at backing up with a trailer, and even worse so when driving a 26-foot truck. We got good at finding large parking lots where we could pull our trucks side-by-side, parked in such a way that we could pull forward to get out. Even though we had no kids with us, we still had to stop frequently, since the trucks drank gas like crazy. So we were constantly scoping out places that had good pull-throughs for long trucks.

We had a lot of rain on this day, which slowed us down some. We were already traveling slower than usual due to the heavy trucks, but more so in rain. I noticed quite a difference in the descent of my gas gauge needle when I went 55-60 rather than 65-70. Technically we weren’t supposed to exceed 55 with the trailers, but we occasionally broke that rule, I must admit.


After San Antonio, the terrain became a lot more green. We made it to Louisiana and stopped at a Target in Lake Charles to buy a couple of CDs. Both trucks had CD players, but mine didn’t work (I didn’t know it until after we’d bought the CDs). So I was stuck with radio. Cristina’s truck also had an auxiliary jack, so she could listen to the iPod. At one point I listened to music on my laptop with headphones, but it was too cumbersome, so I gave it up.

We made it to our hotel in Biloxi, Mississippi close to midnight. We had booked the Scottish Inn on Expedia, and I was expecting a typical $50 dump, but it was really nice and seemed new. Not quite as good as the Country Inn in Tucson, but almost. Breakfast was served at 3:30 for all the oil workers who had to leave early, but we opted to sleep in.

Friday, July 2: I wanted a real breakfast instead of hotel donuts and juice, so we went to Denny’s and pigged out on eggs and grits, coffee and pancakes. The Latin guys in the booth beside us were watching the Netherlands-Brasil game on a smart phone, and I kept looking over my shoulder to check on the game. They didn’t seem to mind. Brasil lost, which was a great way to start the day.

Our last driving day. It was going to be a long one.

This part of the trip almost seems to go faster, because there isn’t as much distance between the bigger cities. Texas is so spread out, but once you get to Mississippi, the cities and states come a lot quicker.

We hit our target of getting to Tallahassee around dinner time and met up with Uncle John and Aunt Kathy for dinner at Applebee’s. It was nice to see them and catch up. They advised us to park our trucks in a bank parking lot and then we rode with them to the restaurant. It felt good to just be a passenger, and nice to be sitting beside Cristina, even for just a short ride.

One of the best parts of the whole trip was that Cristina and I stayed in a great mood. When I think back on the trip, my memories are that it was fun and pleasant, like an adventure. That’s the best kind of travel, no matter what happens along the way.

We pulled into Gainesville about 10:30. I briefly talked to Aaron on the phone and gave him the address for the storage unit. He gave me the name and number of an LDS person based in that area to help with unloading.

Saturday, July 3: Burt and Tyler arrived around 9 and helped Elena and me get the motorcycle out of the back of the big truck. We got to the storage units around 10 am, when the office opened. Aaron’s LDS reinforcements were there to help.

It took about 2 hours to get both trucks unloaded into 3 storage units. Our new LDS friends headed home, as did Burt and Tyler. Back at Jarue’s, we showered and then drove around to look at houses for rent. A former student of mine, Jamar, had sent me some links to rental houses on Craigslist. We drove through neighborhoods, occasionally stopping to “borrow” unencrypted wireless internet. In this way, we looked for houses online while driving around. One of the houses Jamar had sent us sounded good so I called and set up a time to look at it.

After dinner, we went to Starbucks to use their wi-fi. We stayed until they closed at 11, but Cristina barely made it through the hundreds of emails in her inbox. We didn’t have the charger for her laptop so she used the Mac and I read the newspaper.

Big Update Part 1

It's been about 3 weeks since I last posted, and I've had a hard time getting enough access to internet to post an update. Much of my time has been spent taking care of moving things: finding a place to live, registering the cars, job stuff, getting a bank account, etc. I'm at the public library right now, using the free wi-fi, so I thought I'd squeeze in a quick synopsis of the past 3 weeks.

Friday, June 25: Summer School finished without a hitch.

Saturday, June 26: We picked up the truck and car carrier from Penske. The 26-foot truck, even though it was the biggest they had, looked smaller than we remembered. About 9 Latter-Day Saints helped us load the truck. Our neighbor Bob Paxman, the husband of Sofia's piano teacher, agreed with the others that all our stuff was not going to fit in the truck (I had expressed these feelings to Cristina before, but she wasn't convinced until a third party with eyes on the actual truck confirmed it). It was a hard day for Cristina. Lots of tears with the stress of having too much stuff, of having to quickly decide what wasn't going to go, or making a plan B to get all our stuff moved.

The truck got expertly loaded within a few hot, sweaty hours. After consulting with Bob about our options, he suggested we get a second smaller truck. We made some calls. A Penske place in Glendale had one 16-foot truck and a tow dolly, and gave us a good price. We had about 2 hours to go pick it up.

We got the second truck and spent the rest of the evening boxing up the little stuff. After you get the major stuff packed, there's still all that little stuff left over. That's the worst part of moving.

Our beds loaded on the big truck, we slept at Maria Del Mar's house. When I showered, the water pouring down my face tasted like sea water. It was all the salt from my hair, from all the sweating all day.

Sunday, June 27: Claire and Luis came over and helped us pack more. If we needed more LDS help, Aaron told us to call around 4, when most would be done at church. Peter and Roben (and Wesley) came over to say goodbye, and help pack a bit. We really hoped to be done with loading the 2nd truck before 4, but when Peter saw all the stuff we still had to do, he advised us to call our LDS friends.

About 5 LDS helpers came to help load the 2nd truck. Bob was a crucial help again, after spending all day loading with us the day before. We will forever be indebted to Bob Paxman!

It turned out that we had more room in the 2nd truck than we anticipated, so we took our washer and dryer, and some of the furniture that we had decided to leave behind.

Unlike our move from Florida in 2004, we did not leave any pans or baking sheets in the drawer under the oven.

By 11 pm or so, the house was completely empty except for the last stuff in the fridge, which was going in a cooler. We didn't have time to clean the house (vacuum, clean the bathrooms, etc.) but after the exhaustion of loading the trucks, I decided we'd pay someone to come clean the house instead of staying up half the night cleaning before we hit the road. Money well-spent.

Monday, June 28: After a good night's sleep at Maria Del Mar's house, we packed up the cooler, loaded the car and van on the dolly and carrier, and headed out of town.

Almost as soon as I got on I-10 at Baseline, the check engine light came on in my truck. All the gauges read normally, so I didn't pull over. I called the Penske roadside assistance number located on the visor. After being on hold for 20 minutes, a got a human and they advised me to stop at a Penske repair place in Tucson.

Cristina had the camera, so all the "road" pictures are of me in the big truck, towing the van

The Penske guys were extremely nice and got working on the truck. Cristina and I sat in the "cafeteria," drank coffee, and waited.

Two hours later, the guy in charge came in and gave us the scoop. The truck's turbo was shot (a critical part of a diesel engine) and if it wasn't fixed, we'd never make it to Florida. Unfortunately, the nearest replacement part was in Phoenix and the earliest they could get it would be the next morning. We could be on the road by noon the next day. Another option was to do a truck swap: Penske would hire a moving company to unload our truck and load it into a similar-sized truck if they had one. That would take a minimum of 4 hours, but likely longer. Knowing that would still put us way off our schedule, plus the small detail that we had a motorcycle packed in the back of the truck, which is technically not allowed by Penske, we chose the fix rather than the swap. The good news is that Penske paid for our hotel and dinner. We spent a few hours on our cell phones switching all the places we had booked to stay at. 2 of the three just switched our nights, but the KOA in Van Horn, though willing, couldn't because their cabins were already booked for the following night. No one charged us anything extra to switch nights, and the KOA in Van Horn gave us a full refund. Sometimes things go well, even when things seem to be going badly!

We booked a nice hotel in Tucson for the night (hey, Penske's dime...why not?) and booked a dumpy motel in Van Horn for the following night.

Penske also extended the return date for us to return the truck in Gainesville. So basically, we got a free date night in Tucson, albeit with all our wordly possessions in tow. Penske allowed us to take the van off the carrier, so we didn't have to drive either big truck around Tucson. After a nice dinner at a Greek restaurant called Opa!, we went to the movies (our last trip to a Harkins...and we still had two Harkins cups!). We did a double feature: Grown Ups and Knight and Day. Back at the hotel, we slept well with no need for an alarm clock the next day.

Dinner at Opa!

Tuesday, June 29: Breakfast at the hotel was lovely. I even worked out a little in the fitness center. We called Penske around 9 to check on the truck, and they said it was done and ready to go!

One last thing Penske did to take care of us so well was they topped our tanks off for free. Penske is a great moving truck company! I don't think they could have been any nicer or done anything different to make things go more smoothly.

Our blissful little stay in Tucson ended, though, and the reality of driving across the country began to set in. It was a long day, on arguably the most boring, unattractive part of the trip. No big cities (and few small ones too) sit between Tucson and El Paso. Just 300 miles or so of big old nothingness. And after El Paso, it's not much better.

Imagine 10 hours of this

We crawled into Van Horn around 11 pm, checked into our dumpy hotel, and drove to a Wendy's (one of only 2 eating places open that late) to get a little bit of dinner.