So, I took Wednesday off of work and packed our whole house. This seems like a monumental feat to most Americans with a crap load of stuff, but this is our fourth move in 18 months, so we've broken up with a lot of things we loved. We simply couldn't deal with the baggage. I took a picture of all of Jake's ties, because they are the most interesting things we own now. (Besides our bikes, obviously.)
Thursday night, we stayed with my co-worker who conveniently lives in our same complex, (Thanks, Amy!) and got up early to hit the road. We drove across Nebraska for about four hours until we got bored and hungry. We stopped in North Platte and found the library so we could use their WiFi to download some audiobooks. I know, I should have done that before we left. But I had TWO DAYS to prepare! But whatever, it was a cute little library, and they had good WiFi.
After we stopped at the library and Taco John's for disappointing burritos, we drove through this for another six hours. Seriously, Nebraska is SO FLAT. While boring, that part of the drive was the least stressful part of the trip.
Dun dun DUN!
When we got to the outskirts of Omaha at 7:30 pm, we were getting close to empty in the gas department, and very close to over-full in the bladder department. Plus, we hadn't wanted to stop for dinner. But the GPS told us we only had 25 miles to go, so like a horse pointed home, we kept going. This was at the end of a ten hour drive, and we desperately wanted to get to the hotel. So we pull off the freeway on our exit, and the neighborhood looks a little older, but we're still a ways away from the hotel, so we keep going. The streets keep getting narrow, and all the houses look run down, and there's no sign of the hotel. Then, "You have arrived!"
No, we clearly had not arrived.
We were in the middle of a residential neighborhood. A sketchy neighborhood.
"STUPID GPS!" I grabbed the stupid thing and may or may not have chucked it on the floor of the Uhaul. "I am going to put that stupid thing in a box and put that box in another box and mail it to myself and SMASH IT WITH A HAMMER!" (Remember the bladder levels here, and cut me some slack.) So I whipped out my smartphone and started to search for a gas station nearby, because both the gas tank and the bladders were reaching critical levels.
"Great. There's one three miles away."
So we weave through these tiny little streets with our 15 foot truck pulling our car on a trailer, and we drive down the main street of the most run-down Hispanic neighborhood I have ever seen. All the buildings were sagging and dirty, and all the signs were in Spanish, and the streets were super narrow. Finally, we see the gas station and pull in.
The pump is broken and they don't have a bathroom.
We jump back in the truck and head to another one. We try to pull in that one, but the lot is SO tiny that our truck can't fit, so we pull around and head to yet another one. After driving another seven miles, we leave the sketchy part of town and find a gas station with a big enough lot and wide enough streets to navigate through.
So, gas and bladder crisis averted. But we still have to find our hotel. So we pull up the address again, (the GPS was still fired on the floor of the cab) and use our phones to navigate. We got back on the freeway and promptly missed our exit. Then we backtracked, and got off on the wrong exit. At this point, it was 8:00pm, and I hadn't eaten since 2:00. All the stress of the week and the evening got to me plus my very empty tummy, and I literally curled into the fetal position and cried. All I wanted was to get to our hotel and get out of the car. Thank heavens Jake handles stress in more productive ways. He got us to our hotel, and we got all our suitcases and valuables out of the car, and locked everything up, and found our room. Once we flopped on the bed, we realized we were RAVENOUS. We needed food like we needed air. It was 9:00pm at this point. Jake called Jimmy Johns and asked when they closed. They close at 9:00. He begged them to make one more delivery, and God bless that girl on the phone and Jimmy himself, because she took our order. Ten minutes later, the delivery guy showed up with the best sandwich I have ever eaten. We tipped him generously and thanked him with literal tears in our eyes.
After about four hours of driving, the airbag light came on. I called the Uhaul hotline to report it and ask them what we should do. After 30 minutes on hold, a girl finally answered.
"Hello, are you safe?"
"Yes...."
"Are you blocking traffic?"
"No..."
So I've been on hold for 30 minutes and you're asking me if we're safe? Would I have stayed on hold for THIRTY MINUTES if we weren't???
Anyway.
She proceeded to read me some paragraph from the manual, and she had to sound out the word "momentarily," so I immediately realized this was a fruitless conversation. The only interesting thing she said was that the airbag may not deploy in an accident. We were ten miles outside of Des Moines at this point, so she gave me the address and phone number of a Uhaul dealer "right off the highway in Des Moines" so we could "run in and have them check the code real quick to make sure it's not serious." That seemed reasonable, so I called the place, who heard "airbag light" and immediately transferred me back to the Uhaul hotline. Ok, we'll just ask them in person. We ended up driving 10 miles off the highway to this Uhaul place, and pulled in. We walked in and talked to the guy who looked exactly like Curly from the Three Stooges. We said we had a light on, and asked if he could check it.
"Oh, I'm not a mechanic. We don't do that here. Did you call the hotline?"
Yes. They sent us here.
After another fruitless conversation, we left in a huff. (Well, I left in a huff. Jake was nice.)
We pulled into a parking lot across the street, and Jake called another Uhaul place in town. After talking to someone for 20 minutes, (Who said he didn't know of any Uhaul place that did maintenance, and did we think about taking it to a Ford dealer? There's no Ford dealer around, but they would probably be a good choice to spend a lot of money fixing someone else's vehicle. Thanks for that, buddy. ) I started to cry again. I was still carrying the stress of the week and Friday night, and I just. could. not. deal. So I called my mom and blubbered for a while and she said nice mom things, and then at the end she said, "So, to sum up, you had a dash light come on, everyone is an idiot, and it's raining."
YES! AND IT IS TERRIBLE! THIS IS A MAJOR CRISIS!
Actually, that made me laugh. So I pulled it together, and we had some lunch at Chipotle and got back on the road. Another six hours of driving, and we finally made it to Grafton, WI.
Tune in next time to hear about why we're living in a hotel.
PS. I'm never moving again.
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