Go West, Young Man - Part 1

We made it. After a relaxing 42 hour drive…we finally made it to Montana. Ok, so the drive wasn’t relaxing at all…but we have, finally, gotten to our destination…and let me tell you, I’m glad.

After loading the truck with the help of two guys that I “hired”, groovy and I cleaned the apartment like it had never been cleaned before. I mean, that place was spotless! We were considering not leaving because it was so clean (only in a joking way, of course). We decided to use a tow dolly to bring the car along so that we could talk with one another and maybe have a more relaxing ride, so the last thing I did on Thursday evening was attempt to attach the car to the dolly. I pulled it onto the thing and then went to attach it so it wouldn’t come off as soon as I started to drive away. Well, as it turned out, one of the harness ratchet things was broken (we rented it that way…how nice!). I called U-Haul and, after being on hold for almost a half hour (oh how I am glad it wasn’t a REAL emergency!) I got in touch with someone who would send someone out to fix it in the morning.

We had planned to leave around 9:30-10am on Friday, so when I got the call from the U-Haul repair lady at 8:15 saying the guy would be there in an hour, I was elated. Unfortunately, the “one hour” wait turned into a three hour nightmare (“nightmare” only in that I was considering ways of returning the tow dolly and telling them I would never use their services again). I was upset. The guy finally got there at 11:30 and had it fixed in about 10 minutes. We left shortly after that.

If you’ve never driven through western Maryland or West Virginia, I’m going to try and paint a picture for you. You drive along in your 17” x 11” truck towing a Honda Civic in a just-repaired tow dolly through hills covered with huge trees at a mind-blowing 65 MPH (that’s the speed limit). Now, by “hills” I mean “something that would take all day to hike up to the top of…so be glad you’re driving that huge truck” and not “oh look! It’s a molehill!” Add on top of that the fact that it was POURING rain pretty much the whole way through…and you get an idea of what it was like – 45 MPH up the “hill” and 80 MPH down (it all averages out). Pennsylvania…well, we went through there also, but it was nothing to write home about.

We made it to Ohio and spent the evening with groovy’s sister (Doctor) and her folks. We had a great time just chatting and looking through Columbus (we got to see that we weren’t important enough to eat at Carrabas…that rocks!). That night, I slept like a rock. We woke up on Saturday morning and began the long leg of our trip…a 12 hour journey that would take us through Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Missouri and into Kansas. We stopped in Indianapolis to have “breakfast” with Mr. and Ms. Postal, who groovy used to work with. The rest of that leg (although long) was rather nice. We arrived in Manhattan, Kansas around 8pm.

After eating supper with my mom, sisters, niece, grandmother and various other family members, I got to talk with one of my uncles (Cowboy) who used to live in North Dakota. He was saying that if we had room, he would be moving with us (unfortunately, he would have had to ride on top of the truck…so I guess it’s good for him that we didn’t have room). We were all converging on St George, Kansas (don’t bother looking for it on a map…I don’t think that you’ll find it) to celebrate my grandmother’s 80th birthday on Sunday. It was a surprise, but I don’t think she was that surprised after seeing the majority of her family in the same location. The birthday went off well, though and it was great to be able to chat with people that I haven’t seen since I was a kid (I mean like 20 years ago in some cases). Unfortunately, groovy and I had to leave to make it to Omaha.

The trip from Manhattan, Kansas to Omaha, Nebraska was, although only 3 hours long, the hardest part of the trip. Remember that truck that you imagined you were in earlier? Well, imagine driving that truck through 30-40 MPH winds that were coming from your side. Yeah…I was a big truck-sail driving (or tacking?) through the Nebraska plains…doing my best to keep all of our belongings (as well as ourselves) on the road and in one piece. I fought the truck the whole way. It was scary. At one point, I thought for sure that we were going over…but somehow the truck remained on the road (there were inches…literally…to spare). Sunday ended with us eating at Perkins for supper in Omaha, Nebraska.