Moving: Days 1 and 2

First, I want to thank Sarah who used more info from LIS753 than I remembered, and I now have a tag cloud! Yay Sarah!

And now, moving. Day 1 sucked. A lot. First, I had to drive to Ames to get my UHaul. (For those not from the Des Moines area, that's about a 45 minute drive, and there's a UHaul place about 10 minutes from my house.) After picking it up, Mom and I went over to my grandma's house and picked up a chair and ottoman. Then I had to reverse. I jackknifed the truck and car trailer. That was fun. Then I went over to Dad's and got my stuff that's been there for a couple of years. Whee! Then over to my house, with Dad arriving a few minutes later to help. After realizing that I didn't get a big enough truck (I got a 10 footer, and should've gone for a 12 footer), I decided to leave my dresser, bed, Nate's TV, and lots of my stuff at home. How fun. We're just going to buy a bed, probably on Saturday. Then came the REALLY fun part: getting my car up onto the trailer. First I almost castrated my dad because the trailer wasn't completely attached to the truck. Now, most people at this point would reverse. Not us. That didn't occur to my mom, my dad, or me. So I kept going. And then the trailer ripped part of my bumper. So part of my front bumper is hanging off my car. I went inside to call the UHaul place by my house to see if they have anyone who can come help us or if they could help us if I drove over there. No. I have to call the place I rented it from. Only by now I'm crying and unable to talk on the phone. I gave the phone to my dad, who had tightened the trailer hitch. The guy at the UHaul place told my dad that I need to file a claim when I drop the truck off and UHaul will pay for my car to get fixed. So that's nice. I got the cats into the cab of the truck and then hugged my parents goodbye and cried. And off I went to Bettendorf to pick up Jason and his stuff. I got there about 8:30 and dropped Matt and Yzma off at my grandparents' house for the night. At about 10:45 we finished loading the truck and Jason, his mom, and I went inside and I had a bite. Then Jason took me back to my grandparents' where I spent the night.

Day 2, some facts:
number of states driven in: 4
number of counties named Scott: 3
amount Erika spent on gas: $229.57
number of cats hiding behind the bed in the hotel: 1

Jason came over to pick me up at 6:30 am, and we went to his house and put a few more items into his car. I turned on the truck at 7:33, and we got on the road shortly after that. Despite driving between 45 and 50 all day long (stupid auto trailer!) I think we made good time. We got into Indiana a little before 1 after spending what felt like a month in Illinois, aka The State That Never Ends. We stopped a couple of times for gas and once for lunch. We got into our hotel in Lexington, Kentucky, a little after 9 (8 central time), for a total of 13 hours drive time. I'm now comfortable driving the UHaul and am thinking of a new career as a UHaul driver. I listened to a lot of NPR today and did a lot of station surfing. I rocked out to Metallica, Survivor, and Foghat. We drove through a lot of construction, which flipped me out. Especially when I saw a sign saying "road narrows". Great, because I don't take up enough of the road as it is. Now we're in our hotel room (that I actually reserved for tomorrow night--oops!) watching The Rundown. We ordered Pizza Hut for dinner. I'm trying to figure out how to get Matt out from behind the bed. It's a really small space and I have no idea how he got in there; I tried to pull him out with no luck.

I have a couple of pictures, and some from the Fair on Sunday. But, on Day 1, I realized that I left my computer in my room. And my clothes I'd pulled out for this week. Super. Once I know my address, my wonderful mommy is going to send them to me. I'll post again tomorrow about Day 2.