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| Texas plates!! |
Monday, August 30, 2010
Adventures in Eating: Ruby's BBQ
The pictures don't even begin to do this place justice. YUM.
http://rubysbbq.com/
Adventures in Eating: Lucile's
No joke, Katie and I split the chicken fried steak. The above pictures depict a half portion; it was huge and delicious (as were the fried green tomatoes that we devoured before thinking to take a picture)!
http://www.lucilesfortworth.com/
4700 Camp Bowie Blvd
Fort Worth, TX 76107
Adventures in Eating: Welcome to Texas!
Breakfast at one of the many hotels we stayed at on our way to Austin!
California to Texas: The Kitties
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| Above is quite possibly one of the funniest Titus pictures I've ever seen! |
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| Plus, here's a few photos of Titus getting ready for the Lone Star State! Gotta love that cat. |
California to Texas: An Odyssey (Part 5)
After getting some much needed rest, we woke up early and got ready to get on the road again. Our hotel room that night was in one of "those" hotels, where you know that you don't want to know how long it's been since the room was really cleaned. With that thought on our minds, we felt no need to linger and quickly got on the road!
We knew from the start that today would be a busy day. We had a rehearsal dinner to get to that evening, shopping to do (the clothes Katie and I had planned to wear that evening were still packed in the truck!), and several hundred more miles left to drive. Because I take the longest to get ready, I had to get up and shower first while Katie and Melinda got a few extra minutes of rest. No big deal, I thought, since I would get to rest in the car when Katie took the first driving shift. I'm sure that by now you know just about exactly where this story is going to go: Katie forgot to transfer her contacts from one bag to another when we ditched most of our luggage in the U-Haul and didn't have a spare pair of glasses with her (those were lost while she vacationed in Costa Rica), so yours truly would be stuck driving the entire rest of the way to Austin. No rest for the weary is right!
Luckily, aside from that hitch the day actually went reasonably well. I powered through the drive, making the most of the 80 mph stretches of freeway, while Katie did her best to blindly direct me where to go and to work with her parents (who were already in Austin for the wedding) to make sure that she had clothes and contacts, and that we all would have a hotel room for the weekend. My sister had the important job of photographing our journey.
We arrived in Austin around 3:00 pm, where we immediately stopped by Target so I could pick up the additional things I needed for my outfit that evening, and then ventured on to The Driskill Hotel, the luxurious five-star hotel where we would be staying for the weekend. (It was also where the wedding would be taking place on Saturday, so most of Katie's family was also staying there). Definitely a huge step up from what we had referred to as the "semen hotel" from the night before! It wasn't long before we were quickly throwing on our party attire and getting ready for the evening's festivities.
Friday night was the rehearsal dinner at The Shoreline grill. Melinda knew from the start of our trip that Katie and I would be attending the rehearsal dinner and the wedding without her, but she is the adventurous type and was happy going off on her own to explore the city. As it turned out, however, one of the families in town for the rehearsal dinner/wedding who needed a babysitter and had planned to use one provided by The Driskill, was in a bind because The Driskill did not have enough babysitters on hand that evening. Since Melinda was nice enough to agree to help babysit the two boys, she was also able to come with us to the rehearsal dinner. This was especially cool for Melinda because she got to meet all of Katie's awesome family! After everything we had gone through over the past few days, it was completely surreal to be in a beautiful restaurant, wearing fancy clothes, and celebrating such a special occasion with Katie's family. I felt incredibly honored to be included and I was so happy that we had made it to Austin in the nick of time!
Saturday morning came all too quickly. Our bodies wanted us to sleep in, but nonetheless we had more important plans -- apartment hunting! Melinda initially debated about whether or not to come with us or whether to get some much-needed R&R at the hotel, but after a delicious breakfast at The Driskill, she decided that she had enough energy to tag along.
We met with an agent named Monica from Urban Squared Realty who was scheduled to show us several apartments in the Austin area. Neither Katie or I had ever used an apartment locater and our expectations about how useful she would be were low, especially given that few things had worked out very so far on this trip, but we were willing to give it a try. As it turned out, however, Monica was fantastic! Because she had lived in Austin since she was seven years old, Monica was able to give us what amounted to a driving tour of the city as we went from apartment to apartment. She pointed out restaurants, bars, farmers markets, stores, and other places of interest along the way and also helped give us the details about the character of each neighborhood we were considering. We definitely could have gone apartment hunting on our own, but it would have taken much longer and we would have gotten lost a lot! Plus, we've now visited several of the restaurants she pointed out and each one lived up to her top-billing.
We visited four apartments and the fourth one was a charm. The neighborhood was exactly what we were looking for -- vibrant and full of life, with a bunch of cute places to eat, drink and shop. It is three miles outside of downtown in the "South Lamar" area (otherwise known as "SoLa" if you are one of the cool kids). The apartment itself is a two bedroom, one bathroom unit on the second floor. It's nothing that amazing, but it's clean, the layout is perfect, there is parking aplenty, and the location-to-price-ratio can't be beat!
With our biggest mission (finding somewhere to live) accomplished, the rest of the weekend seemed to fly by. Sunday morning we again woke up earlier than was advisable given our level of exhaustion -- but who can argue against a farewell breakfast at an Austin institution: the Kerbey Lane Cafe?
After breakfast, we headed over to the Austin Airport to drop off Melinda. It was so sad to see her go! However, the fact that she was leaving was slightly overshadowed by the fact that Katie managed to lean heavily on her exhaust pipe while the car was running and give herself a half-moon shaped burn on her shin! Oops. Without further injury, we managed to get checked out of The Driskill and checked into our temporary (cheeper) hotel in the suburbs (our new apartment wouldn't be ready until later that week). There we got the kitties set up, ate some Tex Mex, and quickly called it a night. As I drifted off to sleep that evening it started to sink in: I was actually a full-fledged resident of the State of Texas . . !
We knew from the start that today would be a busy day. We had a rehearsal dinner to get to that evening, shopping to do (the clothes Katie and I had planned to wear that evening were still packed in the truck!), and several hundred more miles left to drive. Because I take the longest to get ready, I had to get up and shower first while Katie and Melinda got a few extra minutes of rest. No big deal, I thought, since I would get to rest in the car when Katie took the first driving shift. I'm sure that by now you know just about exactly where this story is going to go: Katie forgot to transfer her contacts from one bag to another when we ditched most of our luggage in the U-Haul and didn't have a spare pair of glasses with her (those were lost while she vacationed in Costa Rica), so yours truly would be stuck driving the entire rest of the way to Austin. No rest for the weary is right!
Luckily, aside from that hitch the day actually went reasonably well. I powered through the drive, making the most of the 80 mph stretches of freeway, while Katie did her best to blindly direct me where to go and to work with her parents (who were already in Austin for the wedding) to make sure that she had clothes and contacts, and that we all would have a hotel room for the weekend. My sister had the important job of photographing our journey.
We arrived in Austin around 3:00 pm, where we immediately stopped by Target so I could pick up the additional things I needed for my outfit that evening, and then ventured on to The Driskill Hotel, the luxurious five-star hotel where we would be staying for the weekend. (It was also where the wedding would be taking place on Saturday, so most of Katie's family was also staying there). Definitely a huge step up from what we had referred to as the "semen hotel" from the night before! It wasn't long before we were quickly throwing on our party attire and getting ready for the evening's festivities.
Friday night was the rehearsal dinner at The Shoreline grill. Melinda knew from the start of our trip that Katie and I would be attending the rehearsal dinner and the wedding without her, but she is the adventurous type and was happy going off on her own to explore the city. As it turned out, however, one of the families in town for the rehearsal dinner/wedding who needed a babysitter and had planned to use one provided by The Driskill, was in a bind because The Driskill did not have enough babysitters on hand that evening. Since Melinda was nice enough to agree to help babysit the two boys, she was also able to come with us to the rehearsal dinner. This was especially cool for Melinda because she got to meet all of Katie's awesome family! After everything we had gone through over the past few days, it was completely surreal to be in a beautiful restaurant, wearing fancy clothes, and celebrating such a special occasion with Katie's family. I felt incredibly honored to be included and I was so happy that we had made it to Austin in the nick of time!
Saturday morning came all too quickly. Our bodies wanted us to sleep in, but nonetheless we had more important plans -- apartment hunting! Melinda initially debated about whether or not to come with us or whether to get some much-needed R&R at the hotel, but after a delicious breakfast at The Driskill, she decided that she had enough energy to tag along.
We met with an agent named Monica from Urban Squared Realty who was scheduled to show us several apartments in the Austin area. Neither Katie or I had ever used an apartment locater and our expectations about how useful she would be were low, especially given that few things had worked out very so far on this trip, but we were willing to give it a try. As it turned out, however, Monica was fantastic! Because she had lived in Austin since she was seven years old, Monica was able to give us what amounted to a driving tour of the city as we went from apartment to apartment. She pointed out restaurants, bars, farmers markets, stores, and other places of interest along the way and also helped give us the details about the character of each neighborhood we were considering. We definitely could have gone apartment hunting on our own, but it would have taken much longer and we would have gotten lost a lot! Plus, we've now visited several of the restaurants she pointed out and each one lived up to her top-billing.
We visited four apartments and the fourth one was a charm. The neighborhood was exactly what we were looking for -- vibrant and full of life, with a bunch of cute places to eat, drink and shop. It is three miles outside of downtown in the "South Lamar" area (otherwise known as "SoLa" if you are one of the cool kids). The apartment itself is a two bedroom, one bathroom unit on the second floor. It's nothing that amazing, but it's clean, the layout is perfect, there is parking aplenty, and the location-to-price-ratio can't be beat!
With our biggest mission (finding somewhere to live) accomplished, the rest of the weekend seemed to fly by. Sunday morning we again woke up earlier than was advisable given our level of exhaustion -- but who can argue against a farewell breakfast at an Austin institution: the Kerbey Lane Cafe?
After breakfast, we headed over to the Austin Airport to drop off Melinda. It was so sad to see her go! However, the fact that she was leaving was slightly overshadowed by the fact that Katie managed to lean heavily on her exhaust pipe while the car was running and give herself a half-moon shaped burn on her shin! Oops. Without further injury, we managed to get checked out of The Driskill and checked into our temporary (cheeper) hotel in the suburbs (our new apartment wouldn't be ready until later that week). There we got the kitties set up, ate some Tex Mex, and quickly called it a night. As I drifted off to sleep that evening it started to sink in: I was actually a full-fledged resident of the State of Texas . . !
Tuesday, August 17, 2010
California to Texas: An Odyssey (Part 4)
Tomorrow was a new day. But I must warn you from the outset, it was unfortunately not destined to be better than the day before. In fact, it was markedly worse.
The day started innocently enough. We ate a quick breakfast at the hotel (I will post pictures shortly), packed ourselves up, and hit the road -- hoping to finally get a full days worth of driving in to ensure that we would make it to Austin by Thursday (at this point, we had given up on the plan of making it there by Wednesday). As you might remember, Katie's cousin was getting married in Austin on Saturday evening and the rehearsal dinner was set for Friday night, so we wanted to ensure that we would arrive in Austin with plenty of time to get settled before the festivities began. Frankly, that just didn't seem like too much to ask for!
We got onto the 10 and things were going well. After an hour we passed Phoenix and were still going strong. Could the truck really be okay, we wondered. Next we were approaching Tucson -- a milestone in our journey because we were nearing the point at which we had exactly 1,000 miles left until we reached Austin. In fact, Melinda had instructed me to call her once the GPS said we had 999 miles left to go. Literally exactly at the moment the GPS read 999, the U-Haul broke yet again and we found ourselves dodging semis that were going full speed down the interstate in order to get over to the shoulder and then to the offramp safely. We were now stranded at the Kolb Road exit just past Tucson, Arizona. In the distance we could see a Chevron station, aside from that, we were pretty much surrounded by desert. Yet again, we had to take turns braving the 110+ degree mid-day desert heat because the Mini could only hold two at a time. On the bright side: there were no flies here.
After a bunch of arguing with U-Haul, we finally got them to agree to send out a tow truck instead of a mechanic so that we could simply move our belongings from one truck to the other and be on our merry way. Given that a mechanic had already pronounced the truck as fine the past evening, it seemed unnecessary to go through the same song and dance the next day -- when obviously the truck had some kind of serious problem. Plus, the previous day's ordeal had taken a good six hours to resolve (without them having to do any actual work on the truck), and we knew that we didn't have that kind of time to spare if we were to have any chance at making the rehearsal dinner and wedding.
We waited for over an hour for the tow truck to arrive. When he finally got there, he was nice enough and he quickly got to work getting the truck and trailer loaded onto his tow truck. Among the many observations he made about our situation were two especially noteworthy comments: First he advised us that the wheel bearings (?) looked like they were about to fall off any minute. Essentially, at any minute the truck could have fallen apart on us. (Awesome) And then he commented several times about the weight of the load our truck was carrying. Apparently it might have been the most stuffed-full-ridiculously-heavy 17-foot truck he had ever had to tow. (Not shocking)
Throughout almost all of this ordeal poor Katie had been braving the heat so that my sister and I could hang out in the air conditioned car. She eventually figured out that it was marginally cooler if she stood in the shade of the trailer, but still it was a miserable experience. As always, my sister was totally a trooper and took the opportunity to continue reading about Buddhism; definitely an apt reading choice for this trip.
We eventually reached the Tucson U-Haul store where we were given a choice of either (1) getting $200 off our U-Haul rental price and reloading the truck ourselves, or (2) being supplied with a team of movers to transfer everything from one truck to the other. Given that we couldn't physically do the job ourselves the first time, this choice seemed like a no-brainer; we went with the movers.
I would like to tell you that the U-Haul movers quickly loaded up our truck and we went on with our trip, but sadly that was not the case. Unfortunately the U-Haul manager had used the term "movers" a little (lot) too broadly. A more accurate statement about what we would be getting would have been something along the lines of: "three random guys who have never loaded a moving truck before." Furthermore, of those three random guys, two of them spoke no English. The third did speak English and tried to help translate, but he looked to be about 16 years old. The three guys were accompanied by their cousin (the only one of the four to have ever packed a moving truck before) who had refused to do the job himself unless he could get paid in cash because "it would interfere with his unemployment payments," but who nonetheless stuck around and alternated between attempting to help (which usually resulted in something of ours getting broken, such as when he accidentally kicked a box containing a glass lampshade) and attempting to crack jokes about our situation. I'm not sure which was worse.
For hours these guys aimlessly wandered around pulling our belongings out of the truck and onto the hot Arizona pavement without an apparent plan for how they were going to successfully load our new truck. I did my best to give them instructions about how they might tightly load our belongings without leaving giant holes for things to move around and get damaged, but between their extreme apathy and the language barrier, somehow my instructions were not properly conveyed. Eventually Katie and I had to physically get into the truck and start rearranging things ourselves. For example, Katie plugged up one hole with THREE (yes, three) 8x10 foot rolled up rugs.
For several reasons, this afternoon (and evening) marks the definite low point of our trip. First, as everything was being unloaded from truck #1, we were able to see all the damage that our original movers had caused to our belongings. Nearly every piece of furniture was seriously scratched. Our microwave door had been ripped off. Our couches were filthy. Our mattress was black on one side. Boxes and tubs were smashed or had fallen over. It was pretty much a nightmare.
Second, the process of transferring from one truck to another ultimately took over seven hours. Meaning, Katie and I were in 110+ degree heat doing physical labor for over seven hours that afternoon. It was an extremely draining experience, to say the least. (Melinda cat-sat inside the U-Haul store).
Third, it became readily apparent that we could not both drive the truck and make it to the rehearsal dinner/wedding in time (especially given #2). The manager of the Tucson U-Haul store represented that it might be possible to get the cost of hiring a driver reimbursed to us given the number of problems we had experienced thus far, which would allow us pile into the Mini and make it to Austin in time. Thinking that this would be a great solution, Katie and Melinda spent the next several hours on the phone with every conceivable manager/clerk/etc. trying to get a straight answer about whether or not this could be done. At every step of the way, we were told that we would have to front the money for all expenses incurred because of our U-Haul problems and that once we turned in the truck, we could try to make a claim for reimbursement. Obviously, this answer was completely unsatisfactory because it put us in the position of having to spend money we didn't have (and that we only had to spend because their equipment broke) in the hopes that U-Haul would later reimburse us -- without any guarantee or commitment that they would! Great business model . . .
Finally, what was already a horrible day culminated with the following events:
The U-Haul store closed before the job was even two-thirds of the way done. The U-Haul employee had refused to stick around until the truck was done being loaded, but did promise us that lights would turn on when it got dark so that we could see what we were doing. Well, I'm sure by now you know where this goes -- no lights ever turned on. On top of that, when the store closed Katie had to quickly load the cats into the Mini and check into a local hotel because it was still 100+ degrees outside, which meant that Melinda and I were left to deal with the incompetent "movers" alone.
The "movers" left before the job was done. Despite the fact that U-Haul had given us a 26-foot replacement truck (far bigger than we needed), the "mover's" incompetence at packing that truck had resulted in the truck being only half full (the top half was empty) yet still running out of space. As it became obvious that the items that were left on the pavement would not fit into the space left in the truck, the "movers" became less and less motivated to do a good job. Essentially they wanted to just throw everything into the truck and go on their way, which would have resulted in even more injuries to our belongings. Then, after making several strong recommendations that we should duct tape our expensive dining room chairs to the side of the truck (um, not happening) things came to a standstill. Katie was on her way back from the hotel and we asked the "movers" to stop working for a few minutes (not that they were really working) until she returned. They did stop, but shortly afterwards we heard a car door slam and a car drive away. Yes, they left. So, there we were -- young females alone in a completely dark U-Haul parking lot in what seemed like a seedy area of town (complete with police helicopters flying overhead).
We had to leave even more of our belongings behind. Katie, Melinda and I worked on packing the rest of the truck and using rope to tie loose items into place for the next hour or so. We secured everything as best we could and then had to just call it a day. We ultimately had to leave behind three floor lamps at the Tucson U-Haul store parking lot. Not a huge deal since two were incredibly scratched from the original mover's incompetence and the third had been broken by the "movers," but it was yet another casualty on the already too long list. At this point though we were dehydrated and starving since we hadn't really eaten since breakfast so we just had to call it a night.
After leaving the U-Haul store, we immediately headed back to our hotel where we consoled the kitties and ordered room service in a successful attempt to cheer ourselves up. We even got (and used) three free drink tokens from a really nice bell hop who heard our story and took pity on us!! Were things starting to look up?
Once we were fed and showered and slowly on our way towards becoming human again, Katie, Melinda, and I stopped to assess our situation. Between the truck (can't go very fast) and the cats (can't handle being stuck in the car for too long), it was obvious we could not make it to Austin in time for the rehearsal dinner/wedding unless we hired someone to drive the truck for us. Even more importantly, however, it was obvious that we were liable to lose it completely if we had to deal with one more truck-related problem. After getting the go-ahead from our respective wonderful parents, we set out to hire someone to drive our truck from Tucson to Austin. Ultimately we settled on "Happy Movers" -- who actually turned out to be just that. We called them at 7:30 am the next day, and by 9:00 am they had picked up our keys so we could hit the road. With everything bad that had happened up to this point, it was kind of shocking to have something actually work out!
So, without further ado, the three of us, plus the two cats (who were now stuck in a cage about half the size of their original space), and four laptop bags, one box of delicate electronic stuff we didn't want in the hot truck, Melinda's suitcase and garment bag, Katie's and my duffle bag of clothes and our tub of toiletries, the "snack bag," and the cat's giant bag of food, their water bowls, and a small litter box all piled into the Mini and hit the road Austin-bound. It was even surprisingly comfortable! Now that we were all together and things seemed to be going well, we were all much happier, though the events of the past few days had taken their toll on us, as was evidenced by the fact that we superstitiously "knocked on my head" about every ten minutes!
While driving (yes, we actually were not at a standstill anymore!) we kept ourselves entertained with cloud shapes, funny/interesting billboards and road signs, GRE vocabulary words, and by taking about 1,000 pictures of the scenery.
I am pretty sure that the moment when we saw the Welcome to Texas sign was one of the happiest moments of the trip for all of us! It was also entertaining to see that we were so close to the Mexico border that our cell phones thought we were out of the country!
We made it all the way from Tucson, Arizona to Fort Stockton, Texas before stopping for the night. A HUGE improvement over the past two days!
Stay tuned, one more to come . . .
The day started innocently enough. We ate a quick breakfast at the hotel (I will post pictures shortly), packed ourselves up, and hit the road -- hoping to finally get a full days worth of driving in to ensure that we would make it to Austin by Thursday (at this point, we had given up on the plan of making it there by Wednesday). As you might remember, Katie's cousin was getting married in Austin on Saturday evening and the rehearsal dinner was set for Friday night, so we wanted to ensure that we would arrive in Austin with plenty of time to get settled before the festivities began. Frankly, that just didn't seem like too much to ask for!
We got onto the 10 and things were going well. After an hour we passed Phoenix and were still going strong. Could the truck really be okay, we wondered. Next we were approaching Tucson -- a milestone in our journey because we were nearing the point at which we had exactly 1,000 miles left until we reached Austin. In fact, Melinda had instructed me to call her once the GPS said we had 999 miles left to go. Literally exactly at the moment the GPS read 999, the U-Haul broke yet again and we found ourselves dodging semis that were going full speed down the interstate in order to get over to the shoulder and then to the offramp safely. We were now stranded at the Kolb Road exit just past Tucson, Arizona. In the distance we could see a Chevron station, aside from that, we were pretty much surrounded by desert. Yet again, we had to take turns braving the 110+ degree mid-day desert heat because the Mini could only hold two at a time. On the bright side: there were no flies here.
After a bunch of arguing with U-Haul, we finally got them to agree to send out a tow truck instead of a mechanic so that we could simply move our belongings from one truck to the other and be on our merry way. Given that a mechanic had already pronounced the truck as fine the past evening, it seemed unnecessary to go through the same song and dance the next day -- when obviously the truck had some kind of serious problem. Plus, the previous day's ordeal had taken a good six hours to resolve (without them having to do any actual work on the truck), and we knew that we didn't have that kind of time to spare if we were to have any chance at making the rehearsal dinner and wedding.
We waited for over an hour for the tow truck to arrive. When he finally got there, he was nice enough and he quickly got to work getting the truck and trailer loaded onto his tow truck. Among the many observations he made about our situation were two especially noteworthy comments: First he advised us that the wheel bearings (?) looked like they were about to fall off any minute. Essentially, at any minute the truck could have fallen apart on us. (Awesome) And then he commented several times about the weight of the load our truck was carrying. Apparently it might have been the most stuffed-full-ridiculously-heavy 17-foot truck he had ever had to tow. (Not shocking)
Throughout almost all of this ordeal poor Katie had been braving the heat so that my sister and I could hang out in the air conditioned car. She eventually figured out that it was marginally cooler if she stood in the shade of the trailer, but still it was a miserable experience. As always, my sister was totally a trooper and took the opportunity to continue reading about Buddhism; definitely an apt reading choice for this trip.
We eventually reached the Tucson U-Haul store where we were given a choice of either (1) getting $200 off our U-Haul rental price and reloading the truck ourselves, or (2) being supplied with a team of movers to transfer everything from one truck to the other. Given that we couldn't physically do the job ourselves the first time, this choice seemed like a no-brainer; we went with the movers.
I would like to tell you that the U-Haul movers quickly loaded up our truck and we went on with our trip, but sadly that was not the case. Unfortunately the U-Haul manager had used the term "movers" a little (lot) too broadly. A more accurate statement about what we would be getting would have been something along the lines of: "three random guys who have never loaded a moving truck before." Furthermore, of those three random guys, two of them spoke no English. The third did speak English and tried to help translate, but he looked to be about 16 years old. The three guys were accompanied by their cousin (the only one of the four to have ever packed a moving truck before) who had refused to do the job himself unless he could get paid in cash because "it would interfere with his unemployment payments," but who nonetheless stuck around and alternated between attempting to help (which usually resulted in something of ours getting broken, such as when he accidentally kicked a box containing a glass lampshade) and attempting to crack jokes about our situation. I'm not sure which was worse.
For hours these guys aimlessly wandered around pulling our belongings out of the truck and onto the hot Arizona pavement without an apparent plan for how they were going to successfully load our new truck. I did my best to give them instructions about how they might tightly load our belongings without leaving giant holes for things to move around and get damaged, but between their extreme apathy and the language barrier, somehow my instructions were not properly conveyed. Eventually Katie and I had to physically get into the truck and start rearranging things ourselves. For example, Katie plugged up one hole with THREE (yes, three) 8x10 foot rolled up rugs.
For several reasons, this afternoon (and evening) marks the definite low point of our trip. First, as everything was being unloaded from truck #1, we were able to see all the damage that our original movers had caused to our belongings. Nearly every piece of furniture was seriously scratched. Our microwave door had been ripped off. Our couches were filthy. Our mattress was black on one side. Boxes and tubs were smashed or had fallen over. It was pretty much a nightmare.
Second, the process of transferring from one truck to another ultimately took over seven hours. Meaning, Katie and I were in 110+ degree heat doing physical labor for over seven hours that afternoon. It was an extremely draining experience, to say the least. (Melinda cat-sat inside the U-Haul store).
Third, it became readily apparent that we could not both drive the truck and make it to the rehearsal dinner/wedding in time (especially given #2). The manager of the Tucson U-Haul store represented that it might be possible to get the cost of hiring a driver reimbursed to us given the number of problems we had experienced thus far, which would allow us pile into the Mini and make it to Austin in time. Thinking that this would be a great solution, Katie and Melinda spent the next several hours on the phone with every conceivable manager/clerk/etc. trying to get a straight answer about whether or not this could be done. At every step of the way, we were told that we would have to front the money for all expenses incurred because of our U-Haul problems and that once we turned in the truck, we could try to make a claim for reimbursement. Obviously, this answer was completely unsatisfactory because it put us in the position of having to spend money we didn't have (and that we only had to spend because their equipment broke) in the hopes that U-Haul would later reimburse us -- without any guarantee or commitment that they would! Great business model . . .
Finally, what was already a horrible day culminated with the following events:
The U-Haul store closed before the job was even two-thirds of the way done. The U-Haul employee had refused to stick around until the truck was done being loaded, but did promise us that lights would turn on when it got dark so that we could see what we were doing. Well, I'm sure by now you know where this goes -- no lights ever turned on. On top of that, when the store closed Katie had to quickly load the cats into the Mini and check into a local hotel because it was still 100+ degrees outside, which meant that Melinda and I were left to deal with the incompetent "movers" alone.
The "movers" left before the job was done. Despite the fact that U-Haul had given us a 26-foot replacement truck (far bigger than we needed), the "mover's" incompetence at packing that truck had resulted in the truck being only half full (the top half was empty) yet still running out of space. As it became obvious that the items that were left on the pavement would not fit into the space left in the truck, the "movers" became less and less motivated to do a good job. Essentially they wanted to just throw everything into the truck and go on their way, which would have resulted in even more injuries to our belongings. Then, after making several strong recommendations that we should duct tape our expensive dining room chairs to the side of the truck (um, not happening) things came to a standstill. Katie was on her way back from the hotel and we asked the "movers" to stop working for a few minutes (not that they were really working) until she returned. They did stop, but shortly afterwards we heard a car door slam and a car drive away. Yes, they left. So, there we were -- young females alone in a completely dark U-Haul parking lot in what seemed like a seedy area of town (complete with police helicopters flying overhead).
We had to leave even more of our belongings behind. Katie, Melinda and I worked on packing the rest of the truck and using rope to tie loose items into place for the next hour or so. We secured everything as best we could and then had to just call it a day. We ultimately had to leave behind three floor lamps at the Tucson U-Haul store parking lot. Not a huge deal since two were incredibly scratched from the original mover's incompetence and the third had been broken by the "movers," but it was yet another casualty on the already too long list. At this point though we were dehydrated and starving since we hadn't really eaten since breakfast so we just had to call it a night.
Once we were fed and showered and slowly on our way towards becoming human again, Katie, Melinda, and I stopped to assess our situation. Between the truck (can't go very fast) and the cats (can't handle being stuck in the car for too long), it was obvious we could not make it to Austin in time for the rehearsal dinner/wedding unless we hired someone to drive the truck for us. Even more importantly, however, it was obvious that we were liable to lose it completely if we had to deal with one more truck-related problem. After getting the go-ahead from our respective wonderful parents, we set out to hire someone to drive our truck from Tucson to Austin. Ultimately we settled on "Happy Movers" -- who actually turned out to be just that. We called them at 7:30 am the next day, and by 9:00 am they had picked up our keys so we could hit the road. With everything bad that had happened up to this point, it was kind of shocking to have something actually work out!
So, without further ado, the three of us, plus the two cats (who were now stuck in a cage about half the size of their original space), and four laptop bags, one box of delicate electronic stuff we didn't want in the hot truck, Melinda's suitcase and garment bag, Katie's and my duffle bag of clothes and our tub of toiletries, the "snack bag," and the cat's giant bag of food, their water bowls, and a small litter box all piled into the Mini and hit the road Austin-bound. It was even surprisingly comfortable! Now that we were all together and things seemed to be going well, we were all much happier, though the events of the past few days had taken their toll on us, as was evidenced by the fact that we superstitiously "knocked on my head" about every ten minutes!
While driving (yes, we actually were not at a standstill anymore!) we kept ourselves entertained with cloud shapes, funny/interesting billboards and road signs, GRE vocabulary words, and by taking about 1,000 pictures of the scenery.
I am pretty sure that the moment when we saw the Welcome to Texas sign was one of the happiest moments of the trip for all of us! It was also entertaining to see that we were so close to the Mexico border that our cell phones thought we were out of the country!
We made it all the way from Tucson, Arizona to Fort Stockton, Texas before stopping for the night. A HUGE improvement over the past two days!
Stay tuned, one more to come . . .
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