Day one got off to a little bit of a later start than we would have hoped. Nothing major went wrong but it just seemed like every little thing we had to accomplish before we could hit the road took longer than it should have. For example, Katie and Melinda had to open up the back of the U-Haul to put a few things inside, but once they opened the back they couldn't get it closed again! (Thank you yet again Old West Moving…) It took the two of them 45 minutes to get the door almost closed. Katie then proceeds to come tell me the following: "Honey, I just want to let you know that there was a little problem with closing the U-Haul door -- but don't worry we were able to get it almost all the way closed and I rigged the lock to this belt thing so it should be fine!" Needless to say I wasn't too thrilled at the prospect of driving 1700 miles, through 3 states with our U-Haul one foot open the whole way! Luckily my dad figured out a way to get some better leverage and actually get the door all the way shut (thanks dad!).
Without too much further delay, we finally hit the road. At first things seemed to be going great. The truck was driving well, the cats were settling in, and the three of us were just happy to get started on our adventure.
We made great time through the California desert and relatively quickly reached the Arizona border. We had no idea what Arizona would have in store for us, or that it would take us three full days (instead the 2/3 of a day we had planned) to reach the New Mexico border!
About an hour outside of Phoenix, our U-Haul broke down for the first time and we had to pull over onto the shoulder of the 10 freeway. To be slowing down and pulling over to the shoulder and then to be parked on the shoulder was slightly terrifying (to say the least) since there were trucks whizzing by and causing our vehicles to shake as if each time one passed it had narrowly missed hitting our car. After sitting there for about 15 minutes, the U-Haul magically started up again as if nothing had ever been wrong. Uneasy about the prospect of breaking down again, but at the same time not wanting to wait on the shoulder any longer, we merged back onto the freeway and continued on our way with our fingers crossed for good luck.
A whole mile later, the U-Haul broke down again and we were back on the shoulder, though this time we were literally rolling downhill to the offramp and into a truck stop. On the one hand, it was a stroke of luck that we were able to make it to the truck stop at all. After all the truck stop had some shade, picnic tables, and bathrooms to use while we waited (around 2 hours) for the mechanic. But, on the other hand, the truck stop was suffering from a major fly infestation making our time there incredibly miserable. Every time we had to open the car door, at least three or four flies made their way inside. My optimist sister even said the following about the bathroom "if you can wait, you should because it's really bad in there." To make matters worse, we had the two cats in the Mini, so the entire time we were stuck there, we had to keep the car running to keep them from frying in the 110+ degree heat. Of course us humans were not quite so lucky. Indeed, there was only room for two in the Mini, so we had to take turns standing outside in the heat! Luckily we happened to have brought along the most laid-back, go-with-the-flow passenger ever and Melinda kept herself happy by pacing back and forth in the shade (so the flies would not land on her as much) while she read her book about Buddhism! Not exactly ideal, but she made the best of the situation and helped Katie and I not completely lose it.
Eventually the U-Haul mechanic arrived and pronounced the truck as "fine." Given that it had stopped working twice already, this seemed doubtful at best. But he had taken the truck apart and found nothing of concern and had even followed us for 40 miles without incident, so we were left with few options but to continue on our way. By now it was around 8:00 pm, we'd lost about 6 hours of driving time, and it seemed obvious we weren't going to make it to Las Cruces that evening. Despite this, we decided that we could drive for at least a few more hours before calling it a night. Melinda and I went off to grab some fast food for dinner and Katie went to a gas station to fill up the truck. Seemed like the efficient course of action at the time…
When Melinda and I arrived at the Circle K where Katie and the truck were located (after first going to the wrong Circle K location) we found Katie looking sheepish. The first thing she said was "I did something sorta bad…" After spending several hours out in the hot desert heat, Katie was exhausted and in her tired state, she had locked the keys inside the truck. Dejected, we ate our fast food dinner sitting on the ground in front of the Circle K Mini-mart. Well, we must have looked like a pretty pathetic bunch because a nice clerk from the store took pity on us and called up some of her friends to help us "break into" the U-Haul. A really nice family came out about 20 minutes later and the father and son worked some magic and got the U-Haul open! All was great until they started awkwardly inviting us to their decidedly not gay-friendly church so they could help us….at that point, we slipped them some money to thank them for going out of their way to help us and we quickly said our goodbyes before things went any further.
Given that it was now around 10:00 pm and all three of us were so tired that we were barely functional, we felt that it was a good idea to cut our losses and quickly check into a hotel before something worse happened! Tomorrow would be a new day…
Stay tuned, more to come!
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