Our epic move story

Note: this was written in the wee hours of last Sunday morning...

It’s one in the morning and I can’t sleep. It’s our first night in our new place in Mammoth Lakes. We’ve just experienced the most stressful set of days that I think I’ve had yet.
Brian had told me not to worry about much of the packing up, loading the moving truck, and cleaning up our house. I was teaching summer school, and he was home with Jack, and so he took that responsibility. However, like most of us do, he procrastinated, and we both ended up scrambling at the last minute to get everything done. He’d reserved a 26-foot truck from U-Haul for pickup on Wednesday morning, but there was some kind of confusion, and he didn’t actually get the truck until that evening. What’s more, as he was driving the truck home, the brake light came on, and the U-Haul place was already closed, so he had to wait until morning to find out what he needed to do about it. After someone came to fix the truck, he was able to begin loading... a day late.
As we began to fill up the truck, we noticed that we had an awful lot more stuff than there was room left in the truck. So we had to call and reserve a 6-by-12 trailer to put on the back of the van. We have too much stuff! Three years of living in that house, and I think we’ve accumulated twice as much as we had before.
So, I was busy trying to finish up with summer school, grading essays and making sure students stayed in line through the very last day. And then I’d come home and pack, clean, and grumble that Brian’d told me this was HIS job. Jack, by the way, loved “helping” us load the truck. He especially liked walking up and down... and up and down... the ramp, and sliding the furniture dolly all over the driveway.
Our original plan was for Brian to leave with the truck on Thursday afternoon so he could get a head start unpacking at our new place. I’d stay that night, to make sure Jack got a good night’s sleep, and then depart Friday morning in the van. But Friday morning came, and we were both still up to our ears in packing... not to mention cleaning. Poor Brian stayed up late on Thursday to try and finish everything while Jack and I slept at the Best Western. We had my dad make us a hotel reservation in Mammoth Lakes for Friday night, but around 5:30, we realized that Yosemite, which we had to drive through, might not be open late... and did we really want to traverse those unfamiliar roads at nighttime? So my dad canceled the reservation (but didn’t get his money refunded, I sadly found out later). We left about 6:00, and stayed in Sonora instead.
Now, imagine our caravan: a 26-foot truck with our Volkswagen Bug on a dolly, and our minivan towing a trailer. Plus, we had Jack, a dog, and two cats in a small kennel to deal with. Lucky me, I got stuck with the animals in the minivan. Before Casey, and long before Jack, the cats used to travel with us everywhere. But now they stay at home when we travel, and so they’re not too used to driving anymore. About halfway to Sonora, I started smelling this stench. Sure enough, upon arrival in Sonora, I discovered a couple huge glops of cat poo in the kennel. And parking? It was a nightmare. Luckily, the hotel in Sonora had a back parking lot that all the fire crews park in, and Brian easily pulled the truck in there. But the next morning, someone had blocked his way at the other end of the lot, so he spend about half an hour maneuvering the truck back out of there.
I am not a good sleeper anyway, and summer school put me right back into my insomnia pattern: I wake up in the middle of the night, my mind racing, and can’t go back to sleep. This pattern intensified as the move grew closer, so not only was I stressed out, I was also not sleeping much past 1:30 a.m. Sleeping in hotels made it worse, as did sleeping in the same bed as Jack in Sonora (Brian got the twin bed). In spite of not having slept well, I was determined to stay positive on Saturday as we left for our four-hour drive. But we encountered some mighty twisty roads through Yosemite. Brian, speaking over a walkie-talkie, kept reminding me that the trailer is wider than the van, so I needed to be especially careful to stay in the center of my lane. About halfway through the park, however, I heard a loud bang and what sounded like a huge gush of water. I didn’t know what it was, so I let the guy behind me pass so Brian could take a look. “Yeah, you have a flat,” he said over the walkie-talkie.
It took awhile before we could pull over—not a lot of turnouts in that area. When my eyes saw the flat tire on the trailer, my heart sunk. (Some readers may recall that, when Val and I were moving to New Mexico in 2000, we experienced a blowout on the U-Haul trailer near Raton, N.M. This was pre-cell phones, at least for us, and so we were stuck for awhile on the side of the road before a nice man pulled over and asked if we needed help.) The thing with U-Hauls is, there’s no spare tire with the vehicle. A U-Haul mechanic has to come and fix it.
And, of course, we had no cell phone reception in that area of Yosemite. So we left the dog and cats in the van, the windows cracked open. Jack and I piled into the truck, and we set off to find a rest area with a payphone, or with better cell reception. After about ten minutes, Brian realized we should’ve gone the other way, since we knew where there was a rest area. It took us another ten minutes or so to find a place where he was able to turn the huge truck around, and then we headed back, past the van, to find a payphone.
U-Haul told us that they had a mechanic in Manteca (which, for all you non-Californians, is just about exactly where we’d started our journey), and that he could be there in a couple hours. Brian and I made the executive decision to not sit around and wait for him, but to instead head to Mammoth Lakes (about an hour-and-a-half away) so we could at least drop off the truck. We taped a note to the van so park officials wouldn’t tow it, and went on our way.
Poor Jack—he never sleeps in the car. But with all the action in the Marshall household, he hasn’t been sleeping well either, and took three naps in the car yesterday. I myself snuck in a little catnap, too, as we headed for our new home.
I was so excited to see our new place. Brian had only seen it from the outside, and I’d never seen it at all, but I told myself, we’re paying $1275 a month in rent... it can’t be that bad, right? Well... it was that bad, and then some. The place looks like it’s been inhabited by a bunch of college-age ski bums. First of all, it came furnished, which we weren’t aware of, and the furniture is horrible. The kitchen floor is cracked and crumbling, and there are drawers and doors missing, and one of the countertops fell apart. The living room carpet is quite stained and gross-looking. There are these snowboarding posters and stickers up all over. (Really, aren’t you supposed to stop decorating doors with stickers after the age of eight?) The big window in the living room has no shade or curtain, so anyone and everyone can look in on us. The bedrooms are an add-on, and those ceilings aren’t finished. There is a fluorescent light in the master bedroom—a fluorescent light! And there are several holes in the walls.
We at first thought we could live with this. It’s only for three months, we told ourselves... but several hours later, we’d changed our minds. (Brian didn’t sign a least yet, so we’re hoping to get out of it. Of course, we still have a packed truck and trailer out in the front yard, with nowhere to put any of it. We didn’t even want to stay the night tonight, and Brian checked at a couple hotels, but there is some kind of music festival going on at Mammoth Mountain, and every hotel room was booked, he was told.)
So, we drove the Bug back to our abandoned van, trailer, and pets. The U-Haul guy had a tough time finding it, but by the time we got back—five hours later—there was a fresh tire on the trailer. As we pulled up next to it, Brian wondered aloud about the rocks underneath the van. The “rocks” turned out to be our cats, who had both snuck out of the van through the back windows! Who knows how long they were out, and if they’d wandered onto the highway or into the woods? We’re just glad they stayed close to the van.
But wait... our adventure wasn’t over yet! Outside of Yosemite is a steep grade that winds its way down to Lee Vining. About three or four miles into the hill, I noticed the van, which Brian was driving in front of me, had started smoking. All that extra pressure the trailer had put on the van was doing a number on its brakes. We stopped for about fifteen minutes to let the brakes cool. A nice fire crew stopped and made sure we were O.K. Then, Brian put the van in first gear for the rest of the way down.
We didn’t get back “home” until after eight. What a day! So many things to do next: thus, my insomnia. I can’t find my Tylenol PM, but that hasn’t seemed to help much lately, anyway. Tomorrow, we will try out Mammoth Lakes Community Church, and then try to unload the truck and trailer. All our stuff is going into storage for now. Brian said there’s a couple other places for rent in the neighborhood. If those other places are just as horrible as this one is... I honestly don’t know what we’ll do!