Blowing Up My Life Part 3

In which the literal wheels come off.

So, now we’re moving. After closing on the Richmond house we had less than a week to drive from central Virginia to western Oregon, roughly 2,900 miles. We were driving Fred’s work truck with the cats in a long kennel on the back seat and a U-Haul trailer for the stuff we’d need immediately or didn’t want to put on the moving truck. Our furniture would arrive a week or so after we did, so the trailer was necessary. My little Honda was getting a ride cross-country on a car-carrier truck and would also arrive several days after we did.

I’m just going to say this right now: traveling with two cats will really ruin a trip. I can’t tell you how many well-meaning people suggested we stop here or there along the way to see something cool or go for a bike ride. Not only did we not have time to stop for fun, we literally could not leave the truck unattended, ever.

On Tuesday, April 12th, the moving truck loaded up our stuff and left. Then my car was picked up. Then my friend Kate brought sandwiches over and we ate lunch in the carport because there was nowhere left to sit. After lunch, I said goodbye to Kate, our neighbors, and our sweet house forever and hit the road.

We made it to West Virginia before it happened. We were driving on the highway when Fred looked in the mirror said “OH SHIT” and immediately pulled over. I watched in disbelief as a wheel FLEW passed my window, bounced into the roadside wilderness and disappeared.

“Was that…OUR WHEEL?”

Yes, yes it was. Or rather, it was fucking U-Haul’s trailer wheel which had loose lug nuts so all of the bolts sheared off WHILE ON THE HIGHWAY. The other wheel was about to go as well. We were stranded by the side of the highway in the middle of nowhere and the sun was setting. This is the only time on the trip that I cried, mostly because being on the side of the highway in the dark with giant trucks whizzing by is a lot more terrifying than you’d imagine.

It was, in short, a shit show. We were there for a couple of hours until a tow truck came along to get the trailer and follow us to a hotel. The next morning, we had the trailer towed to another U-Haul location so we could switch all our crap from the busted trailer to a new one (in the pouring rain of course.) I asked the very kind tow truck driver to tighten all the lug nuts because fuck U-Haul all the way to hell¹. He tightened them all with vigor and said “if the wheels comes off this one it’s not because of the lug nuts!”

That was the worst of it and Fred promised me that one day it would just be a cool story to tell people. I mean, yes, it is, but it’s still pretty fresh and I’m still mad about it.² The trip continued for a while without incident. We drove through:

West Virginia, Kentucky, Indiana, Illinois, Missouri, Kansas…

Somewhere in the middle of nowhere Kansas we stopped at an A&W for lunch and I swear it hadn’t been updated since it was built - a little 1970s fast food joint trapped in amber. Fred ordered me a root beer in a frosty mug (they totally had them!) and it was the best. Then we had to go eat in the car because cats ruin everything.

One piece of advice I can pass along (thank you to Kendell!) is that Love’s Travel Stops are the absolute best. They’re clean, full of excellently weird stuff to buy and they are everywhere.

We exclusively stayed at La Quinta hotels because they let cats stay for free. We discovered that most “pet friendly” hotels a)charge a fee and b) define pets as dogs. Nobody wants cats and honestly I don’t blame them. Every single night when the drugs wore off, the howling would start. Nobody got a good night’s sleep that whole week and did you know cats can burrow into upholstered furniture and will do so at every opportunity? SO FUN YOU GUYS.

As we headed west, Fred said we were going to drive up through Wyoming. I looked at the weather map and it looked like this:

Oh hey, that’s a blizzard. Change of plans! Instead, we drove into Colorado in a not-quite-a-blizzard snow storm so we could meet a notary and sign a page of our closing documents that had been left out accidentally. Oh, yes, that’s right, we were closing on our new house while on the road which I FULLY do not recommend.

We stayed the night in Golden, CO and because we were essentially snowed in the only dinner/breakfast option was the Denny’s across the hotel parking lot. That was a real epicurean low that I hope to never revisit.

Finally we were back on the road and drove through a snowy mountain pass, through the rest of Colorado and into Utah, through Idaho and finally, finally:

And look, my first glimpse of Mt Hood:

Part IIII coming soon. You can read Part I and Part II here.

1. Fred told me later that if he hadn’t pulled over when he did the trailer could’ve flipped and taken the truck with it. COOOOOOL. Again, U-Haul sucks.

2. About two days into our drive we got an irate phone call from the U-Haul in Portland demanding to know where their trailer was and why we hadn’t dropped it off yet. Is the trailer capable of teleportation, sir? Fred made that guy wish he has chosen to not make that call. Also, when when Fred was finally able to talk to the franchise owner at the Richmond U-Haul, he was deeply horrified and refunded all of the cost (probably so we wouldn’t sue him.)