Skip to main content

An Adventure in Moving!


Last post was way back on Feb 20th. Guess you could say we've been pretty busy!
Most interesting thing that's happened just happened last weekend-------
Last Friday(3/7) to Saturday(3/8) we helped by transporting the belongings of a friend of Stacy's move from this area to the Seattle area. I'd drive the 28 foot U-Haul, Stacy would follow in our truck for the return trip. I went with the friend on Thursday to pick the truck up about an hour away, got it to her place and then helped load with her other friends until I had to leave to go drive that afternoon.
I was surprised with U-Haul. While the truck itself was in good shape, as I was checking it over before leaving the U-Haul facility, I checked the engine to find it had no coolant in the overflow tank and was at least a quart low on oil. I went back to the office and asked for coolant and oil only to be told that they aren't serviced there so they don't keep anything like that there. I'd have to get them myself and if I kept the receipts they 'should' reimburse me on turn in of the truck. Hmmmm.. Okay. Well since I kinda know what I'm doing that wasn't a problem for me. But with all the paperwork that the renter had to sign, and me too since I was the driver, indicating all the ways of YOU break it YOU bought it. I would have thought because these things are apparently geared for the guy or gal that doesn't know how to do anything except maybe be able to drive it, a little more care would be stressed at the renting level!
Okay, enough ranting about that, now back to the trip.
Well Stacy and I had pretty much planned a kinda nice weekend working around this trip. As planned we'd leave around noon on Friday get the truck there Saturday morning, the friend was supposed to have many people there for unloading it. We'd bid our goodbyes and good lucks with the new job etc., then head up and meet Mike kinda in between his place and Seattle for a lunch and visit since we were in his neck of the woods. EXCEPT, Friday we get there at 11 am , their still finishing loading. Then Stacy says that the friend doesn't want her oldest daughter to stay by herself. So she'd be riding out with Stacy and back with both of us in our truck.
Okay, side story here. The daughter didn't want to move at this time because she wanted to finish her schooling in this area. Her father, friends ex-husband, was going to be moving into the house that the mom and her two sisters had been living in to continue trying to sell the place. Also turned out that the apartment in the Seattle suburb wasn't big enough anyway for all of them. She be riding with us was because the small car they have was also loaded.
Back to the story!
Daughter didn't want to go. And we hadn't expected a passenger, let alone someone we didn't know, to make this trip with us! And now we're expected to be there Friday night as everybody will meet there to unload. Well............. go with the flow right?? We aren't doing this for US anyway! We're just trying to piggyback some fun with a job! We're all on our way by 12:30 pm. The truck is loaded too much on the passenger side so the truck leans and pulls to the right all the way. First fuel up at a Flying J truck stop in Post Falls. Fuel tank is also on the right side. So its really leaning with a full tank and 51 gallons of more fuel added! We drive on through Spokane and out the I-90. GPS indicates arrival time around 7 pm which stretches to become the 8:30 with stops we arrive. The fuel gage stuck on full after the fill up at Post falls so at just under 200 miles and since I've got no idea what the economy is loaded, we stop for fuel again. Turned out the truck got an impressive (to me anyway) 8 miles a gallon. Luckily none of the strong winds going over the plains of Washington we've had before on other drives. But going through the mountains was at times white knuckling it! Especially all those LEFT turns!
Stacy and I each had our Garmin GPS units with us and each unit indicated a different way to go to get to the destination. Since we'd never been where we were heading towards we went with my GPS and it's way of getting there. Now, you can already guess that that turned out to be the wrong way to go! Stacy's GPS would have kept us on the freeway. I should have reset mine to truck instead of car/motorcycle. Live and learn right? Looking at the maps it looked like it would be a good way to go! It became a narrow up hill and down hill back road with limited turn around if we hit any problems. Stacy said there were two times I came within inches of taking out street signs that came into the road a little too much! Well, we finally get there, find the apartment and the truck gets unloaded in about 2 1/2 hours. We decide to leave the truck at a Safeway parking lot over night and take it over. Its late, we're tired, Stacy checks the GPS for places to sleep and it leads us to a very comfortable bed. On the trip in Mike had called and said he wouldn't be able to make it with us for lunch do to time constraints. I tell him not to worry as all plans have been changing since just before we'd left! We'll be seeing each other soon with the better weather. Saturday we get back over and take the truck for drop off. Get back to the apartment, now say our goodbyes and good luck with the new job, get the daughter and head on home. At least we had a nice uneventful drive home and got back at 6:30 pm. Dropped off the daughter and decided to stop at 3-Mile and have dinner. A quick 847 miles and we're done! They'll be other weekends!
Next weekend Stacy leaves for her two weeks at Idaho POST Academy. It wouldn't be so bad if it was closer than the Boise area! About 500 miles away so she can't come home for the weekend that she'll have to be there. She's stressing about it quite a bit. Stacy's already done two
pre- tests via CD and Internet she was sent from the Academy, got 100% on both!
Sandy, Laura and Sean are all doing well. Sean and Brandy will be coming up for a week next month, we're looking forward to that. Sean hasn't been here in several years and his wife has never been out of California before!
Well this became a long story didn't it! So I guess that will do it for now. Type later, Tad

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Life in a Northern Town, In Winter

So, here we are, early in 2018. While our area gets cold, we don't get the  really cold, the cold of Montana and eastward. Where we are, in North Idaho, 30 miles from Canada, we are in a bowl of a valley. That's why we wind up with mostly overcast days in the winter. We are also pretty well protected from the strong blizzard kinds of winds and the weather patterns that are causing the conditions in Montana eastward, a parked high-pressure system that steers that super cold weather up and over this area and into Montana and eastward. We are into, what is usually some of the coldest weather of the year for this area, for a normal year! When was the last of those, normal years, thanks to climate change, whether from natural cycles or what's been changed by human expansion? Anyway, since before Christmas the area has been lows in the 8 to 10-degree (F) range (-13 C to -12 C) with highs in the upper teens to low 20's (-6 C or so). As mentioned the last post, we'd
Post a Comment
Read more

Yeah!! The Elections are over!!! For now.....

Yes we're sure glad the elections are over, that is a really good thing. But we're even more happy that they're over because of the CONSTANT commercials on TV and the, seemed like, every night calls at home. With the stretched out length of this election "season" (as it was referred to on many programs!), and with those increasingly annoying TV adds and calls to sway votes, we quit answering the phone all together, were really bad and lasted so much longer this time around. And with our ability to see regional TV from other locations in the US and Canada, what we didn't see for more local stuff, we saw the same kinds of things for those areas instead. It was interesting at times, and thoughts of how things could have changed if the actual election had been held earlier with the rush of pro Palin, or if Obama had chosen Hillary instead of Biden, just so many things this time around had potential for some serious changes to the outcome! But we've got what
Post a Comment
Read more

Other things from the past week

Hornets, Yellow jackets, and Wasps, a very, very bad year this year for them around here!  And not just in our area but most of North Idaho from what we've found out. In fact when Stacy stopped at Wal Mart to buy some new bait for our traps, Wal Mart was sold out and across the street at Home Depot, she was lucky to get there when a new shipment of traps and bait was being opened. She was told by the clerk that their shipments have been selling out in less than a day and as quick as a half hour as so many people are having problems with the bugs! And hospital and doctor visits have increased dramatically too due to stings according to the news. It has been both hotter and dryer than normal locally this summer so mosquitoes were way down, a very good thing!  But now in late August when the "skitos" would be low anyway, the Hornets, Yellow Jackets and Wasps, and yes we have all three types on our place!, have been going crazy quietly building nests all over the
Post a Comment
Read more