10.07.2011

The Trip - Part One

Well, I suppose it's about time I post something, considering we've been in VA for almost a month already! Here's how everything went down.

We started packing almost as soon as we decided to go, since we knew we wouldn't be sticking around for long. Ugh- packing. We've only been married for 4 years, and we already have enough stuff to fill a small moving truck?? If we had kept any of the furniture we would have had to get a ginormous monster-size truck! (Though I kind of wish we had kept our dresser... it was pretty).

On September 9th, after getting the last of everything into the truck and saying goodbye to family and friends, we went to sleep in an almost completely empty apartment. It was weird, and echo-y.

DAY 1
We woke up bright and early (why do we say that- bright? it was definitely dark) the morning of September 10th. It was 6am, about an hour earlier than planned because neither of us could sleep. I ate the last lonely little item in the fridge- a cup of yogurt- and then we carried our mattress out to the dumpster (sorry trash-man!), climbed into the truck and started the first leg of what would be a 5-day journey.


First destination: Cheyenne, Wyoming to stay at my friend Jessie's for the night. We grabbed some bagels from Einstein's, and then drove for hours... and hours... and hours. This would be the shortest day of driving. I didn't know if I could make it all the way to VA! But everything was going smoothly, until... 

We were only about 3 hours away from Jessie's when we stopped for gas and lunch. I would go buy us some sandwiches while Nate filled up. As I reached to lock my door after hopping out, I thought, maybe I should leave this open. I wont be very long... But I decided that was silly because I always lock the doors, so I did, and went on my way.

I got two sandwiches and Nate met me on my way back out. He took his sandwich and said, I locked the key in the truck.

Whaaat!?


Well... that sucks. Nate never makes silly mistakes like that. But getting upset or frustrated wasn't going to help, so we called U-haul and they said they would send someone to open it and that he should arrive in about an hour. We ate our sandwiches, got a couple other snacks, and entertained ourselves with iPod games for the time being. The guy was right on time and got the door open in about 5 minutes, and we didn't even have to pay for it because we had signed up for roadside assistance when we first got the truck. Nice!

We got to Cheyenne about 3 hours later. My friend Jessie's husband is in the Air Force, and they live on base. We had to show ID to come on as visitors. Everything looked fine, until...

The guy running our info told us that although the expiration date printed on Nate's driver's license said sometime in 2013, it came up in the system as already expired- in November of 2010. Apparently there was some confusion when Nate went to get a motorcycle learner's permit waaay back then, and they didn't tell him they were changing the expiration date of his license to match the permit. He never went back to finish his motorcycle license, so he had unknowingly been driving with an expired license for almost a year. Good thing he's a good driver and never got pulled over! Thanks, DMV. Now we can't stay on base.

Except that we could. The guys were really nice and said they would put my name down as the primary person, and Nate would be secondary. And even with an expired license, they let Nate drive the truck in so I wouldn't have to. :) We thought they'd be extra careful since the next day was September 11th, but everything turned out fine.

Jessie fed us a delicious meal of slow-cooker chicken with beans on chips with cheese... it was SO tasty, especially after a long day of driving (Jess, I want your recipe). Then we just "hung out" and chatted until bedtime. Probably stayed up too late for our early start the next day, but it was worth it.

Luckily there wouldn't be so many issues over the next few days. Or so we thought.

3 comments:

Randi said...

baha oh gosh. The anticipation!

Randi said...

This is Sam, btw...in Randi's account I am just now discovering.

Kelsey said...

Crazy! What next?!?