So Motel 6 has cheap internet. Not free like a lot of the other chains, but when you add the room rate to the internet rate ($2.99/day) and subtract the rate of one of the other places with ‘free’ internet and still get a negative number, it works out okay.
Iraq sucked. Ft Riley sucked too. At least they had the 3-and-out plan down cold. We arrived, they stuffed us on buses without letting the smokers get a puff in (following our layover in Iceland, which is apparently a non-smoking country…), then didn’t have the ‘redeployment ceremony’ for another 5 hours. (boo!! hiss!!) After that cluster-f*ck, they had all their feces co-linear, and we were able to get outprocessed with little difficulty.
And thus I am here, sitting in a Motel 6, waiting on the delivery guy to show up with dinner, and hoping that I won’t have to kill Amanda’s dog when he does. We’re 3 days in, and while we could technically make it to Huachuca in a single day, we won’t be able to get there before the housing office closes, so there’s really no point. But they do have a house waiting on us, so that’ll be nice. How did we get here?
Well I took some leave in OH so as to just chill out and rest before beginning the moving ordeal. But then the moving truck showed up:
This of course meant that I had already loaded my trailer with all the stuff we’re taking for the DITY portion of our move (bikes, tools, etc). Having had some serious heartburn over bike tie-downs in the trailer during previous moves (without a chock, you have to strap the rear down too, which means LOTS of straps in the way), I decided to engineer a better solution:
Voila! Movable wheelchock that can be tied into the e-track already installed in the trailer. In practice, they look a little like this:
All in all, a much more agreable solution. While the packers and movers were there, we had to be as strategic as possible about dog walks, because we had the cats penned up in the front room with them to help minimize escape attempts. Since I have taken to carrying my camera pretty much any time I have a pocket for it, I got a couple of pretty funny shots involving the various animals:
What’s going on daddy?
Gracie mostly hid in the cat carrier except when we would take the dogs out. Then she would hide in Resa’s crate, which got her stuck more than once when we let them back in:
Heidi pretty much stayed in the litter box the entire 2 days:
We made it out w/o much incident. The drive thus far has been relatively uneventful, but I will say that I’m glad I pulled the trailer through Dallas on a Sunday at lunchtime instead of any time during a weekday. Couldn’t quite understand how extra lanes kept getting added on the left, but lane endings were always on the right, meaning I had to move left some 5 times to keep from being in an ‘exit only’ lane. Having Amanda as a ‘blocker’ during some of those moves was very helpful, because apparently retards everywhere don’t realize that they’re called “acceleration lanes” for a reason…
Texas has yielded some highlights, such as the deer herd on the roadside soon after we entered the state (wasn’t fast enough on the camera), and Whataburgers, with their wonderful fried cherry pies:
(Had to post that for the motorcycle peeps in GA who have this habit of riding for pie…)
More to follow as events warrant…
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