Healthvues

Nothing much at all to report for today. We were supposed to get hammered with heavy weather, but it was clear driving for the most part – except for the last 20 miles which were filled with high winds and heavy rain. Annie got her first taste of pulling a huge load behind a vehicle (and I’m not talking about Afghan hounds) – she drove the trailer for the first time. Excellent job for a newbie! Finally got internet access at the hotel tonight (Lebonan, TN) – so if you got this, it worked!
Beautiful country for driving…lower Virginia, Eastern Tennessee ending up about 20 miles east of Nashville…Just tooling along with all of the other holiday travelers (lots of them!!!) singing along with the Dixie Chicks and the Coors and lots of Christmas music….Our Thanksgiving destination is Graceland baby….I mean, how often do you have an opportunity to do something as outrageous as visiting the King on Thanksgiving???? We are on the lookout for a tacky diner or a great rib joint in Memphis for our holiday dinner celebration….Shouldn’t be a problem….We are sending all of you our very best wishes for a warm, belly filling and grateful Thanksgiving as we continue on the road…

Annie (Spike’s sister) flew in on the red-eye to travel with us cross country. She gets in at 6am and we have a full day planned. Sleep is for wimps, anyway. We first stopped at Arlington National Cemetery to visit Johnny (Andy’s dad who is buried there). Always a moving experience. We then zipped over to see the new WWII memorial, which was also very moving – seeing the monuments and the veterans. DC is always such a cool visit.

But the topper was the Pentagon. One of Spike’s dear friends Julie (Jersey shore reunion chicks) is a commander in the Navy and works for the Joint Chiefs of Staff – impressive enough in her own right – and she was able to take us on a personal tour of the Pentagon! We walked by the Secretary of Defense’s office (whatever you think of Rumsfeld, it’s still impressive to stand at his front door), visited the courtyard, ate in a special dining room and walked the famous halls and corridors. She also took us down to the 9/11 memorial (in the works) which is at the impact site. It was very strange, eery, moving, solemn… to stand at the exact point that the plane struck. Puts a lot of things into perspective. Security was impressive (a bit unnerving to stand next a guy with an AK47 with his finger on the trigger), but what do you expect? This is the seat of our defense. The Pentagon seems so big in pictures and video – and it certainly is – the biggest office building in the world, I think – but in reality, it’s much easier to navigate than one might think. It was absolutely amazing to be inside a place that is so famous and has so much history attached to it. Thanks Jules, truly an impressive day and our best to your boss, Col Gwen Bingham (hope I didn’t maul the spelling of your rank or name, um ma’am)…..

We decided to get a jump start on our westward travel, so we left Bonnie, et. Al. in the early evening to get to Roanoke, VA. The drive was pretty much uneventful, thanks to the new wiper motor (it rained the whole time) and a tankful of gas.

Today is a very special day: a trip to the University of Maryland and the Comcast Center – new home to Terps basketball. What a place! Even more impressive in person. They have the center court from Atlanta 2002 displayed on a wall, as well as the center court from old Cole Field House. And for an extra bit of pride, Andy’s and Bonnie’s grandfather was the foreman for Cole Field House as well as Ritchie Coliseum among other prominent buidings on campus back in the 50’s….So, it was a very pleasant and emotional surprise to see the original center court from Cole so prominently displayed in this new high tech mecca. Many pics were taken of the brother and sister alumni… The national champ trophies, wall of fame – I was in pig heaven! Bonnie was into the experience (being a MD grad herself). All Alex wanted to do was go see Testudo – who is perched out front. Spike spent some serious Christmas shopping at the Team Store. The first major highlight of the trip. We spent the rest of the afternoon visiting places around campus.

We then drove over to Rockville to show Alex the house Andy grew up in. We were a little nervous because we had heard that the house had gone to pot when we sold it after Mom passed away. It might be hard to see the wonder years abode in disarray. But we were pleasantly surprised. The place had been cleaned up, decorated for Christmas and looked like the new family was taking very good care of it. Alex fell asleep and missed the whole thing.

Oh yeah, the car part purchase of the day? A new wiper motor and gas filter.

Bonnie and Jim’s place is great. They also just moved from their home of many years this summer to a brand new “retirement” community. We spent the morning running errands, the most important of which was to get RainX – but the cruel irony is that you can’t apply it in the rain (it is raining now), so we have it, but can’t use it yet! Hopefully it’ll dry up before we have to leave here. We went to the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum at Dulles, which we highly, highly recommend. They have the original on the Mall in DC, the storage unit out on the Beltway and this new one. It’s a huge double hanger with actual complete aircraft parked there. They have a Space Shuttle, a Concord, a Boeing 707, war birds, the Enola Gay, and many many other craft and exhibits. It was the second most exciting part of the day.

The most exciting (for Spike anyway) was the discovery of a new Wegmans very close to Bonnie’s. Those who know Spike know that she’d live in a Wegmans if we didn’t have a home. We felt like we were back in Syracuse – a taste of home before leaving the East Coast. We all have our places of worship, and aisles and aisles of new and interesting food and wine and entertaining concepts just happens to be what warms the cockles of Spike’s heart….She winced a few tears as she used her coffee card and swiped her Shoppers Club Card….I’m verklempt….Talk amongst yourselves…mmmm…

Literally.

Okay,so it seems that on this “beautiful, sunny” Connecticut mornin’ that we may actually be ready to rock and roll, still without much of an itinerary still, but hey that’s what the adventure is all about right….. We spent the morning doing little things like visiting the trailer store AGAIN to pick up things I forgot. Taking digital stills of Lenny’s business for his web site (NOW I just wrote off the whole trip!). We had planned on being on the road by noon for the “short” 7-hour drive to Bonnie’s (Andy’s sister) in Virginia. We actually didn’t get going until about 1:30, just when the rain started. Less than a mile from Lenny’s house, and literally on the on-ramp to the I-84, the windshield wipers quit. In the pouring rain. Got ‘em started, they quit again driving 60 on the highway. We briefly contemplated turning around, but decided to go easy an get as far as we could. They teased us a few more times but luck held up and they kept working for the most part. (This was a problem that surfaced in Syracuse about a year ago, but was so intermittent that nobody could find the problem.) We didn’t dare turn them off the entire ride – in fact, during pit stops, we didn’t turn off the car or wipers! We looked a little silly when the rain would stop but our wipers kept going full force.

Like we said, it should have been an easy drive. But those of you who know I-81 through PA know what’s about to come. The construction was horrible. They decided this time to not only squeeze down to one lane, but to make that one lane barely wide enough for a car, let alone a wide trailer. It was white knuckle driving for a spell, coming what seemed like inches to the guardrail on one side and the concrete barriers on the other – in the dark, in the rain, in the fog. Yeah, the fog. We ran into fog starting at that notorious spot on 81 south of Wilkes-Barre and it didn’t let up until we pulled into Bonnie’s in Virginia! At times it let up, but most of the time it was so thick we couldn’t go more than 40 mph. All the time not knowing if the wipers were going to give out. We joked in CT that the next purchase on our trip was a new Suburban, but right now that didn’t seem too far fetched. It was about that time that we vowed not to travel at night if we could help it. We finally arrived about midnight (11 hours!), unhitched the trailer and visited for another couple of hours. We arrived late but safe. A mantra we seemed to have adopted for our trip.

We picked up the new trailer in the morning. It’s a little wider, longer and heavier than the other new trailer, but this will do the trick. We’re not worried about the FT pulling it because Dad used it to pull trailers 3 times this size. But most of day was spent (yet again) loading up the trailer with our stuff. Hopefully, this is last time we’ll have to do this. Pizza, beers and visits with Melissa and the kids (Alex loved them) were the perfect way to end the day.

After assessing the damage (which is nothing really), we come to the conclusion that we need the type of trailer we should have purchased in the first place – a larger, more heavy duty trailer. There have been (and will be) things that have happened that seem to be barriers to our moving, but looking at them in different lights, they’re really events that have prevented major problems down the road (figuratively and literally). For example, we need the right trailer to replace the one we just bought 2 months ago. But we need it so that we’re not stuck in the middle of the desert with a broken axel. Lenny knew of a place right around the corner from his house which might know of where we could get one – turns out they have exactly the one I need. Ironically, the make is a Kristi – made right there in Canastota, NY (20 miles from our Syracuse home!). Good thing I paid off the credit cards before we left. Lenny has offered to keep the “old” trailer at his house to sell for me, which should be an easy sell, seeing it has only 400 miles on it. We’re having a great visit, and we feel grateful that we’re able to head off potential huge problems later now with Lenny and Shirley’s help. But we STILL haven’t planned our trip.

There are times you realize you may be turning into your parents. I think I am closer than ever to morphing into my dad - I’m driving his Suburban, and I now have TWO trailers! For the record, he had 3, so I have a little ways to go.

Last night, we made an appointment to get the brakes looked at. Turns out they weren’t properly installed in the first place, so we had a completely new unit. Which is not so bad, given the importance of having the ability to stop periodically during our drive across country. The people at the garage were extremely friendly and professional – they said they had traveled cross country many years ago and people had shown them kindness along the way and they want to pay it back. One of many angels on our shoulders on this trip. Now we’re in business – brakes work, trailer feels OK (or at least as good as it could be given the weight), gas tank’s full, UPS has come…

It finally hit us that we were leaving Syracuse when we left Binghamton and didn’t get on 81 north to go to Syr, but went south instead….That was strange indeed….And driving 81 south listening to a wonderful CD that Stacey made for us ( and overnighted to us in Bing) all about fond farewells and holding those who are near and dear, even closer in your heart was quite an emotional experience…It has finally hit us that we are leaving for awhile…….I understand how it felt for those we left….

We finally pull out at about 3pm heading for Connecticut for a visit with Lenny (Andy’s brother) and his family. So far, Alex has been a real trooper throughout this entire move. Things were going along smoothly until about 60 miles from his house – we had to make a pit stop at a dive gas station: I didn’t see the storm grate with the deep depression and ran over it. The FT make it OK, but the sound I heard when the trailer ran over it was something out of a Road Runner cartoon. Sure ‘nough, one wheel had popped up, hit the fender, which wrinkled the side of that stupid trailer. Still too much weight in that thing. We hobbled on to Connecticut without incident but it is clear that we’re asking too much out of this trailer.

Lesson #2: Always allow a “little extra” in the travel budget for unexpected expenses.

There’s a reason why that trailer didn’t feel right – actually two reasons. Not fully comfortable with the way that axel looked underneath the trailer, we took it to a truck garage to have it officially weighed. 1000 pounds overweight! @#$%&! On top of that, the trailer brakes weren’t working. While Spike and Alex ran some errands, I unloaded that damn trailer again to remove some more weight. I figure I could UPS the equipment I didn’t need and save some weight. Turned out to be about 400 pounds. Spent most of the day unpacking, repacking and boxing up stuff for shipment. Spike had some errands to run during the day – the look of horror and disgust on her face upon returning “home” to find our belongings sprawled (yet again) across another driveway is not a sight I want to see again. But some time in Jim & Renee’s hot tub was the perfect prescription for relaxation (that and Capt. Morgan). All the Binghamton crowd came over for a send-off dinner – it was great to see everyone. Alex had a great time with her cousins. It’s starting to hit that we’re not heading back north home, but that we have no home right now. We’re still in familiar settings with familiar people. But it’s starting to sink in.

Didn’t get much sleep at all – got up about 5am to begin throwing the remaining small stuff in the Family Truckster (aka Suburban) to take to Dave & Kayo’s for repacking after the closing. It was a very hectic, stressful morning – last second packing, making sure nothing got left behind, dodging the final walk through. We still left a truck load of stuff in Betty’s garage, to be retrieved after the closing and repacking into the trailer.

The actual closing was the smoothest part of this whole thing, so far. No problems or hitches. Afterwards, we took off to D&K’s to drop off the wife and kid and stuff, then back to Betty’s for more stuff and a rewarding visit to the bank to make a nice deposit. Back to D&K’s unload the trailer to remove some weight and repack. We ended up with a room full of stuff that we’d be leaving in storage in Syracuse for later shipping or retrieval. Another full day of packing and repacking. When all was said and done, we had the bare “essentials” in the trailer but the FT (Family Truckster) was still packed to the gills. The plan was to spend our first few nights in Binghamton with Spike’s cousins, finalizing our trip. We finally took off after dinner to officially kick off our trip. Literally - I’m not making this up – as we pull away from D&K’s house, Alex pipes up, “When are going to get there? 2 minutes?” 10 feet down, another 3000 miles to go. Nothing eventful to report for the first drive, though that trailer just didn’t feel right behind that FT…