Friday Morning: 8 am. I'm already sweaty, having loaded many boxes and a closet full of clothes into my car. In addition, I have taken several doors down to facillitate removing large items from the house. This is not a big problem. I'm about where I expect to be.
Friday Morning: 8:30 am. My wife is already questioning every decision I make. I decide to leave a little early to get my brother-in-law to go pick up the truck to avoid a fight. My wife will be running a workshop for Youth Conference, and thus will not be there when I get back. Fight is effectively prevented.
Friday Morning: 9:05 am. Gary (my brother-in-law) and I discover that the truck rental place is not actually right off of Backlick Rd as they say they are. Nor are they off Alban road, which is what Backlick turns into. We eventually make it to the rental place, which is about a mile away from Backlick Road.
Friday Morning: 9:20am. We're still waiting for the U-Haul jerks to get their act together. The people who were receiving help at the counter when we walked in the building are still there. No one has moved.
Friday Morning: 9:40am. They've managed to move to the SECOND set of customers. Some girl who doesn't realize that she shouldn't be wearing a babydoll tee when her belly will dramatically hang down over her pants waist tries to cut the entire line, quite upset that no one has reserved her truck even though she called the day before. I can almost understand this, except that I had reserved my truck 2 weeks earlier and noted that they said it would take about 24 hours for them to give her a response on the reservation. Several audible growls from the line get fatty back into place.
Friday morning, 10:00 am. I'm still not at the front of the line. I'm getting very angry. One of the two people behind the counter has disappeared. The only thing keeping me from exploding is that the girl still there must have heard me tell Gary that I found it incredibly rude to make a customer who is there in the flesh, and whom she has already started helping, to handle phone customers. The phone rings non-stop, but the line has finally started moving at a faster clip than one person ever 20 minutes.
Friday morning, 10:11 am. I get a truck. At last. It's a manual. The truck is easily at least as old as the Kennedy Administration. at least the stupid thing runs. Though I stall the first time I try to put it into first. Part of this is because I haven't driven manual for 2 years, but mostly it's because the first geer doesn't work properly. 2nd geer is a much better place to start with this beast. This, however, does not prevent mr. man who brings the trucks around front from glaring at me. I place an ancient gypsy curse on him out of pure onery-ness.
Friday morning, 10:35 am. I had planned on pulling the truck in from the back. THere's a nice flat place where the grass meets the road that would be great to pull in with if the telephone wires weren't hanging down to about 7 feet off the ground. I had, however, scouted a secondary entry point that was slightly less even and required a sharper turn. I reckon I can still take it. I reckon wrong, which I learn when the tow hitch digs deeply into the asphalt and the rear wheels hang an inch or so off the ground.
Friday morning, 11:00am a cop pulls up. Oddly, this is the only time in my life a cop is not a complete ****wad to me. Though he does tell me that I had better call a tow truck, since we're obstructing part of the road -- nicely, he gives me a while longer to work it out. My other brother-in-law, Anders, has been directing traffic. We realize that the cop is still a partial ****wad when he sits in his car and stares at us, instead of doing his fricking job and directing traffic. Gary, me, the bishop, and my neighbor Rodney have been trying various strategies involving many branches from the nearby forest, soem spare book shelves, and a hydrolic jack to get the truck back on the road. No dice. Unfortunately, no one has capuchin monkeys or marshmellow sauce so we can't try my idea, though a two inch thick piece of rope snaps in two at one point.
tbc
