Actually this happens every semester, but this time around it was worse. Besides finishing up my semester we had to move in time for Trisha to start her new job. So it went something like: write a page, pack a box, find another apartment lead, repeat. Everything got done, but not at the level of quality I'd have liked. But we've signed our new lease (for late July!) and lucked out on the place we picked out.
The move threatened to be epic (reminding me of a river trip put-in I drove when all hell broke loose) but ended up being pretty easy. Budget, bless their hearts, overbooked their trucks the day we were moving and we drew the long straw. We ended up making a deal with U-Haul and got out of town the next day but we were a bit stressed since I had to be back to Austin RIGHT after we finished the move, so time was scarce.
On top of the booking part, we started hearing about tornadoes in Alabama and Missouri, then flooding from North to South on the Mississippi, then that I-40 was completely torn up throughout Tennessee. There was probably a hurricane eminent too. Basically, there was no safe route to take anywhere in the US. Even rerouting through Canada (adding an extra 1000 miles probably) would've been dangerous because of weather. Fortunately we didn't have any trouble the entire trip. We stayed just ahead and behind crappy weather.
The rough part of the trip was that the truck was longer than we asked for. That was fine for me, it was like driving a bus with a short trailer...something I've done once or twice in Moab (or perhaps closer to about 350 times per summer). So it was fine until I got tired and it became Trisha's turn to drive. She did really well. Extremely well considering one of our first (and few) construction zones came about 3 miles after she started driving--you know when they put concrete barriers on both sides of your car? That's what she got, plus the tiniest 6" shoulder on one side. Brave woman.
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| My motivation for about 50 miles of our trek |
So we made it. But the next adventure was our first night in Baltimore. We'd stayed there a month ago looking for apartments, but this time we couldn't get a place downtown. We used Hotwire to locate a place in NW Baltimore for about $60. Expensive by my families standards, but that's about as cheap as we could get in any event. The hotel turned out to be an Econolodge. This wasn't just any Econolodge. This was an Econolodge in a sketchy neighborhood where some activist meeting was taking place down the street about 1/2 block, and next door. Basically there were people out at night on some out-of-the-way suburban street at midnight dressed up.
It turns out some of the hotel rooms were pay-by-the-hour so that just made it all the more interesting. They also only had a smoking room left, despite our reservation. That wouldn't have been so bad but I have bad enough allergies as it is, and Trisha doesn't like that smell any more than I do. Throw in a couple twin-sized beds donated from some barracks during the Korean war (maybe those were the ones my family donated to the Salvation Army after the kids moved out :) ) and we lived out a scene from Leave It To Beaver. What a night.
Morning, really. A few hours after we went to sleep, someone knocks on the door. For the first time in my life I'm out cold, dead asleep and enjoying my lack of consciousness immensely. Trisha, for the first time in her life, was sleeping lightly from nervousness. The guy keeps pounding on the door. I actually heard some guy doing this before I went to bed, and then again after Trisha woke me up 2 hours early so we could check out ASAP. I won't say it was the worst hotel experience I've ever had, but Trisha probably would. The best part is that Hotwire put us in a Westin Inn the next night for the same price. HA!
We had a couple days of fun in DC and then I flew back to Austin to work/study half the summer. I'm living in Trisha's old Co-op house and she's subleasing an apartment in a nice part of town. We've done fine not missing each other (it's been a week and a half), but going to church feels really weird. I keep interpreting the casual smile of "hello" as "You sick man! What have you done to cause your wife to leave you?!" Thanks to how my mind works, life is far more exciting for me than for most people.
