Stuck in the garden of Edon

Monday 2/27/2006 cont.

It’s Nor. The sweetie has done a search and gotten us a quote on how much it would cost to UHaul the truck all the way to Oregon. “I know it’s not cheep,” I tell her, hearing the hesitation in her voice. I had heard horror stories of $3000 Uhaul bills before leaving Cleveland, one of the reasons Donnie and I hadn’t even bothered to get a quote.

“$1,900,” she says. I don’t flinch. That was from OH to OR; and our major goal has changed to just making it to MN, which I assume would be substantially cheaper. Still expensive, but not multiple-thousands.

“I’m running out of minutes,” I tell Norah, and cut the conversation short.

Donnie sat rather motionless, numbly considering our next move.

“Norah quoted out a Uhaul and tow bar for the truck at $1900. The place she called is back towards Ohio.”

“They gave me directions to a place in Indiana, about 10 minutes down the road.”

“Okay, we’ll go to that one.”

We drive pretty much in silence, distracting ourselves with following the directions given to us by non-Tim. They pretty much consist of “drive straight down the road,” but give us a break. There is little to talk about. We both feel pretty dumb.

When we finally do come upon the Uhaul rental facility, we are greeted by a (hopefully disarmed) bomb out front painted with a message: “WE MEAN BUSINESS.” Honestly, except for the multitude of Uhauls parked out front, even in our most adventurous, we probably would have given the place some space. As it turns out, it was a military surplus store that also rented Uhauls.

“I’m going to stay out in the car and try to put some more minutes onto this phone,” I tell Donnie.

“Okay. I can handle this.”

It sounded like a plan.