Hard to think right now. Exhausted. Tired. Cats roaming the hotel room.

I need to relax by writing. Instead I get sucked in by the TV.

You really learn stuff on the road. Hard stuff. Stuff like people learn in movies. Friendship, romance, chatting with evil leprechauns that have hearts of gold, worrying about purse snatching do gooders chatting guys up guys in the pool.

I was thinking of the fable about the grasshopper and the ants. How the grasshopper fiddled away and danced through the spring and summer and into the harvest season, while the ants toiled and worked just so they would survive through the winter. I think of how I really didn’t plan that much in moving - I just fiddled and had parties and went out to restaurants leading up to our day of departure. It made the hard times very hard, but in a way, I am glad I had fun leading up to them. If I had just been stressed out and sad the whole time, what fun would that have been? Stupid ants.

Monday 2/27/2006 cont.

We are not done accepting help yet. First, a guy offers help to us when I am struggling to latch the auto-transport to the back of the Uhaul (he actually does no better than me - the screw was threaded wrong and it takes Donnie and a pipe wrench to get it unstuck.) Then, finally, we are ready to load the truck.

We pull the Uhaul over to a flat, level surface. Donnie pulls the limping pickup over and tries to line up the tires. To me, it looks like the ramps onto the back of the auto transport are way too wide. We both bite our lips as, in fourth gear, Donnie tries to load the truck.

Half way up the ramp, the engine dies.

He can’t get it started again.

He looks at me with utter and complete hopelessness in his eyes. I never want to see that look again.

I head on back to Tim’s lobby, sure the guys are going to bite my head off or throw something at me when I tell them what’s up. Instead, they too heave a great sigh, bite their lips, furrow their brows, and follow me out.

They assess the situation as I huddle in my car with the cats and my camera. I try to imagine what they will do - will they try to push the thing up the ramp? No, Tim pulls around with his front end loader and a chain.

FINALLY, we get everything loaded. Tim and his buddy disappear. Donnie and I strap the front wheels of the truck down. We are so ready to get back on the road.

3:53 - Back on the road.

The prerequisite “guy taking the purse” story

Secure being a relative term. We take the ratchet straps and loop them around the trailer to make it at least semi-stable. Then we try to cram the boat in somewhere. A single guy sidles over, thin, 50-ish, glasses, hands in pockets. He asks if we need some help.

“Sure,” we accept. The three of us, using what menial physics theory we all know, manage to tilt the boat and wedge it into the back of the Uhaul. The man tips his hat (if he had a hat), gets into his pickup and drives off.

Donnie and I start loading the rest of the boxes from my car and his truck into the back of the Uhaul. We decide to leave a lot of the heavy stuff in the back of his truck. I decide now is a good time to check my phone and see what time it is.

“Did you see my purse?”

“It was at the end of the truck bed.”

We both stop what we are doing and look around. No purse. I think of the guy who helped us. Could he have taken my purse? I voice this to Donnie and he easily accepts the possibility. Suddenly I start thinking over all the help we have taken without any thought as to the possible devious means behind it.

But before I get too angry at being deceived, I check my car, and there is my purse, exactly where I have kept it all through the trip. I feel nasty.

I begin to consult the taro cards

Monday 2/27/2006 cont.

I sit in my car with the cats as Donnie and the garage dudes contemplate how to get the small, white trailer into the back of the Uhaul. I own a taro deck called Taro of the Cat People. It’s pretty much full of new-agie crapola. The drawings are interesting, but the artist has gone way insane in describing the “world” that these cat-warrior people live in (they eat nothing but blue green algae for instance). But the basis for cards as fortune telling still intrigues me, as do palm and tea readings. So on a whim, I consult them.

Three of Cups - Resolution of a Problem.

I glance over at the Uhaul, truck, boat, trailer conglomeration. There is only one ramp leading up into the Uhaul’s storage area (meant for one person with a dolly to walk up and down), not two, and so the only way to get the trailer into the back is to hoist it up with a forklift. The garage guy’s forklift can lift it high enough to make it into the back, but the fork tines are not long enough to reach from one side of the trailer to the other to lift it up with any amount of stability. When they try, the trailer almost tips over. So, in some physics-defying bout of planning, they jack up the hitch side of the trailer and brace it with logs as they inch by inch bring the wheels closer to rolling into the back of the truck.

I wish I had a photo of this but honestly, I fell the guys would have dumped the trailer on me had I gotten closer. I guess the word had gotten out that all the stuff in the trailer was mine.

After almost another hour, the trailer rolls into the back. Donnie and I pay the guys off for their work (Tim tried not to accept, believe it or not. I paid the guy who was at the desk in the first place who had the misfortune of offering to help load the trailer a little extra) and we hop into the back to secure the thing.

A note to Uhaul -

A note to Uhaul -

Monday 2/27/2006 cont.

I know you probably don’t have to advertising, being the first name that springs to mind when people are thinking about renting a moving truck. However, I would encourage you, more as a sort of public service, to advertise the worth in at least getting a quote when moving, no matter how long or short the journey. It did not even enter my mind to get a quote when I was moving across the country, mainly because I was relying on bad second-hand information as to how expensive it would be. I would also like to see you pose the possibility to people who think they can drive themselves that it might be better to get a tow bar to transport their vehicle to their final destination. It would allow the person to transport more stuff and would save wear and tear on the vehicle. Also, I think people would be amazed as to the number of locations where Uhauls can be rented. They are available absolutely everywhere. Anyway, think about it.

“Relax, Life’s Too Short” - sign near Columbia, IN

Monday 2/27/2006 cont.

The army surplus store is just that. If I were interested in army surplus, this would be the place for me. Everything from army lunch bags to army body bags ($15. Another $8 gets you the plastic liner.) Donnie is at the counter chatting with a curly headed middle-aged woman.

“We get an auto-transport,” he says, almost cheerily.

“Oh yeah,” I say, thinking, what’s an auto transport?

“It’s the trailer as opposed to just the tow bar for the truck,” he answers my thoughts. “And the whole deal is about $600.”

“Nice,” I say, truthfully. The lady is smiling and pulling paperwork together.

“These walk-ins are always fun: so much paperwork.” We decide to get the insurance (a very good idea it turns out), and Donnie pays. We chitchat a bit with the lady, tell her we’re stranded just up the road at Tim’s Transmission in Edon.

“Ah yes,” she says, “the garden of Edon.”

Outside, I take a gander at the “auto-transport,” parked next to the bomb. The thing is a massive piece of hard-wear - chains and hitches and crank-lifts and grating like what semis pull, loaded down with the newest model vehicles.

As you know, Uhauls panel trucks have artwork on the side, usually depicting some interesting tourist site from one of the 50 states. Ours had the incredibly interesting Tennessee Cave Cricket.

Which is blind.

And lives in caves.

It takes us about 40 minutes if not longer to get the auto-transport hooked onto the Cricketmobile. The lady who had rented us the truck was not the owner of the surplus place; she was just covering a shift and decided to let us fend for ourselves as far as hooking the thing up. We end up having to cut the transport’s break lights down to bare wires to hook them to the Uhaul connectors (Donnie did it, I’m not sure how. Perhaps by sawing at them with his key, but more likely he bit through them when I wasn’t looking.)

Back on the road and headed back to Tim’s.