On Friday, February 24th Jim picked up the 14' uhaul. It was practically a brand new truck; it only had 900 miles on it. Unfortunately, when Jim tried to open up the back, it would not open. Jim ended up having to call roadside assistance. An hour later we finally had the back open. The roadside tech said that the new trucks were having issues with their door alignment. Even with this early hick-up, and with the help of our friend Greg, we started loading the uhaul. On Friday we were able to fill about a 3rd of the truck. But, even then, we started to question if all of our things were going to fit.
On Saturday, our friend Darren came over to help with the uhaul load and, the truck filled up quickly...to quickly. We started to talk about what could be left behind. This was not an easy conversation! All the items that we considered non-essential we had already put into the pod that was taken away a few days before. We had talked about getting a roof rack for the car before but now it looked like it was going to be essential!
We said thank you to Darren and headed off to Sears. Jim said that he would go on his own but, it was lunch time so...I convinced him that we should all go along. In retrospect this was a VERY bad decision! The first Sears we went to had the carrier that we wanted but not the car connecting kit. They called another Sears and they had the kit so, they put it on hold for us. After lunch, we headed to the 2nd Sears. They indeed had the carrier and the connecting kit but, the kit did not fit our car. They tried another kit that they had on hand but, it didn't work either. Jim had to go to Ace with the Sears service man to find some thing that will work. The end result...2.5 hours later...is we had a car carrier and 2 hungry, un-napped, bored, crazy, dirty (the only thing for them to play with at the Sears auto center was a pile of rocks...literally) girls.
We finally got home and tried to pack the rest of our things up but, again, no luck! It became very clear that we were going to also need a to get a uhaul pull trailer. Unfortunately, it was too late in the day to get one. The one thing that we didn't want was to have to get a hotel in Vegas. We wanted to move forward no mater how far we were able to get. But, we had no choice...beds were packed and we had to stay somewhere.
Did I also mention that I accidentally packed the cords for our Sony portable DVD player?!? There was no way that I was going to be driving across country without a DVD player! We stopped by Best Buy to get replacement cords but, of course, Sony does not allow any universal cords to be used on their products. They suggested we try Radio Shack but they were no luck either.
We were not able to get the pull trailer until mid-day on Sunday. But, by 2 pm we were finally completely packed!
One more problem...Jim tried to close the rear door on the truck and it would not close all the way. When he tried to lift it to see if any items needed to be readjusted so that it would close...the door would not open. Again, a call to roadside assistance. At this point the girls were very bored and ridiculously tired to I drove them around until the fell asleep in the car, poor things!
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| uhaul all packed almost ready to go. |
We had to make 1 more stop...we needed a new DVD player.
