Moving Day 2, the Saga continues

Tuesday: The final packing and first day and driving
I get up at 7am and take a shower. I go to wake up Mike and he's not ready to get up, but I make him anyways. We pack the remaining items in the house and make a few trips to the dumpster. Luckily, the apartment complex has several grocery carts that people use to bring items to their apartments, so I used one to take out the trash. I start putting things in my truck, the S-10, since the UHAUL is about full. I will call my truck Betty, as this is her name, to prevent any confusion between the UHAUL and the S-10. I named her years ago, and she is affectionately called Betty. Anyways, we are now down to the last few items. The bistro set and the grill. The bistro table never made it to the truck, as there wasn't room, and it was already had a huge chunck of it broken off from the move down to New Orleans. We go to put the grill on Betty, and Mike wants to stand it up and tie it down that way. I am arguing with him telling him that its not a good idea, since we have to drive 17 hours, and I don't think it will make it. I finally agree with Mike to do it his way. You should have seen us trying to life this thing up in the bed of Betty. I almost dropped it a few times, and I think I came close to throwing Mike's back out. But we finally got it up there. We do a final check of the apartment, and I vacuum and get rid of all the trash. Its now 10:30.

We are getting ready to load Betty on the Tow dolly, but Mike doesn't know what he's doing, so I say lets go to UHAUL and have them do it since they are professionals. He thinks I'm an idiot, but I don't care, I don't want anything to happen to my truck. This is Bety we are talking about, and she has been good to me and I love her. So we get to UHAUL and I ask them to help me load this thing, since I have no clue as to what I am doing. I ask if there is anything I need to do to the truck, like disconnect the drive-shaft. Oh no the kid says, its good to go. So they hook it up to the trailer, and we a all set.

We go to my old job so I can say goodbye to all my friends. I will miss them dearly as they are great people and they are the reason why I decided to stay in New Orleans for so long. James wanted to take us out to lunch, and since it was already late, I said why not. Well, Mike wasn't too happy, but I didn't care. This was going to be the last time I saw them for a long time.

We went to get Po-Boys. Yet another great New Orleans' food staple. We had Roast Beef Po-Boys, James' favorite. When we finally got back and got on the road it was 1230.

We decided to take the Causeway instead of going through the city. The Causeway is the longest bridge in America that doesn't have any land for 23 miles. James is very proud of this, and tells us to go this way. So, I take the first shift of driving, and we are off. I was a little nervous at first, especially with towing Betty, as it makes it harder to turn and stuff. Everything is going well and we are doing good. We stop after 2 hours just to walk around, as Mike wants to stop a lot to break up the monotony of the trip. I usually don't do this, but whatever. So I go to check on Betty, and notice that the straps holding the tires to the tow dolly are completley undone. The only thing that was keeping her on the tow dolly were the chains that are there just in case this happens. This made me a little nervous, but we fixed it and off we went.

The trip was uneventful after this. Just a lot of driving. We were making great time, and I thought we could get past Atlanta by 10pm and drive straight through. The only problem. Well, there were 2 problems. 1) Snow. Fayetteville got 6 inches of snow. Go figure right. It never snows, but when I want to move home, we get 6 inches. So the roads are icy and this might be a problem when we get close. 2) Mike. We get right outside of Atlanta and he wants to stop for the night. He's tired and says that if we drive through the night it will mess up his sleep pattern, and he wants to work on Thursday and doesn't want to be all messed up. I'm pissed, but whatever. Fine I say. So I get past Atalnta and we stop. Its 1130 eastern time. The room cost me $80 after taxes. Mike wanted to get up at 5am and leave my 5:30am. So that means I paid $80 for only 6 hours!!! Well, we get on the road and Mike drives. Then we stop after a few hours and I drive. Then we stop again and he takes over. Its 10:30am All of a sudden I hear Mike say "oh shit!" and then he pulls over on the side of I-95. We are 85 miles from Fayetteville in Florence SC. I'm asking him what is going on. Betty is smoking he says. So we both jump out of the UHAUL and run to see what is going on. Sure enough, there is smoke and oil pouring from Betty. I pop the hood, and since Mike is a wimp, open it up to see what is going on. There is oil everywhere on the left side of the engine, and its pouring from under the truck. I'm freaking out! So I call mom to get the # for the tow truck. Since there is no way we can tow it anymore, since we have no clue what is wrong. Its going to be an hour wait the lady says. No problem. Well, Mike didn't want to wait, and he wants to leave the truck attached to the tow dolly on the side of the road. Hell no! I say. I tell him I am not leaving my Betty here on the highway, especially since we don't even know what's wrong with her. I also tell him that its not like we have anywhere we need to go. But Mike was in a hurry because he wanted to be home at a decent hour so he could relax before going to work the next day. What a jerk! I was so mad at him. Here I am paying for everything for him since he was supposed to be here to help me out. The whole purpose of him going to New Olreans was to help me move back to NC. He knew it would take some time to do all of this, but now he's in a big hurry to get back to Raleigh. He wasn't even scheduled to work on Thursday, but just wanted to go in and make some extra money.

Anyways, the tow truck driver gets there and looks at Betty and says "you blew the transmission. That is transmission fliud all over the place. You should have towed it from the rear, since its rear wheel drive. Since you towed it from the front, the back tires were turning, and that meant that your transmission was still running. That was going to happen eventually, I'm surprised it lasted this long." So, he tells me I will need a new transmission, about $2,000. He asks what do I want to do with it. Its gonna cost $60 a day to keep it in the yard at the tow truck company. Or he could tow it back to Fayetteville at $3 a mile. Or, he would buy it from me since it was already gone. $800 he would give me. I told him to keep it for now, I will sell it to him, but let me take care of the insurance first and talk to UHAUL. He was really nice, and said he would keep it at his house and it would be safe and free. Remember, my grill is still attached to the back of this thing. There's no room for it in the UHAUL, so it stays with Betty for now.

So, now we have to drop off the tow dolly since we can only drive 45mph with it empty. Mike tells me to find a UHAUL so we can drop it off. I call them and they tell me that its gonna be extra since its not the dropoff location specified on the contract. I'm so mad at this point I tell her whatever, and we go to drop it off. The manager was awesom e and took the dolly for free, he was glad to have it, he needed some he said. He gave me great advice on how to deal with UHAUL since they killed Betty. Once we dropped off the trailor, we were on our way back to Fayetteville. In the meantime I am on the phonw with UHAUL telling them the situation. The manager in LA told me that he was really sorry and that he would do everything he could to fix this problem. Then I call the insurance company and put in a claim. Oh how I love dealing with those idiots.
So we are still on our way back to Fayetteville and I am ready to just offload the UHAUL and chill for a bit. However, Mike didn't want to help me offload the truck, he said it would take hours and he just wanted to go home to Raleigh. So, I had to switch vehicles and drive 2 hours to Raleigh to drop him off, and then 2 hours back. By the time I got home it was 6:30pm! I was exhausted. What a horrible day. I think that my friendship with Mike is over. I mean with friends like this, who in the hell needs enemies. Sometimes I wonder.

Thank God we made it home safe and nothing really bad happened. At least Betty is replacable, I am not!

It was great to see mom again and to be home in NC again. Even though my day was horrible, it was nice to relax with mom and just chill.

More on what happened with UHAUL and the VA to come.......