Wednesday, Jun. 08, 2005 - 5:12 p.m.

Someone remind me again why I did this???

So, I am here in Colorado, semi-settled, gainfully employed (almost) and going apeshit with boredom from being out of work for over a month. JQ got a job within a week of moving here... go figure! The man who was searching for employment for almost two months, in Rhode Island... finds a job at the hospital (working security) within the first week of moving here. Me, I've been the one going on interview after interview and I'll just be starting my job on the 15th. (I did have a temp job that I worked for about a week, but due to lack of communication and a whole slew of mess ups, I stopped working there... which will be written about in a later entry)
Considering everything that's been happening, and the length of time I was away, I'm going to try to get everything written about without boring everyone too much... especially myself. So I'm going to write separate entries for every week I was gone, although some may be longer than others, I figure I don't need a five hour long entry.
We head back to April 29th, to the last entry I made, where I wrote we should be leaving around 10:30 AM. Yeah, whatever... do you think my luck would be anything but shitty?? The car dolly thingy we had to tow our car on was broken. And not just kinda broken, "we can maybe try to make it work, cross your fingers and lets go" broken... it was beyond hope. We had to call road side assistance and we hadn't even left our fucking street! Needless to say, we did not leave on Friday as planned. Five separate parts had to be replaced before we could even hook our car up to the piece of shit hunk of metal with wheels. JQ and I had to sleep on the floor of our empty apartment, on the living room floor, covered in coats, because anything warmth giving, soft, and/or comfortable was already packed/crammed into the back of a 17 foot moving truck. Yeah, hey, and no food either. I had cleaned out the refrigerator before 8 am that morning. So, no food, nowhere to sleep, no creature comforts... thank GOD I hadn't drugged the cats like I had planned on doing, right before we were supposed to load the car onto the dolly thingy. But nevertheless, it got done, we waited until around 5 am Saturday morning, and headed off into the great wide country.
Oh, if only that were the end of our escapades...
Let me just tell you, driving over the Appalachian Mountains at 25 miles an hour, in a 17 foot rental truck, with a car dolly towing another car IS NOT A PLEASANT EXPERIENCE!! And anyone that says it is, is a liar! We drove for 15 hours that first Saturday, trying very hard to keep our spirits up, and desperately trying to not burst into tears every time we gassed up and forked out another $60.00. And the tolls, holy moley... we were charged for the truck and the dolly and our car... every single toll. I don't think we paid less than $10 bucks at any toll we passed. I left Rhode Island with close to $500.00 in cash and ended up with about $80.00 when we finally got to Colorado... It was definitely an experience! Sunday was another 15 hours of driving, and according to Map Quest we should have been home... but I guess Map Quest didn't figure in for the absolutely horrible, piece of shit rental truck we got. You ever heard of weeble wobbles (or however it's spelled) Yeah, that's what we were, in a huge, gargantuan metal truck. If the wind blew too hard, we wobbled from side to side... if the ground changed from asphalt to concrete, we wobbled from side to side. If we actually got up to a descent speed (like above 45 mph) we wobbled from side to side! It was actually really scary! I called road side assistance on Sunday, finally, after an exceptionally scary wobble. JQ had to pretty much slam on the breaks, for fear we were actually going to tip over. We were told if the wobble got worse to pull over and call back. It was already worse enough for me, but we kept driving. Our trip had already been delayed one full day because of the stupid car dolly, I REALLY didn't want to delay it anymore by needing to off load our truck and load all our stuff into a new truck, on the side of the highway! And then we got to Iowa... oh lord! Now, Iowa is very flat, which is all good and fine, but its also very windy, which combined with the flat ground and our weeble/wobble metal truck, made for very difficult driving. Not to mention the wind was trying its damnedest to rip the metal siding off the truck.
Go in your kitchen, get two cookie trays, hold them over your head, AND BANG THEM OVER YOUR HEAD FOR 10 HOURS... then you'll get an inkling of what that was like. Oh, yeah, and sway from side to side while you're doing it...
This was actually when I finally called to complain. The very nice girl I spoke to even asked what the noise was that she was hearing, so if she could hear it, it was very very loud! She even thanked me for being so polite and told me if this had happened to her, she would have been, quote, livid. We had an "incident" report logged and I was told to call back when we finally got to our destination. We finally drove into Colorado, Monday evening, almost 10 hours over our estimated driving time. Budget Truck rental did refund 20% of our bill, but I don't think I'll be renting from Budget ever again. I have pictures from inside the cab, and it was filthy! (Just need to get the film developed)
In the mean time, I have a few of the pictures I took with the digital camera. They didn't come out too well, since I took most of them while the truck was moving, but you'll get the idea. Once I get all the rolls of film developed, I'll have a slew more to post. So enjoy:

This is just one of the 32 Budget Trucks we saw while driving. And, yes, it is passing us, because our stupid truck could only go about 55 miles an hour. JQ joked that all the good trucks must have already been rented out, that's why we got the weeble/wobble mobile.

Even though the drive was scary at times, the scenery was breath taking, and the sky did things I hadn't seen in over five years. Rhode Island didn't have much in the way of a skyline. I call this The Hand of God.

Just a little random house or shack or hut... I don't know, take your pick.

This was the most beautiful sunset I have ever seen in my entire life. I wish my digital camera could have done it justice. I'm hoping the pictures I took on film (that still need to be developed) came out better!

More sunset.

More sunset. I can't begin to explain the colors that were splashed across the skyline. I wish I could describe to you what colors we were seeing, because this picture doesn't pick up a tenth of the color that was there.

Just some pretty scenery. I think this was in Pennsylvania.

My momma and stepdad's new house in Colorado. They have all the landscaping finished now, with some really pretty flowers, so I need to get a few more up to date ones.

That's all for now... tomorrow starts with May 3rd, our day of unpacking. I know you can hardly wait. hehehee.
Anyway, its nice to be settled and getting back to some normalcy, so until we read again...