If Corelyn or I owe you money, you are out of luck my friend, because we are gone. We departed from FIshersville, Virginia yesterday at about two in the afternoon, and arrived in Brentwood, Tennessee to make use of the “Nash-vegas” Allens’ overwhelming hospitality. We got in pretty late, so we had to sneak up to our bedroom, despite intense protestations from Boomer, whom I bribed to silence with a vigorous belly-rub. This morning, we’re grasping at our few precious hours of Jake-and-Natalie-and-Baby Brady-time, before heading out on the road again to continue our journey.
The story our departure only makes sense if you structure it as a series of disasters:
1. DISASTER ONE. We woke up at nine in the morning yesterday, sped down to the UHaul, and discovered that, despite Uhaul.com’s approval of our reservation, the trailer we had held for us was simply too much for our car. Now I dutifully informed the gentleman working at the gas station that I found his “lack of faith disturbing,” but for some reason, no amount of holding my hand out in front of my face and concentrating hard would make him begin to choke. I suppose the Force is weak with me right now.
2. DISASTER TWO. So now we have no trailer. We are informed that a 5′x8′ is the largest thing an insurance company will allow us to tow, and we are forced to abide by this. The clerk tells us that since it’s Sunday, all other UHauls will be closed, and the only 5′x8′ he has is scheduled to arrive at five o’clock in the afternoon. Not good. Then he actually calls the people with the trailer and they inform him that they actually intend to return it at nine o’clock. At NIGHT. I learned an important lesson right then: it doesn’t matter how loud you shout “SMITE HIM!” at the ceiling, sometimes God just doesn’t feel like it.
3. DISASTER THREE. We go home, and I call the UHaul office. After an eternity on hold, which the clerk at the gas station promised would happen, I get ahold of the regional office and I let the operator have it but good. A cool customer, she apologizes professionally and arranges a trailer for me in Harrisonburg, deflating the clerk’s claim that all UHauls are closed on Sunday (I KNEW he was a liar). Corelyn and I head out there, find the people to be very friendly, and get ourselves hitched up to a trailer in no time. Things seem to be looking up, until the attendants realize that the lights aren’t working, because someone screwed up the wiring. We can’t have this trailer.
4. DISASTER FOUR. Okay, okay, so we get a different one. This one is much newer, in much better shape. But not so fast: the right turn signal isn’t working, and after trying several different trailers, the attendants deduce quite correctly that the problem must be with our wiring. Crap. In spite of regulations against it, they let us go in exchange for a promise that we will get it taken care of, and we try to figure out a route home consisting only of left turns.
5. DISASTER FIVE. We get home and begin loading the trailer. Within ten minutes, it becomes a simple and irrevocable reality that our stuff will not fit in this tiny thing. When we made the reservation, we were expecting a bigger size, and now that we’re stuck with this glorified glove box, by the time we get the mattress and box spring inside, half of our storage space is gone. Spirits crash, morale erodes, and I recommend a five-minute break.
And then, quite simply, a Biblical miracle happens. We decide as a group to just start packing and see where we get, and a few hours later, everything we own is successfully stored away. Corelyn later observed that it reminded her of Jesus with the fish and loaves of bread. After many prayers of gratitude, we turn in for the night.
6. DISASTER SIX. The next morning, I get up and take the trailer to the place where our hitch was installed, and explain to them that we have a wiring problem. They dutifully fixed it, but I quickly noticed I was the laughing stock of the garage. Turns out, I had assembled the hitch wrong, and as a result our trailer was scraping angrily against the ground. Friendly guys that they were, they fixed it on the spot and hardly charged me, and then we were on our way.
7. DISASTER SEVEN. We had just gotten on the road, and locked up Cor’s mom’s house for good, when we remembered that Corelyn’s phone was still inside.
Are you seeing a pattern here?
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