We pulled out of Raleigh, NC on June 25th, 1997. Jonathan and I were in my car and mom and dad in his truck. They were pulling the U-haul trailers I had rented. There was stuff piled in my car, in the trailer, and in the bed of the truck. We were good to go. The plan was to take 3 days to drive the ~21 hours to Minneapolis. Mom and dad would drive back the 29th and we'd spend a few nights in a hotel before moving into our new place on the 1st. Simple.
Yeah, right. Remember the story of how the vikings would burn their ships when they landed someplace? Conquer or perish, with no chance for retreat.
I'm pretty sure we were somewhere in West Virginia, going up and down mountains in Appalachia, when my car's head gasket blew. We were lucky that the engine kept running long enough to reach the top of that hill where there was a gas station. We pulled off and realized there was nothing for it. We offloaded everything out of the car into the trailer or the truck. Dad talked to the owner of the station and arranged to leave the car there and he'd come back to pick it up and tow it back home to sell. Fine. All taken care of.
Except that dad's truck was a two-seater... So what choice did we have? Jonathan and I joined the remainder of our belongings in the back of the truck. It's like the south was getting one last dig in before I escaped, forcing me to enter Yankee territory like something out of the Beverly Hillbillies. We spent the rest of the day riding in the back of the truck, all the way to Indiana.
At which point we were saved from our predicament by my dad's truck deciding to drop its transmission on the highway, south of Indianapolis. We managed to get a tow truck to drag us to a shop and hotel. In the dark of late evening, we rolled into Seymore, IN where we would be marooned for 2-and-a-half days.
The next morning, dad set about pulling some kind of success out of the wreckage of this trip. He knew a guy in NC who agreed to drive to IN and pick up his truck to tow back. We set to looking for a U-haul truck to pull the U-haul trailer the rest of the way to MN. We finally found one, seems like it was the only one in town - a 15' truck to pull a 10' trailer. At least we'd have plenty of space.
Dad's friend arrived on our second day in Seymore. He and his some had driven straight through from Asheville and they were going to hook up dad's truck, turn right around and head back. And mom was going with this so she could make it back in time for something she had going on. (She wouldn't actually set foot in Minnesota until 2007 when she visited Jacob and me with my Uncle Bruce.) Once they left it took another day to get the truck squared away and then dad, Jonathan, and I set out for MN.
We made the entire rest of the way from south of Indianapolis, past Chicago, all the way to St. Paul in one very long day. I think we arrived at the hotel about 2 in the morning on July 1st. We checked in, slept, and got dad in a taxi to the airport to fly home bright and early (later) that morning.
Driving an enormous truck and trailer combo into downtown Minneapolis, right to Loring Park where we have to try and find a way to unload was not the way I envisioned things happening. We ended up driving around until we found a grocery store with a large enough parking lot where we could take everything out of the trailer and put it all into the truck. That meant we could go drop off the trailer and only have to maneuver the giant truck behind the apartment building where we could access the freight elevator. No problem.
Of course, the afternoon of July 1, 1997 saw tornado sirens and one of the year's most serious thunderstorms. But then, what could have been more appropriate?
Yep, all the boats got burned. Even before we got to shore. So it's a good thing that what I found here was My Place (tm). Nothing more, nothing less.
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