I'm home! Hooray! While I'm sad to leave the beautiful California weather behind, I am so happy and relieved to be home. Gosh life is easier here...well except for the whole unemployment thing, but let's not dwell on that right now. :) Here's how it all went down...
My dad and my sister arrived in Burbank on Wednesday, October 20th to help with the move. I had all sorts of fun stuff planned, but most of it got thrown out the window due to last minute packing, cleaning and general exhaustion. Oh and the weather in CA that week was kinda crummy. We did a few things in Burbank, but mostly packed boxes and staged all our crap so it was easy for the movers to load up. The original plan was for the movers to arrive on Friday and we'd take off Saturday morning. Well, we decided that if we were able to leave Friday afternoon then we should take advantage of it.
So, the movers arrived around noon on Friday and were immediately impressed that all our stuff was packed and ready to go. Apparently, they encounter quite a few people that are still packing stuff while the movers are working. That makes no sense to me, I like to have everything prepared. Anyway, they said that they would be done in about 2-3 hours instead of the 4-6 they had planned! Ha, good thing because we were planning all along that it would only take 2 hours so we could get going. They got everything loaded and were on their way. All the while we were trying to clean so the apartment was spotless by the time they were done loading. We touched everything up one last time, dropped our keys off at the leasing office and were on the road home by 330pm Friday afternoon. (Side note: We decided we didn't want to wait for the apartment people to come to do the final walk through so we just left. I fully anticipate them keeping every penny of our security deposit for one lame reason or another whether we were there or not, so we just left. This will probably bite me in the ass later which might result in a big ranting blog post about it. Fun!)
So 330pm on Friday in LA means rush hour traffic on basically every highway in every direction. Well, ALL DAY on Fridays means rush hour traffic in LA. We were anticipating some delays and while we got stopped here and there along the way, it wasn't as bad as I thought it would be. We maybe lost an hour total sitting in traffic. Our goal was to make it to Mesquite, NV by that night - 5 hours from LA. We rolled into Mesquite at about 930pm. Driving through the desert at night kinda sucks and I wouldn't recommend it. It is super dark! Anyway, we arrive at the hotel, grab some burger king and settle in for the night.
Saturday morning we were up early hoping to be on the road by 7am. This was the long leg of the journey, about 11 hours, plus we lose an hour due to the change in time zones. Well after packing up, checking out and gassing up we were on our way at about 745am. Rain was forecasted all along the way through to Denver and as we drove through parts of Utah we were rained on some, but experienced lots of splash back. Not fun when you are following another car all the way home. Evan and I drove our cars out of LA on Friday and for the first 2 rainy hours of Saturday. Then we switched and my dad and sister got nothing but blue skies and sunshine while they drove the next 6 hours or so. Cheaters.
We stop in Grand Junction for lunch at about 2pm and switch drivers. Here come the mountains! More rain...a lot of it this time. Then a break in clouds as we approached Eagle county. Then we start getting some gray clouds...wet roads...and at the top of Vail Pass...SNOW! UGH! I hate, no loathe, driving in snow with every fiber of my being. And what better way for the state to welcome us back then to have us drive through it on our way in. Really, it wasn't that bad. Just a little bit on the road, but the mountains were completely covered with the white stuff. So I was the loser going about 40 mph (partly because my Taurus and large hills/mountains don't get along that well) with Evan following behind. Luckily as we got to Frisco things cleared up and there was no more snow the rest of the way. However, by the time we got past Idaho Springs the sun had set and it was now pitch black. Blech. Curving roads, down sloping grades and lots of people's bright lights blinding you at every curve made driving the last hour and a half really crappy.
Then the bright lights of Denver appeared on the horizon and we were almost there! Home was not far and I couldn't wait! We pulled into my dad's house at 730pm Saturday evening. YAY!! We unloaded the cars, dropped my dad off and headed to my sisters where we would be staying for the week. We eat pizza, relax and play with our super excited 2 year old niece and enjoy being home!
Flash forward to this past Thursday when the movers arrive with all our stuff. Since we still have a tenant renting our house till the middle of the month, my dad generously allowed us to store all of our stuff in his garage. Moment of truth...our stuff made it! Kinda. All of our stuff is here, but I'm concerned about some of our stuff, mainly every box marked fragile. It seems as though the crew that loaded our stuff in CA either didn't give a crap about our boxes or had no idea what the word "fragile" meant, because our boxes are kinda beat to hell. A lot of them are bulging, gashed, ripped and even a few are partially crushed. In fact, I witnessed every box marked fragile come out of the truck with at least one super heavy box on top of it. One box of all glassware from our china cabinet was one of the boxes where the top was totally crushed. I haven't opened any yet to check the damage because 1) I don't want to have to repack the boxes for when we move back into our house and 2) I'm kinda scared of what I'll find and don't really feel like being pissed off at the moment.
So here we are! I am soooooo happy to be back. Now I'm just waiting till I get a job and we move into our house to breathe that final sigh of relief. Oh, I'd also say that I'm totally stoked to watch the Broncos on tv again, but after that game with Oakland I'm not sure I want to watch anymore games. Ouch.
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