M2NYi30ES – Before we could even start

The first step of moving, the joyless drudgery of packing, is usually the worst part.  Although it is not creative or interesting, you still have to think it through and pay attention to what you’re doing or you’ll just have a big mess on your hands.  Packing also takes place far in advance of the move so that it is impossible to feed off the enthusiasm that one might have for new places and new challenges while you’re doing it.

In this case, we would leave a three-bedroom house with a full basement and move into a 700-square-foot apartment on the Upper East Side of Manhattan.  We figured that only about one-third of our possessions would fit into the apartment, so we had some serious choices to make.  We had to determine which third of our accumulated stuff would make the move, and what would happen to the other two-thirds.  These intense negotiations required much forethought, along with a few Faustian bargains, Hobson’s choices, and even a little of the wisdom of Solomon one hears so much about.

We at least had a free option for storage–my mother-in-law’s garage in Charlotte, NC.  Of course, that was 275 miles away from Charlottesville.  So, first we had to figure out what we needed to store, boxed-up non-essentials and furniture mostly, and then get it to Charlotte where it would lie in state, gathering dust, cat hair, and other filth for three years.

This trip to Charlotte was the first indication of just how badly things would go with this move.  We rented a truck for the trip, loaded it up, and ignorant of the way the stars had aligned against us, we took off.

My wife has a tendency to tailgate.  I saw her doing it just this morning on the way to work.  She says she doesn’t tailgate, so I’m guessing it’s a definitional thing for her.  She doesn’t actually tap the bumper of the car in front of her–that would be just plain rude–so she thinks she’s doing fine.  Well, as she followed me to Charlotte, she was “saving gas,” allowing herself to be sucked along in my draft.  That worked out OK until we found ourselves in Danville, VA, right on the North Carolina border.  I saw something in the road ahead, something metal and spiky, like those things they use to hold tent poles when they set them up on pavement.

You already know what happened, but maybe you’re having trouble imagining how bad it was.  She didn’t wreck the car or even run off the road, which was good, but the tire exploded, and the rim was shot.

Here beginneth the search for the last rim to fit a Geo Prism in Danville, VA.  We consulted a phone book and then started calling every junk yard and gas station we could find in Danville.  This was before people generally had cell phones and GPS units, so it was kind of quaint the way we talked on pay phones (remember those?) and got lost exploring the area.  To add the the fun, Danville is bisected by a river with only a few places to cross.  We got to know that town–and its bridges–pretty well.  Oh, and I was driving a fully loaded rental truck for the exploration mission.

We finally tracked down that last rim.  It wasn’t a perfect fit, but the guy at the junk yard thought it probably would work.  He pointed us toward a tire store, and the guy there even stayed a little late getting the tire on for us.  I guess we must have looked a little pathetic.  I know I was feeling that way, more than a little.  We drove back to the car, sitting forlorn and disabled on the side of the highway, put on the wheel, and began again, four hours late and feeling a little beaten down by the Fates that govern the movers of the world.  We were still two or three hours from Charlotte, and we still had a truck to unload, but no one had died, and no divorce papers had been filed, so it wasn’t the worst day ever.  We didn’t know that the worst day ever was lying straight before us.

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