October 31, 2006
 
Ok, so "tomorrow" turned into "almost a week."  Stuff happens. 
 
Back to the move North...driving up through Pennsylvania was amazing as the foliage was exploding with color.  On one hand it made driving easier because there was so much to look at.  On the other hand, it greatly increased us straying into other lanes (hooray for the rumble strip!).  We're alive, so it's cool. 
 
Since we were very low on gas, we stopped at the first service station on the Mass Pike.  By now, we knew the drill on how to use the diesel pumps, so we pulled in, and I went inside to pay.
 
The guy at the counter annoyedly told me that the pump I was at was out of service (um, it would have been nice if he had put a sign saying this out on the pump), and to back up and go to another pump.  I tried to tell him that I couldn't back up because I was pulling a car trailer, but he just repeated himself for me to back up and find another.  Fine. 
 
I went outside and saw that my co-pilot was nowhere around, so I figured he went inside to get a soda or something.  I tried to back up, but because of the curve I had to go around just before I pulled in between the pumps, the trailer was jackknifing.  Ok, backing up wasn't an option.  The only thing I could do was go forward and loop around....except that when I turned to the left I noticed that I was going against traffic in the plaza. No problem, I would just go into the regular people car area, and connect back to the truck road in the back - except that not only did it not connect, but there was no place for me to turn around.  I kept going straight against the flow of cars that were by-passing the parking lot towards the non-truck gas islands way behind me. 
 
I started going slower since I was starting to run out of road, but then a glimmer of hope appeared.  I kept going a little bit further ahead (as I passed the "WRONG WAY" and "DO NOT ENTER" signs politely telling me I was trying to exit the enter ramp for the service station; the cars flashing their lights and honking at me was another gentle reminder as well), and was going to take a hard left turn to get back onto the truck road, but when I approached it, I saw there was no way in hell I could have done a 20-point turn in the truck even without the reverse-hating car trailer. 
 
So I sat there for a few minutes contemplating my non-existent choices, and becoming increasingly afraid that the 6 o'clock news tonight would feature footage from a helicopter of my moving truck blocking the service plaza ramp with the comment, "And after the break, some guy from Alabama caused a traffic nightmare when he couldn't figure out which way to exit the Lee Plaza on the Mass Pike.  What an idiot!"   
 
I got out and saw Pat walking across the vast parking lot and laughing at me.  When he left the store, he saw I was gone and thought "He left me here?!," but then saw the big yellow truck stuck facing the wrong way on the ramp at the far end of the plaza. 
 
It took a while, but we finally got out of there.  Pat stood on the edge of the road and waited until absolutely no cars were coming.  When he waived at me, I gunned the engine and drove as fast as I could (not very) and swung wide to the right, taking up both East-bound lanes (and then some) of the Pike.  I pulled over quick (to avoid the cars that had appeared over the horizon and were braking to avoid hitting me), picked up Pat, and off we went. 
 
If only that guy had put a sign on the pump.         
  
 
What I'm listening to right now:  The Get Up Kids - Mass Pike
 
 
 
October 25, 2006
 
Driving a big ol' truck was definitely a new experience.  The first thing you learn very quickly is that you need to take very wide turns otherwise you run over/hit stuff like curbs, walls, baby seals, etc.  Plus towing a car was a little disconcerting at times.  I'd look in the rear view mirror and think, "Geez, that car is really tailgating me...oh wait, that's mine."     
 
     
The cab was pretty roomy, but once you put two guys, two cat carriers, a litter box, a stack of cds, snacks, and a few small boxes of important things...well, it quickly gets cramped.  We didn't get much use out of the cds since we preferred listening to news programs on NPR.  We did, however, enjoy the new cd by Iron Maiden for the bulk of the drive, and then switched to Rock N Roll by Ryan Adams.  Good stuff.
 
We hit into a couple of snags with the truck.  The first one was trying to buy gas at a real truck stop.  After a couple of floundered attempts, we discovered how to get to the gas pumps, but then we had to wait in a big truck line.  Once it was our turn, we were confused by the gas pumps on each side.  The tank was on the passenger side, and there was a pump there, but it was just a pump.  No payment, no buttons, no nothing.  The pump on the driver's side did have all of the buttons, so we figured that once we swipe a card, we should be able to just get gas from the other side.  I swiped my card, and it said to go inside.  Uh, ok. 
 
I went in and up to the counter where a frizzy-haired woman named Lurleen asked me for my tucker's card (they have special cards?).  I said no, I was driving a moving truck and I didn't have a "trucker's card."  Obviously this was a newly-fangled problem for her so she had to get her manager.  Meanwhile, a line of grumpy trucker dudes started forming behind me.
 
She came back with her manager and got me set up for gas on my pump.  I went back out and Pat said that it wasn't working.  The screen still said "See attendant."  Grr.
 
I went back in and waited in line again.  I told Lurleen that it wasn't working, and she discovered that she accidentally activated the next pump with my card, meaning the next rig was going to get a free tank of gas on me.  She had to get her manager again to void that out transaction and do it for reals with my pump. 
 
I thanked her and finally went back to my pump...where Pat said it still wasn't working. 
 
After waiting in line for a third time, I got Lurleen to come outside.  Apparently, in order to use the other side of the pump, you need to remove the driver's side gas pump, put it on the ground, (which began to ooze diesel fuel all over the pavement), and then you can use the passenger side pump.  This was explained to us like, duh, it's common knowledge.
 
After we got the truck filled up, we were ready to hit the road again...but saw that we were blocked in by the truck in front of us.  I guess the common way to do things is to get your diesel, then pull your truck up enough to let the rig behind you get to the pump, and then go into the plaza to get dinner and hang out for a while.  For normal truckers, this works fine since it takes a good half an hour to fill their huge gas tanks.  The tank on our truck was only 30 gallons, so we were filled up and ready to go and ended up sitting and waiting for the guy in front of us to finish doing whatever he was doing inside the truck stop, come out, and go. 
 
Twenty minutes later (an hour and fifteen minutes after we first stopped for gas) we were back on the road, and better educated on the ways of the trucker.
 
Tomorrow:  Driving the wrong way on the Mass Pike.
 
 
What I'm listening to right now:  Echobelly - Everyone Knows Better
 
 
 
October 24, 2006
 
So yeah, I'm back in the Berkshires!  My whole trip started a smidge over two weeks ago when a good friend, Patrick (a former columnist on this site, and husband of a famous crafter), flew down to the Deep South to help me finish packing and head North.  Unfortunately, his plane was delayed for a day, but as soon as he landed, I whisked him away to the best touristy spot in the Huntsville area...Nashville!  I've often thought that the best part of Alabama is Tennessee and this time was no exception. 
 
The two-hour drive to Nashville was fun, and we were able to get some Powerball tickets (which I need to check and see if I won...I could be wicked rich and not even know it!) on the way.  Thank goodness it was just the two of us because if we had anyone else in tow, they would have been amazingly frustrated by me stopping every ten feet to take pictures of seeming random things, and Patrick stopping every other ten feet to check our proximity on his GPS device to the nearest GeoCache.  I'd never been GeoCaching before, but it was pretty fun (once we found stuff), and brought us to scary parts of the city we never would have normally seen had we stuck to the more touristy areas.
 
After a few hours of that, we headed back to Alabama and found a few caches hidden downtown.  It's kind of weird to watch Pat read his GPS because he'll be like "We are 30...20...10...ok, 3 feet from the cache," and a few minutes of searching shrubs later, voila!  There it is. 
 
After the caching, it was nothing but packing and loading the 24' moving truck for the next day and a half.  Man, we have a lot of shit.  On October 10th, we rolled out of the apartment complex Kari and I called home about five hours behind schedule.  It didn't help matters that MapQuest gave us a crappy, super-long way to get up to Chattanooga which added another two hours to the lateness we were experiencing (and I'm a wicked dummy for not going the way I knew).  It helped even less that I was driving a 24' truck, with Kari's Ford Ficus in tow behind it.  I did pretty good driving it and only hit a few curbs in the early parts of the trip.  It didn't take long for me to get the hang of being a trucker.  After all of the delays, bad directions, and inexperience in driving a giant truck through Alabama, Georgia, Tennessee, and half of Virginia, we (me, Pat, and two pissed off cats) finally arrived to the first hotel in around 2:30am.
 
Tomorrow:  The trucker life           
 
 
What I'm listening to right now:  Flogging Molly - The Kilburn High Road
 
 
 
October 23, 2006
 
                          
 
I'm back!  Actually, I arrived back in the Berkshires a little over a week ago, but I just got around to unpacking my computer.  Right now I'm happily uploading a bunch of pictures to my Flickr account.  More tomorrow.
 
 
What I'm listening to right now:  Bjork - Immature
 
 
 
October 6, 2006
 
If you're wondering why Kari's site hasn't been working all week, ask the folks at our crap-tastic web hosting company.  The most simple way to explain what happened is they apparently moved her site to a different server, and now they're having trouble getting it working again.  The full explanation involves several hour-long calls and, when we got sick of them giving us attitude and talking down to us on the phone, the remainder of the week was spent sending somewhere around a dozen emails back and forth with them.  Hopefully her site will be back to normal soon.
 
This will be my last update until I get up to Massachusetts and get settled.
 
Goodbye Alabama.  A, B, C-ya... 
 
 
What I'm listening to right now:  plus/minus - Trapped Under Ice Floes
 
 
 
October 4, 2006
 
Tonight when Kari was walking Baxter in the middle of town, they were startled by a big ol' bear rummaging through the dumpster of a local restaurant.  Baxter mistook the bear as an oversized badger, whereupon his Dachshund instincts kicked in, and he promptly ate the bear*. 
 
So today was my last day at work.  It was an odd mix of emotions, which I won't discuss since it would violate one of my major tenets of this website - don't talk about work; so I won't.
 
Never one to linger long on the past, I'm pushing forward and have turned into a packing machine.  My goal is to get everything packed up and ready by the time Patrick arrives at the local "international" airport (where the only international flight is a cargo route to the Bahamas).  If I achieve my goal, then Sunday will be spent up in the awesomeness that is Nashville.  If not, then Pat's going to be waiting at the airport for a long, long time for me to finish packing before I pick him up.  
 
 
*Actually, he didn't see it.  He was too busy fussing about it raining out to have even
noticed. 
 
 
What I'm listening to right now:  The Sheila Divine - Automatic Buffalo
 
 
 
October 1, 2006
 
So, I'm trying to sell something on Craigslist and I got this funny-ass email...
 
HELLO SELLER... AM KAUFFMAN JASON BY NAME,I GOT THE ADVERT OF YOUR ITEM ON THE WEB SITE WHICH I WILL LIKE TO PURCHASE FOR (BRITISH AMERICAN HOTEL ) FOR THERE CONFERENCE AND I ALSO WANT YOU TO TELL ME THE CONDITION OF THIS ITEM? AND WE ONLY MAKE PAYMENT WITH US CHECK TO SECURE FRAUDLENT....AND I WANT YOU TO GET BACK TO ME WITH THE PRICE OF THIS ITEM WITHOUT THE SHIPPING COST AND HANDLE TO (BRITISH AMERICAN HOTEL )..I WILL BE LOOKING FORWARD FOR UR PROMPT RESPONCE KAUFFMAN JASON. BEST REGARDS.
 
As I was letting the bolded, italicized, all-caps-ness of this masterpiece sink in, I wondered why they didn't just go all-out and underline it as well.  Heck, to make more of an impact they could have colored it pink and made it 72 point font size.  Actually, that would have been unprofessional.  He does work for a "(BRITISH AMERICAN HOTEL )", after all.
 
So I ended up writing him back...
 
HELLO BUYER KAUFFMAN JASON, AM McSELLERPANTS ERIC, I GOT YOUR MESSAGE THRU TEH INTERNETS TUBES. IT WOULD BE HAPPY ME TO SELL USED FURNITURE TO (BRITISH AMERICAN HOTEL ) FOR PAYMENT WITH SECURE FRAUDULENT CHECK.. I AM LOOKING THAT MY RESPONSE WAS PROMPT TIMELY FOR CONFERENCE AT (BRITISH AMERICAN HOTEL ) WHERE USED FURNITURE MUST LOW BE IN SUPPLY.  THANK UR FOR BEST REGARDING.  McSELLERPANTS ERIC.  
 
I sent my reply a couple of days ago and sadly, KAUFFMAN JASON hasn't responded yet.  That's ok, I'm sure he's pretty busy with his conference. 
 
Man, on a completely unrelated note, I love me some Achewood. 
 
 
What I'm listening to right now:  Scheer - Wish You Were
 
 
 
 
 

 

                                                                    © 2006 Eric Nixon.  All rights reserved.