What do you do at 5:00 in the morning, when a cold, wet nose presses against your elbow and you hear a slight wimper? Normally, I'd mumble something like "you've got to be kidding me", roll over and go back to sleep. With Tuck....who had ridden 3,200 miles and never made a peep....you pat him on the head, scratch his soft as velvet ears and get up. Absolutely. His time zone clock is off and so is mine. He still thinks it's 8:00 and it's time to go out, sniff every branch, do his business and then....being the lab that he is....scarf some food out of the bushes. That's my boy. No one was up but another hotel guest walking her shepherd. It's always comforting to know there are other crazy people out there.
So, I digress. Yesterday was the great unloading of The Beast. We fueled up the Penske to get ready to turn it in and drove to the storage unit. We'd had our first real breakfast since leaving Florida (courtesy of the Northern Queen Inn dining room) and we're feeling pretty good. The weather looked a little "iffy". It was overcast, with a very slight drizzle, but the wind was gone. So far, so good.
Getting off the exit in Grass Valley (another really cool town about 5 miles away), Claudia led us with her trusty IPhone GPS to find the storage facility where we had rented two units. We found the address and saw the entrance sign, but no large, spread out storage unit. Hmmm, wrong address? Nope, we'd found it alright. But, we had both forgotten, this was a mountain town. There are NO large, flat as a pancake, easy to drive around, storage facilities. That was Florida. This is California in the mountains. Claudia was in front and called me. The news was not good. The first thing I heard was "you've got to be kidding me". Uh-oh. She turns at the sign and looks up, and up, at the storage units perched atop the hill. Trust me, it gets better. It's the Driveway from Hell. There are switchbacks you had to negotiate to get there. Fun in a go-cart. In trucks, not so much. Once you conquered those, you arrived at the office and the electric security gate. Claudia punches in the super-secret code we are hiding from the Russian hackers and moves through the gate, only to find out that she has to make another hard, almost 90 degree turn to her left. Somehow, she makes it before the gate comes down. Then, it was my turn. I punch in the code and start through, only to find out that the Penske won't make the turn. The rear wheels hit the steel pole guarding the code pad and I come to a rapid stop. Are you freakin' kidding me? Keep in mind, this is not only a storage facility, it's also a Penske drop-off site. We were pissed. And the manager of the place (a guy we're sure was pretty stoned), just sat and watched us through the office window. The two guys we hired to help us unload show up and they too are amazed at the turns and the clueless manager.
About that time, a lady approaches my truck. Another manager there to help? Nope, she and her family are there to unload, guess what....another 26' Penske truck and her Dad is right behind me, getting ready to negotiate the same turn. Bless her heart, she stands in front of my truck and directs my right front wheel up, over and off the curb, which we both figure out at the same time is the only way to get the front of the truck over far enough to the right so the rear wheels on the left side will clear the poles guarding the "code machine". Meanwhile, the gate keeps coming down (it has no safety mechanism to stop it) and the guy auditioning for the remake of "Reefer Madness" has to keep hitting the "up" button in his office. Honestly, you can't make this up. I finally make it through and Claudia walks up to me pointing up the hill to yet another switchback (don't worry, we're going to try and post photos of this). This building, it turns out, is where our first unit is located. I put the truck in the lowest gear, negotiate the turn and park in front of our unit. The guys work by the hour, so we're ready to get to work. They're nice, we like them immediately. Up goes the door to the unit and....down comes the rain. Oh well....get 'er done.
I won't bore you with the details of the two hour unloading of The Beast, except to explain that the truck had been loaded in Florida with the furniture in first and everything else behind it. Now that we're unloading it, we need to get to the furniture first to pack the unit correctly, which meant...we had to sit a lot of stuff out in the rain while we unloaded enough stuff to get to the furniture and the boxes that we wouldn't need until we find a rental house. A lot of it got wet, including the BMW, which hadn't seen a drop of water since I painted it. Long sigh.
We got the truck unloaded and then reloaded everything that had been sitting out in the rain. This pile consisted of the boxes that would be stored with the two cars, the BMW, all my tools, the drill press and the air compressor, etc. But oh, it gets better. Our second storage unit, it turns out, is located on the next level up (remember, this is a "tiered storage facility". Since I was facing the wrong way and the other Penske truck being unloaded blocked my way forward, the only way to get the truck up there, was to back it part of the way down the hill I came up, using the air brake to keep me from rolling backwards and then make another 90 degree turn to the right up to the other unit. I think maybe the guy in the office had it right....maybe you do have to be stoned to do this. Anyway, I made it and pulled up in front of our second unit. Up goes the door and Claudia immediately realizes that we had unloaded all the furniture in the wrong unit....25' one....which was supposed to be the one reserved for the cars, tools, etc. Whoops....a few really bad words fly. We now had enough room for the BMW, all the tools and the Isetta, but not enough room for the old Volvo (we need a name). Old Sven, or whatever we end up calling him/her, will have to be stored somewhere else.
At 12:30, we were done. The Penske truck was empty, the Isetta and the BMW were safely tucked away with all my tools. We. Were. Exhausted. The good news is that we think everything made it safely cross country (we did see a few boxes that looked crushed), except for my old glass jug full of corks that we'd been saving for about 35 years. In the waning moments of the move, I slid it out of the way to make room for the mattress and box spring and it dropped about an inch to the floor. Boom, it shattered. A long silence ensued between the four of us, as I realized that I'd just broken a jug from an old whiskey still I found while squirrel hunting. I had been protecting it since I was 16. That one hurt. Life goes on. It's just "stuff".
So, here we are at the end of what I'm going to call Chapter One. I hope those of you suffering through this enjoyed it. They say writing is therapeutic and I agree. It was quite a road trip.
In Chapter Two, we're going to take some pictures of where we're staying, views of downtown Nevada City and surrounding areas and our search for a long-term rental, where we can....you guessed it...unload the storage units and move everything to the new rental home. No problem....we're getting good at this.
Cheers!