Thank you, Bill Cosby, for that turkey of a movie, because without it I couldn't adequately express the essence of my move out to the Bay Area. It was a harrowing experience, and while I mostly take responsibility for it, it was hardly a solo effort. Rather it was the achievement of several people, and in anticipation of the Oscars I'd like to thank all those little people who contributed to my near breakdown. Names need not be named, but suffice it to say that extra work with a schedule that was moved up artificially makes for a move of Fatty Arbuckl-ian proportions.
The main stumbling block was the extra sorting I had to do as I packed up the house. There is nothing worse than having to sort through all the crap that other people had left in your home. It wouldn't be so bad if it were a roommate, because you can essentially throw away anything they leave. Unfortunately there are things that family members have left, and that you can't just toss, or else you'll hear from your mother. Or my mother - and you don't want to hear from my mother. So I'm sweating like a priest in a nursery school, trying to sort through things that aren't even mine, as well as put my own belongings together. It doesn't help that Phoenix is experiencing a cold snap that makes you think of the part of the refrigerator frequently referred to as "the crisper". Swinging between sweat, dust, and my own impression of iceberg lettuce, I managed to find a cold and have a fling with it during the course of my move.
Still, I managed to pack most of the house, which was made easier by the fact that I wasn't taking any of my furniture with me. Now that I am a big boy, I want to wear big boy pants and sit on a big boy couch that I didn't buy for $5 at the moving sale of some hapless frat boy. No, no, instead I want real furniture, that I buy and place in my house with care and some amount of thought. So, with the help of the Big Irishman, I managed to discard or donate the majority of my furniture, though ideally I would have put it all in the middle of the street and set it afire to release the soul of my old life and send it whatever Valhalla awaits. All that remained was to pack up my actual belongings and set out in my Uhaul truck with the car in tow. I started out at 10pm.
Luckily I had a friend who offered to drive up to the Bay with me, and since he'd worked there before I thought his presence might ease the move into the area. In true enough fashion though, my suspicions that the trip would either bring us together or lead to a grisly murder in the wilderness were well-founded. This was made more obvious, in retrospect, by my friend's personality and mein, a combination of Woody Allen, Larry David and George Costanza. I managed to do a fair bit of the driving, my companion beginning to doze off and paranoid about every warning light he saw on the truck's dashboard. The crowning moment for the first night of driving was the moment that he began to doze off and talk in his sleep.
Costanza: "Allllll right! Aaaallllllll right!"
me: "Yeah?" [looking over to see a sleeping Costanza]
C: "Whuh[snort]hrrrm..."
We arrived in the greater Los Angeles area around 4:30a and found a hotel, which was situated a little too close to a truck stop for my personal taste. A few hours sleep and fortified with the complimentary muffins (more like cupcakes) at the front we set out again, and in true slapstick fashion managed to get lost. Twice. At the same spot. Headed in what can only be described as a straight line. I could only laugh beneath all the seething, and take over the driving duties. The saving grace was the scenery in California's central valley, which was lush and green. As it was we arrived in the Bay Area in the nick of time, despite the fact that the truck handles like a dead cow on wake board. The closer we got, the more agitated Costanza got, which culminated in his insistence that I drop him off at the airport.
Now, you can call me paranoid, or crazy, but I did not relish the idea of driving a truck into the airport. Aside from the practical issues of navigating a 15 ft rental truck through the narrow traffic sluice ways of the average airport, there are other considerations. For instance, the fact that some people might take issue with a young Muslim man driving a full packed rental truck, towing a car, into an airport. This is the sort of thing that raises all sorts of flags and sets off all sorts of alarms, and I wasn't relishing the idea of being the cause. Fortunately it went relatively smoothly and I made my way to my new apartment, where I arrived in time to pick up my keys by 7p.
Since it was dark I only took a suitcase up and slept that night on the floor wrapped up in a jacket. I slept the sleep of the dead but woke up very early the next morning and immediately started unloading the truck. I was pretty much done by midday but decided to check my bank account to make sure the rent check I had given the lady was not going to bounce. I discovered that I was short by almost $500! Of course I called her and told her not to cash it just yet and she was ok with that, but I had to think quickly. I knew I had about $1000 saved up in my savings account, so all I needed to do was find the checkbook that I had made sure to take out of a box when I was in Phoenix. Of course I discovered that I had taken the checkbook out of hte box and then left in the house. La hawla! I needed the money right away in case the woman cashed the check, so I called up a friend and got them to wire me some money directly using Western Union. Usually I wouldn't ask for this kind of help but the situation was desperate and I knew that I would be getting money soon enough so I could pay them back in a couple of weeks. My friend called back about an hour later to confirm that the money had been sent, and I went to pick it up, but they showed no sign of it existing at all. So I called back and my friend called them to see what was up. It turns out that my name is on a government watch list (like father like son!) and I had to fax over my social security number and id so they could release the money. Thank you John Ashcroft you bastard, and the Patriot Act.
I finished unloading the truck and got ready to return it. I had to take it to San Jose (about 25 miles away) so I towed the car with me. I got terribly lost (of course) and missed a thousand turns. You can't really maneuver very well in the damned truck, so getting back to the correct turn off would take 20 minutes usually. What is it about this damned state that prevents them from having any visible street signs? After completing the 15 minute trip in about 2 hrs I dropped it off and took my car off the tow hitch. As it rolled back I started to brake and nothing happened. I was rolling very quickly back towards the street and after frantically pumping on the brakes for a few seconds they finally engaged. I parked it and it did the same thing, and it did the same thing AGAIN on the street. I had no choice but to drive back home, thinking that I was screwed because it was already Saturday night and there's no open mechanics on Sunday. After pumping the brakes at an intersection though they came back and have not gone out since. I will of course get them checked anyway, but I suspect there was something about an air bubble in the brake line that had travelled up during the towing, since the car was tilted up.