Whirlwind

It's been a hectic few days. Friday was beginning stages of packing, Saturday was a big garage sale day from 6 am to 11 and then more packing and cleaning. Sunday was an attempted garage sale, it was supposed to be the fire sale where everything is insanely discounted and people buy it all by the pound. But it seems like sundays are not good sale days in Ahwatukee. We had probalbly a dozen people stop by in the three hours we were open. Tay was kind of bummed we didn't get more sales, but then he posted a bunch of stuff on craigslist and it was a selling bonanza. People drove across town to pick up a $10 knickknack.

At 7:30 monday morning we picked up the U haul. We got a 14 footer and it feels really big, driving along. Terrible fuel economy. One bench seat in the cab. No cd player. Air conditioning definately yes. Then at 8:30 am the movers came. They were fast, efficient, and good. They were there to help mom, but helped us out too. They lent us the dolly and when we were trying to wrestle the matress on the dolly, one of the guys just picked it up and carried it on his back and put it in our u haul. We finished loading in the late afternoon as Tay fielded calls from craigslist. That afternoon, in the empty house, we vacuumed and replaced the nice appliances mom bought with the crappy appliances that came with the apartment.

Tay and Brittany went out to dinner at a local pizza place, and mom picked up a last run to Filiberto's. I got a pollo asado burrito and Saori got a fish burrito. After Tay and Brit came back, we all lay down on the empty carpeted living room floor and watched two episodes of Community on the big drop down projector screen that came with the apartment. It was really nice for all of us to lay there watching the TV, although it was a shame that the show was so unwatchable. The characters were unlikable and artificial, and the lead characters were just stupid and obnoxious. At the end of the night, Brittany went home to sleep and we said our goodbyes.

Saori and I slept in the living room, lying on our yoga mats. Tuesday morning was a whirlwind. We got up early, finalized cleaning, while Zara cowered in mom's closet. Suki got out of the way by stashing herself on top of the refrigerator. Mom and I moved the rest of the garage sale stuff out to the patio for the Salvation army to pick up, and everyone finished packing up the small belongings. With the luggage, we filled that U haul to the door and nearly up to the ceiling. The house agent came by and did the walk through with mom at 7:30 and shortly after, mom's cab arrived, and we had barely time for a quick hug before she was gone, on the road to the airport with Zara. And that was it. It was just me, Tay, Saori, and Suki in an empty house. We left shortly thereafter.

The U-haul has a pretty generous cab, which sat the three of us pretty comfortably. We've got the most important amenity- air conditioning, and not much else. No GPS, no CD player, just glorious AM/FM radio and a cigarette lighter outlet. Tay in the driver seat, Saori in the middle, I rode shotgun with Suki in her carrier on my lap.

We stopped for gas and coffee on our way out of town. Tay drove out- which I thought was kind of fitting as the leader of this expedition. He drove all the way to Holbrook. We drove out along the beeline, which let us both avoid the miserable I-17 drive up to Flag and the really bad inclines. The truck was pretty good, actually, we only had to engage the lower gears once or twice to control our ascent or decent.

Gassed up and grabbed a bite to eat at the A&W in Holbrook. After Suki never stopped howling from her carrier, we wised up to how hot the floor was where we'd sat her carrier and from then on, held her carrier on our lap. It was a beautiful ride up to Holbrook. The lowland desert of the valley gives way to the rocky, mountainous deserts to the northwest, and we rolled through to the higher deserts until it gave way to the rim country, with the forests of towering pine and green cliffs of the mogollion rim. We pressed onward and upward, finally cresting the rim and entering the high desert plains of the northern Arizona plateau.

The rest of the day we drove to Albuquerque, where the picturesque and interesting portion of the driving scenery ended. I finished the day as the driver, and we pulled into the same Red Roof in we stayed at last year. The first room was filled with flies, so Saori went down and demanded a different room. The second room smelled mildly of ass, but that was the last room available, so we took it anyway and let Suki roam around after we'd stopped up the gaps in the bed boards to prevent her from seeking refuge under the beds. We were all tired, so we called a cab to drive us to Sadie's for dinner. Great dinner- really spicy in a good way, asado enchiladas, margaritas, and delicious chips and really good salsa. Taylor demonstrated the two ways to eat Sopapillas to Saori who'd never seen them before. The first involved drizzling honey on the outside, the second involved poking a grubby finger hole and blindly filling it with the honey bottle, so you would wind up with a massive amount of honey flowing around the inside of the Sopapilla. Cabbed it back to the hotel and we all crashed.

Up the next morning bright and early, tasted the hotel coffee, and immediately checked out in search of decent coffee. Filled up again with gas and got to it. The upside of the truck having a 37 gallon tank is that it holds a lot of gas. Unfortunately, it also means Tay is forking over about $60-$80 every time we fill up which is about twice a day. The price we pay for gas has ranged from $3.89 a gallon, when we were desperate in the middle of nowhere, Texas, down to $3.27, a few hours drive away. We finally got into Grandma Perkins' house around 6pm wednesday, and she welcomed us with pulled pork sandwiches. We pretty much passed out early after our long day of driving.