Well...we are about two months behind in blogging...so get ready for a Draeger rush over the coming days! We finally said "good bye" to the east coast in late July. It was extremely difficult to leave all the people we have called family for so long, but it was a needed change for us. The move didn't start well at all. When I went to pick up the truck, I was told that I wouldn't be able to get it until 1pm, but the movers were coming at 11am. A lady at Pep Boys haphazardly rented me the truck and I ended up getting a car trailer instead of a car dolly - which is quite a bit longer. Overall, I got the truck an hour late and the total length of the beast ended up around 37 feet...Wowsa!
Here I am, proud man with the truck!
Our last DD stop before we hit the road:(
What's that you say? There's a thunder/lighting storm in the middle of no where in New York? Oh, and a tornado warning?!?! Well then....I think its about time that your trailer tire explodes. So here's what happened. We're driving along and Sarah notices that a semi truck is pacing us. We look over and he's motioning to the back of the truck mouthing "You have a flat tire!" Obviously we pull over and here's what we see...
As you can imagine...that sucks. A few minutes later, we find out from Sarah's mom that there is a tornado warning in the area. We are literally in the middle of no where. Meanwhile, I'm on the phone with Budget. They are going to contact the closest tire repair place and have them meet us to fix the flat. They hang up and tell me that they will notify me when they find someone who can come. THEN, the floodgates opened up. It was ZERO visibility around us and we are parked on the side of I-69. I decided that I needed to go get the flares and light them so that no one plows into us while we're sitting there. I jumped out and was drenched by a ridiculous wall of rain. I got the flares out of the trunk and spent about five minutes trying to light them. No go. I was complete soaked through and just got back in the truck. We just had to wait for the repair man to show up.
Eating some chips.
Here he is. This guy came out in the middle of the storm and with two pry-bars he removed the old tire and put a new one on. It only took him about 20 minutes to get us on the road again and he was very nice. We got back on the road and found out that a tornado touched down and ripped some roofs off of buildings about five miles behind where we were stuck. We ended up getting to Elyria OH about three hours late. We slept for 7 hours and got right back on the road. The trip from OH to MI went smoothly, but we got round two of the storm literally as we exited the interstate into Grand Rapids, MI. We had to check-in to our apartment and unload the car from the trailer in another ridiculous downpour.
In the end, we are happy with our apartment, despite a few quirks. I have a good commute to work and it's nice to be Sarah's family. We have taken on the yard work and odd jobs for one set of grand parents, but Sarah's been pretty sick so we haven't spent a lot of quality time with people yet. That'll change soon though:)
