A lot to catch you up on. I can summarize the last few days for you.

MOVERS DAY: Movers started later than planned due to some last-minute shuffling of their teams/vehicles. As we waited at Rob’s, the co-owner of his house (the man) was literally building the front porch and the city was LOUDLY breaking holes in the street and digging holes all around. The moving truck parked next to a pair of busy construction vehicles. The owner was laying down boards within a foot or two of where the movers proceeded to remove all the furniture.

So anyway the movers came to both our places and got all our stuff outta’ there. The lead guy claimed that we had done the best “non-professional” job of packing he’d ever seen and had specific details of things we had done right! You betcha’ we did and also I take pride in the effort I spent to collect a hundred or so boxes from the recycle bin in my apartment building over the last 2 years: worth it!

Then we stayed at a hotel in downtown Minneapolis overnight and guess what the room number was? 612, which is the Minneapolis area code!

MOVE-OUT DAY: Rob got a nice surprise when the owner of the cleaning service he hired met the other homeowner (the woman). They were like two peas in a pod as they both knew the ins and outs of how to get a place clean. I’m sure they bonded over the pitfalls of self-cleaning ovens and the how to clean baseboards. It was a relief since he had been worried that the cleaners may not pass the incredibly high standards set by the homeowner. Rather, she was asking for her card!!

At my place I found it ironic that the only thing that didn’t readily exit the apartment was the Comcast cable which required the maintenance guy to use a wrench on to disconnect it from the wall. Comcast causing trouble until the end! Resistance is futile: I cancel my subscription!!

One thing that got way too much attention was my chocolate. I had a box of many bars of my favorite (88%) dark chocolate and I feared that if it wasn’t kept cool it may melt in the car! So we setup a little cooler just for my chocolate. We had a few beers left that I threw in there and some carrots. More on that later.

DRIVING DAY ONE: We left after lunch as soon as our “walkthroughs” were over. It went OK except that I happened to drive ahead of Rob (in leader position) and my GPS inexplicably spoke incorrect directions - completely not matching the route we were supposed to drive!! I had to call him when traffic lightened up to ask him if I was on the right road. I was, but later on I exited when the sign said “35” to the right but that was Business 35 not the Freeway 35 so of course I messed that up. Naturally, I nominated Rob to lead the way on the rest of our trip. We stopped in Osceola, Iowa for the night and I was thrilled with my dinner which was a baked potato with toppings, asparagus, and a couple of Toppling Goliath Pseudo Sues which are made in Iowa and are AMAZING.

By the way, the previous weekend we had an overnight drive to Iowa and I kid you not, there was a lake or broad river with a whole bunch of pelicans in it. I saw them on the trip out and the trip back and they were pelicans!

DRIVING DAY TWO: I was too tense and tired to plan ahead on podcasts and just kind of played radio on the drive. The whole country seems to want to hear Sweet Child ‘O Mine a lot. We stopped for lunch in the most desolate place you can imagine in the middle of Kansas which apparently was TallGrass Prairie. We had a fast food chicken sandwich and just marveled at how weird it all was. I dropped a couple of my carrot sticks in the parking lot and I bet they are still there and will be forever? Unless a tornado whisks them away there’s nothing to eat them and but let’s say there are birds they probably wouldn’t recognize them as it’s not an Arby’s Buffalo Chicken Sandwich & fries.

There were some severe thunderstorm warnings around, we did see lightning, we did have high winds, but we stuck with it and basically remained on the fringe of these storms. Phew.

South of Oklahoma City we called it quits for the day and had dinner at a Buffalo Wild Wings. What a shock to discover that the ENTIRE BAR was SMOKING and the sub-par remaining part of the restaurant was for the NON-SMOKERS. Yikes!! Also a guy was wearing a cowboy hat just like regular.

In general hotels were OK but neither of us slept great. Just too pooped out, stressed, wound up, and all that stuff. I wore my noise reduction headphones to sleep with which was good but very uncomfortable. I am still getting up at 4:15 so until that stops I’m still going to be fuzzy.

Seen before starting our 3rd, and last, driving day. YES!

DRIVING DAY THREE: Can we just get there? I had accumulated 3 hotel apples by now. Note that hotels always have raisin bran as a cereal option. Finally, I was mourning the loss of ALL MY CHOCOLATE! Somehow, despite putting ice in a ziploc bag and all the chocolate bars in ziploc bags, water had seeped into the ziplocs and I had to throw it all away. (Rob gently pointed out I had put the top of the cooler on wrong. Classic.) Profound sadness.

That was all boring, I realize now, because what comes next is ****THE BEST****! That’ll be the next post.

* Why in the world are people listening to this song still? U.S. Radio stations seems to like it.