Tue, 28 Feb 2006
Here’s part one.So we’re done moving in the snow. Somehow we finish just in time to have a quick lunch, hop back in our car and drive back down to Sacramento to pick up my mom at the airport. In fact, as we’re heading down the 80 we pass Mark and Dan in the Allied truck. They’re already headed back to San Diego. They should get there by midnight.
Meanwhile, we pick up my mom and my buddy Sean and head over to “The Pizza Place” in Auburn for lunch. You see, I’m trying to soften the blow of seeing the mess in our house (and the amount of work it will take to clean it up) with pizza. Clever eh?
It turns out that the 80 is backed up for about 10 miles below the off ramp to our house. The CHP is squeezing it down to one lane to space out the cars as they go over Donner Pass. So we decide to do a “lateral arabesque” around the traffic and come in the back way. It was quite an introduction to the mountains for my mom who’s never been up here before. I’m not sure what made her more nervous, the one lane road or the one lane bridge. But it was a beautiful drive.
I’ll spare you from trying to make a couple of days unpacking boxes sound exciting. But I will tell you about the evenings. I’m a big fan of cheap ass games. One of the boxes I made sure I found and unpacked was the game box. So we all sat around the table, drinking hot chocolate and warmed by the wood stove, while playing Kill Dr. Lucky!. Now, if you’re not familiar with the cheap ass concept here it is: They feel that there are certain game parts like dice, tokens, pawns, play money, stones, etc are common to a lot of games. They’re also the most expensive part of the game. So why not just take all those bits from your other games and reuse then? So they make just the game board, rules, and any special cards that are needed for a new game. That way, they can produce really cool board games for less than $10 each. Of course, you could always do what I did and buy their “Ultimate Bits Pack” so you’ll have all that stuff handy.
In “Kill Dr. Lucky” you try to (guess what?) kill Dr. Lucky. The problem is that you have to do it while none of the other players can see you do it. After every turn Dr. Lucky moves around the board to a different room in a particular path. You have to time his arrival with the other player’s positions so you can be alone the same room as him when you try to off the old guy. But even if you do try to kill him the other players can play “Failure” cards to thwart your attack. After all, They want to kill him off themselves.
A fun time was had by all. I really enjoy game night. There’s just something more satisfying about playing board games as a family rather than planting yourself on the couch to watch TV all night.
The next night my mom wants to learn how to play Texas Hold-Em. No Problem! I’d be glad to teach her. So we get out the cards and chips and go through the rules. Let me tell you something, That Woman Is Unbeatable! I mean, I had A K and the flop came A K 6. I raise and she calls. The turn is an 8 and she bets, I raise, and she re-raises. Ho Boy! I’m about to make some money! The river is another 6 and we cap the betting.
I smile and turn over my two pairs, Kings and Aces. She turns over the 8 6 offsuit that gave her a Full House. Arrrgghh!
OK, so anyway, it’s the next night and my mom comes in from the guest room and ask “Is there no hot water when the dish washer is running?”
“Of course there’s hot water. The dish washer has a heater in it” I say. But as I check the shower there’s no hot water.
OK, no problem, it’s probably just the pilot light on the water heater. I go out to check it and sure enough, it’s out. But that sucker won’t relight. So I put on my boots and trek out into the woods where the propane tank is and sure enough, the gauge is on zero. We’re out of propane which means not only do we have no hot water, but we have no heat in the house. A quick check of the thermometer shows that it’s already down to 36 outside. So I get a wheelbarrow full of wood and bring it up to the porch and start to stoke the wood stove. We get the room up to almost 80 degrees before it’s time for bed. I set my alarm for 3:00 am so I could get up and toss a couple more logs in the fire. By morning the house had only cooled off to about 60 degrees so we did ok.
Welcome to the mountains!
Stay tuned for chapter 3 … .
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OK, so it’s been a while since I’ve written anything on my blog. But hey, we’ve been busy!
Where do I start? How about the weekend before moving day. My mom came down from Laguna Nigel to help us pack boxes as did our friend Susan from Santa Monica. We had ordered a 4 bedroom house moving set of boxes. It came on an 8 foot pallet. “OK”, we’re thinking “There’s no way we’re going to use all those boxes.” We were wrong.
So after 3, no 4, no wait, 5 trips back to Home Depot to buy more boxes we’re almost packed. In fact, we have so many boxes that there’s no room to put any more on the floor. So we just waited for the big truck to arrive.
On Tuesday the BIG Allied moving van arrives. As they packed the truck we used the recently cleared floor space to pack up still more boxes right behind them. Holy Cow we have a lot of crap! I foresee a profitable EBay business just clearing out my garage! Loading the truck took all day long. We finally finished about 8:00pm. Since we have a mobile home here in Santee we spent the night there. On Wednesday, the next day, I spend a completely useless day at work. I was so exhausted that I could barely think.
Beep Beep Beep Beep Beep … What the hell is that? It’s the alarm going off at 5:00 am Thursday morning. OK Greg, Up and At ‘Em. We’ve got a 580 mile drive to do today. For the most part we miss the traffic around Los Angeles. We did hit some on the 210 westbound as we circled around the worst of it and took our “secret back way” to the grapevine. Actually, it was a pretty easy drive for me since my wife drove the 1st half and I slept though the first 3 hours of the drive.
So now we’re in the vast flat nothingness of the California Central Valley. My wife has always wanted to stop at this little Swedish town just off the 99 freeway (Kingsport? Kingsman?, Something like that). So we stop to stretch our legs, do some shopping and have some lunch. The very first thing we notice as we step out of the car is that it’s freaking cold. But overall it was a nice break from the drive.
I need to stop here and rant about a totally geek thing. On the 99 freeway there’s a spot where your exactly halfway between the California-Mexico border and the California-Oregon border. At that spot the 99 freeway has 2 trees planted in the center divide between the north and southbound lanes; a palm tree and a pine tree. The palm tree represents southern California and the pine tree represents northern California.
Somebody chopped down the friggin Pine Tree!!
OK, I admit, that’s a total geek landmark. But every time we drove past it we knew that A) we were half way up California, and B) we were just 200 miles from the new house.
Anyway, I took over the driving and continued all the way to the new house. Other than stops to gas up and get groceries we drove the rest of the way non-stop. As we arrive at the house it’s cold and clear. But we’re happy because we’re home. As Merja puts away the groceries I lit a fire in the cast iron stove in our front room and heated up the house. It wasn’t long before we were passed out in bed. (Sleep, sweet sleep)
Knock Knock Knock Knock! … What the hell is that? I live in the middle of the mountains. Who could be banging on my door at 7:00 am? Oh yeah, the moving truck arrives today.
But it turns out that because of the one lane road and the tight turns the big truck can’t make it to our house. Luckily, we planned for this and the driver parked his Ford F150 truck in the back of the van. And so started about 40 shuttle loads of boxes and furniture between the truck and the house. It’s right about this time that I’m realizing how smart I was to pay somebody else to do the heavy lifting.
Being a bit of a cook I decided to make bratwurst and sauerkraut sandwiches for all of us for lunch. As we’re sitting inside the warm house (Thank goodness for that stove) it starts to rain a bit. No biggie, it’s just a few light drizzles. Then it starts to snow. No biggie, it’s melts before it even hits the ground. Nothing to worry about here. So we just keep unloading the truck and unpacking until it’s too dark to work. The truck isn’t quite empty so the movers stay in a motel down the hill in Auburn. They’ll come back tomorrow to finish unpacking. And besides, we have to be done by 11:00 am so I can drive back down the hill to Sacramento to pick up my mom who’s flying up to help us unpack all the boxes she helped pack last weekend. So we have to get that truck unloaded early. But before we worry about that we have a quick spaghetti dinner, do a bit of reading, and pass out on our own bed in our new home. Ah! My own bed, my own blankets, my own pillows. I can’t wait to get some undisturbed sleep.
Nudge Nudge Nudge Nudge! … What the hell is that? It’s my wife glaring at me. How can I be in trouble when I’ve been asleep for the last 9 hours? “It’s snowing” she says. Now we need to understand that even though (or perhaps ‘because’) Merja was born in Finland and grew up in Toronto, she hates snow. The town of Colfax is suppose to be “Above the fog and below the snow”. But occasionally the “tule fog” came up the hill past 2200 feet where we live and today, the snow came all the way down to 1000 feet. It hasn’t snowed in Auburn (the next town down the hill) since January 2002.
Welcome to the mountains.
Now, that’s pretty and everything, but it really wasn’t too bad. The movers scrapped the ice off of the driveway so they could keep shuttling the load up to the house and we all just started offloading more boxes and furniture. As the sun came up the slush was more of a problem than the snow.
But it does make for a nice story. “Yeah, we got the heaviest snow in over 5 years on our moving day.”
Stay tuned for chapter 2 … . What we’re listening to today: DJ DoBoy rocks
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