Onward to Arizona, Part 2

Sorry, I meant to get part 2 up much sooner than this, but you know how it is. I also didn’t mean to disable comments the last time around, guess I need to fix the default setting. Anyway, on to it!

So, there we were, Money and I both frantically calling around to all the rental truck places we could find in the phone book and on the net. U-Haul was the obvious choice, and they allowed you to tow your own trailer, which was great. The problem was, as I mentioned last time, they only offered a 2 inch receiver ball. Money called their main office to discuss it further as recommended by one of the local rental places. They were saying that they could install a 2-5/8 inch ball for $15, but they had no idea what class hitch they had on the trucks. Despite who we talked to, none of them had a clue was we were talking about. Great.

Then my Dad called me and said he talked to Penske and they had 16 foot trucks available for about $1,200, which was a few hundred less than U-Haul wanted anyway. I wasn’t sure if 16 feet would be enough, considering we had filled a 14 foot trailer and a full-sized truck completely, but I had little choice; we had to leave today! So, I called the local Penske place and they quoted me just over $1,000 with the insurance. On top of that, the truck was still fairly new, so it was unlikely we would have problems with it. That settled it, I was renting a 16 foot Penske truck.

We went to go check it out and sign the papers and I was stuck on the idea that 16 feet just wasn’t enough. The guy that ran the rental place pointed out that U-Haul counts the 2 foot section above the truck in their overall length, so a 16 foot truck is really only 14 feet, where this truck was truly 16 feet, which was nice. Still, the whole ride back to my house I kept thinking 2 things….. I hope they didn’t tow my trailer yet (we had to leave it unattended) and how much it would suck to have to ride my motorcycle down the whole way if everything didn’t fit. But, I had to do whatever had to be done. I called my parents on the way back to let them know what we decided to do and they said they were coming back down with my sister to help me pack everything up again. I told them they didn’t have to, but I’m really glad that they did.

Before they showed up, Money and I grabbed all of the boxes and bins that I had and stacked them all up in one row near the front of the truck. The plan was to stack them all the way up, slap the mattress and box spring against them and tie it all down so nothing would move. This was Money’s idea, and a brilliant idea it was! We managed to do all that before my parents even made it back down from Milwaukee, and after seeing it all in there and what seemingly little was left, I was a little move confident that it would all fit.

We finished up just as my parents showed up. The next thing that we decided to put in the truck was the motorcycle. Before we did that, we had to get it back out of the trailer, and before I talk about that, I should explain how we first got it in the trailer. See, I didn’t have a ramp or anything to get the bike up the foot or so into the trailer, and with a dry weight of 700 pounds, there wasn’t much chance of us lifting it. What we ended up doing was nailing a couple of long 2×4′s together, supporting the middle with a jack stand and walking the bike up it. It was really difficult and the ramp kicked out as soon as we got it in. Looking back, it was a pretty sketchy idea, but it worked.

So, logically, we thought we could do the same to get it back out. That proved to be easier said than done since the ramp kept simply getting pushed off the trailer as I backed the bike up to it. My Dad kept insisting that we could do it, but as I explained to him, my motorcycle was the single nicest and most expensive thing I own and I wasn’t willing to simply risk it when I could run up to Harbor Freight and buy a proper ramp for less than $100. It seemed like a good investment to keep from jacking up my $8,000 bike, and he agreed.

After a little hassle at the Harbor Freight (messed up stock numbers and buried stock led them to believe they were out of stock, luckily my sister happened to notice that there was one buried in some other ramps), we safely backed the bike off the trailer and onto the pavement. Now, we just had to get it in to the back of the Penske truck. The trailer was about a foot off the ground, which was difficult enough, but the truck was closer to 3 feet off the ground. Granted it had a proper ramp up to it, but anyone who’s seen ramp on a moving truck knows, it’s only about 2 feet wide and it’s not an extremely gradual incline. And the only way we were getting it on the truck was for me to ride it up. Pretty freaky to say the least!

My Mom disappeared into the house because she didn’t want to witness this happen, but nobody else thought this was going to be difficult at all. Then again, they weren’t the ones riding it up, I was. I decided that it would be a good idea to put on my leather jacket and helmet in case something went wrong, they seemed to at least agree with that. So there I was, decked out in my leather jacket, helmet and gloves and staring down the ramp in front of me anticipating the Evil Knievel type shit I was about to pull off. And, thankfully, I did pull it off!

In order to secure the bike (which we parked right next to the big “no motor vehicles” sign in the box of course), we decided to drill a hole in the floor of the truck and sink an eyelet into it. I figured I could always claim that the truck was like that when I got it since the guy didn’t inspect it at all before giving it to me. Unfortunately, we snapped the head off the bolt because the wood was too hard and the hole was too small. In the end, we took out one of the bolts that held the bed in place and sunk the eyelet into that hole, which worked out pretty well. The other side of the bike we just tied to the lower tie-down rail on the side of the box. I was pretty worried that it wouldn’t hold with all the stopping, but nobody shared my concern so I figured I would just go with it.

We packed everything else in the truck and even managed to fit more than we originally put in the trailer and truck that I bought for the move. So much for my concerns about not having enough room. What’s funny is that the trailer was rated to move a 2 bedroom apartment, and I had all of these things packed mostly into 1 upstairs bedroom at my old place. Apparently I have way too many things.

So, that’s the excitement of the move day. So exciting, in fact, it had to be broken into 2 parts! To review, the original plan was to leave that Friday night and stop in Peoria. That was revised to leaving early Saturday morning and still stopping in Peoria for a little while. In the end, after we packed and re-packed everything and took some quick showers, we hit the road at 4:00pm. So much for Peoria. Sadly, I was too busy freaking out about everything and packing everything up to grab any pictures.

I started out the trip behind the wheel and I want to point something out about that. I’m not a complete novice to driving a large truck, but it’s another thing entirely to drive a large truck around knowing that everything you own, and I mean EVERYTHING, is in the box of that truck. One spot of bad luck, one mistake, one stupid driver and I stood to lose it all! Needless to say, it took me a lot of hours behind the wheel before I was somewhat comfortable with it. And I never quite got comfortable when Money was driving at all. Every turn felt too fast, no matter how slow he was driving it always felt like he was driving way too fast and I was just always on edge. Luckily enough, we made it down without any major problems.

I’ll pick up the third and final part with our first hours actually on the road. The trip down went pretty smooth overall so I don’t have much to hook you for the next part. I guess I’ll just have to hope you tune in. And you’ll have to hope it’s not another 2 weeks before I write it. I’ll leave you with some shots I took the next day of everything in the truck.