It was 11 o'clock on a beautiful afternoon, Jordan's "workday" had been over for nearly two hours, and we were relaxing at the pool, basking in the warm Florida sun. As we sat there enjoying the luxury of this new Pilot's life, we couldn't help but laugh as we thought about what a dramatic contrast life in Florida has been so far, from Jordan's long, excruciating days in Virginia. My, how life has changed in one month's time....
It wasn't an easy journey to Florida, but we made it. We have officially completed two military moves now, and the second was no less...interesting...than the first. Jordan and I are convinced we must have somehow angered the moving gods, because we have had more than our share of bad luck on these moves. Although we didn't get stuck in the mud or have to get bailed out by firemen, this second move was just as eventful, if not more so than the first...
Our bad luck started before we even hit the road this time around. We decided to have the military move the majority of our belongings; however, because the military can take 2-3 weeks to deliver your furniture to the new location, we decided to take a few small things to get us by until the truck arrived in FL (a small loveseat, mattress, a few essential kitchen supplies, and a few boxes of clothes). We showed up bright and early on moving day to pick up our small Budget moving truck to transport these few remaining items, only to find out that they were somehow
missing our small truck. If we wanted to leave that day, we would have to take the largest size truck instead, the 24' truck (plus trailer). This is the same size truck we used for our move from CA to VA, when we had our
entire household to move. Driving this much larger truck would mean not only going much slower, but dealing with all the challenges that we faced on our first move ... finding parking, changing lanes, making u-turns, backing up etc etc. However, despite all the challenges of the larger truck, I think Jordan secretly enjoys driving The Beast (the name we gave the 24 footer after our first trip) and we headed back home with our old friend, The Beast, to finish packing.
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| The Beast |
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| When returning The Beast in Florida, we parked alongside the smaller truck that we were supposed to be driving for the move! The size difference is hysterical! |
After filling approximately 1/8 of the truck with our remaining belongings, we were finally ready to hit the road, only to discover our house keys were nowhere to be found. Having just been robbed blind by our landlord's mother, during our not-so fun, and very infuriating walk-through inspection (too stressful and long of a story to recount here), and having just sliced open the top of my foot on a broken vase the movers had left behind, our patience were definitely being tested at this point and this new situation with the keys did not help!We didn't discover until unpacking again in Florida, that the movers had actually packed up our keys in one of their boxes! Jordan and I blew off steam by laughing through all of our frustrations and recounting all the setbacks of the day, because hey, at least we were getting all of our bad luck out of the way now, paving the way for a smooth rest of the journey. Well, turns out, we laughed too soon...
It was nearly 8pm by the time we got the keys re-made and dropped off to the landlord. All we had left to do was drive Jordan's car up onto the the trailer, and we would finally be off! Only, we could not get Jordan's car onto the trailer. No matter how high Jordan jacked up the trailer, or which angle we tried to attempt the ramp at, it was just too steep to drive up without scratching the front of Jordan's car. So we headed to Walmart to pick up a few
rhino ramps, the ramps people use to drive up on to get under their car to change their oil. Staying with our positive mindset, Jordan justified that he had actually been wanting a set of these ramps for his own personal use for awhile now. So off to Walmart we went....or the truck went I should say.....the trailer decided not to follow. After hearing a very loud, strange noise coming from outside, Jordan looked in the side mirror of the truck to see the trailer spinning and ping ponging across the road behind him. Thank God, no one was driving that section of road when this occurred! After swinging the huge truck around (not an easy task), Jordan attempted to hook the trailer back on again as it sat in the middle of highway 1, at which point it started raining!
After
finally making it to Walmart (both truck AND trailer) to get the ramps, we attempted driving the car up on the trailer again, but the ramp was
still too steep! So Jordan bought some wood planks and created his own smaller ramp, underneath the rhino ramps, which were underneath the trailer ramp, in attempt to make the drive up the ramps gradual enough to drive onto the trailer without scratching the front of the car. (Did I mention that it was still raining this whole time?!?!) With all of Jordan's "Macgyvering" of the ramps, we
almost were able to clear the front of the car up the ramp and onto the trailer. But as the saying goes, almost only counts in horseshoes and hand grenades, and the car was still a half of an inch too low to make it up the ramp without scratching. It was now nearly 10pm, Jordan was soaking wet from working on the ramps out in the rain, and we still hadn't left town.We finally decided that this car was not going to get on this trailer. Perhaps it's a sign, because what if we did eventually get the car on the trailer, only to have the trailer fly off the back of the truck again?!?! This time with a car on it!!!! So we decided to call Budget's roadside assistance, to see if they could bring us a new trailer all together.
Roadside assistance quoted us 90 minutes before they could get someone out to us. So there we sat in the cab of our 24' truck, in the pouring rain, of the Walmart parking lot in Stafford, Virginia. The Budget repairman replaced a broken part on the trailer (which was what caused the trailer to detach), and informed Jordan what the first Budget employees did not...there was a second jack on the trailer to lower the ramps further, allowing the car to easily drive right on up! Despite finally getting the car up on the trailer, it was now 1130 pm, so we decided to call it a day. We spent the first night of our trip in a hotel.....exactly 5 miles from our old house.
We set off to hit the road in the morning, saying GOOD RIDDANCE to Virginia! From there it was smooth sailing, except of course for a flat tire in Alabama, because no moving road-trip of ours is complete without one! We made it to beautiful Pensacola, FL in just 2 days, and arrived just in time to be welcomed by a beautiful sunset on the water.
After dealing with all the stress of another crazy move, and 6 months of long days and hard training, I would say Jordan's definitely earned a few of these relaxing days at the pool! Not sure how long these short days of work, and long days at the pool/beach will last, but for now he's singing Yo ho, Yo ho, It's a Pilot's life for Me, and is very happy to be done with The Basic School and out of the state of Virginia, FINALLY!
As promised, here are a few pictures from Jordan's TBS graduation and Family Warrior Day...
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| Jordan, Me, and Alex getting to shoot live rounds of the M16 and SAW machine gun! | | |
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| Jordan and the some of the guys from his Platoon (Jordan is in the middle) |
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| So proud of him! |
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| Jordan and Branson (also going to Pensacola) went to OCS together for the first time in the Summer of 2006 |
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| Marine Wives: One is going to Pensacola, FL with us, and the other is heading to North Carolina! |
