It was time for my wife and I to head out of Colorado and make way for Oklahoma where we’ll spend at least one year living. Rather than hiring a moving company like we did for our last move, we decided to rent a truck and move ourselves. This decision was made based mainly on the thought of having to live without our possessions for at least two weeks while the moving truck made it’s way to all of its destinations before coming to our place. Since the trip from Colorado to Oklahoma was mostly freeway the entire way, it would be an easy drive as well. Easy for someone who is experienced at driving a truck that is.
Out with a Bang… Literally
This would be my first experience driving a rental truck. I have driven tractors and wagons, cars with trailers, large vans and large pickups, but nothing quite like a large U-Haul truck. The main difference is that in a U-Haul truck, you can’t see a thing behind you, which I learned the hard way. After picking up the truck and getting back to our townhouse to load the truck, I thought I would back the truck up to the sidewalk to make it easier to load. The driveway to the townhouses in our neighborhood are pretty tight, but it looked like there would be room to do it. Apparently, there was a medium sized high-voltage box right next to the parking spots that I was trying back into. As I wheeled around to bring to truck into the spot, I backed right into it. When I looked back to see what it was that I hit, I finally saw it. At first I thought that I just put a small dent in it, but when I took a second look I realized that I had knocked the metal box off of its mounts so that it was sitting at an angle with the cables inside exposed. This was not a good start to the move…
I got out of the truck to take a closer look. It didn’t look like any major damage had been done. Yes, the box wasn’t mounted to the ground correctly, but it appeared as though all of the electrical equipment was intact. I certainly wasn’t about to touch anything, so we ended up calling the electric company to come take a look. Meanwhile, our hired hands had showed up to load the truck.
After a couple of hours, the electric company showed up and verified my evaluation of the damage. They took down my name and address so they knew where to send the bill and proceeded to put the box back onto its base. The procedure was basically the reverse of my procedure for pushing it off: hook a cable to the box and yank it with the truck. Five minutes later, they were gone. I’m curious to see what they’ll charge for something like that; I guess I’ll find out soon enough.
On the Road
It took about three hours to load the truck. Not too bad, although it wasn’t the best packing job as we would find out later. Now with my nerves all frazzled about running into things with the truck, we headed out. The plan was pretty simple: take I-25 to E-470 to I-70 into Kansas. I’m happy to say that this went without a hitch.
It took a few uneventful hours to get to Kansas through eastern Colorado. This is desolate ground, and I could tell that it was going to be a long drive. Western Kansas was more of the same. I lived in Michigan for most of my life and I’m used to seeing a lot of farmland, but nothing like Kansas. The whole state is farmland. The odd thing is that I didn’t see that many farms. My history of watching horror movies started getting the best of me out there. The sky was cloudy and gray, there was nothing but farmland for hundreds of miles in every direction, and there were only two radio stations, both Christian. If those stations had been preaching fire and brimstone, I think that might have been too much for me. I have seen way too many horror movies that start out this way. Even when towns did pass by, I was creeped out by it. Take Goodland, KS for instance, with the town motto “We’re waiting for you.” No, I am not making this up.
One of the finer landmarks on the way through Kansas was Prairie Dog Town which was advertised about 100 miles on either side. Prairie Dog Town featured such sights as a Russian wild boar, a 5-legged steer, and best of all, the largest prairie dog in the world! Unfortunately, it was late enough in the day that we figured Prairie Dog Town was closed for the night; or maybe my wife just wanted me to think that it was closed.
After driving about six hours, we decided to stop in Hays, KS, the largest town in Northwest Kansas: population 20,000. If you haven’t been to Kansas before, this should give you an idea of what it’s like. The largest town in the entire Northwest quadrant of the state only has 20,000 people in it! After getting there, I think that 20,000 was an optimistic count.
Overall, after hitting the high-voltage box and missing out on Prairie Dog Town, the day was uneventful. And if you know my luck at all, you’re well aware that my life runs in two modes: uneventful and freak-accident. I’ll take uneventful any day.
