The Big Move

 On June 15 and 16 we packed up a 16-foot pod. Pods are big, steel-framed boxes that are delivered by a company aptly named Pods. It was delivered on June 13 and picked up on June 17 using a device call Podzilla. Podzilla is a big, movable frame that rides on a truck with the pod, picks up the pod,allows the truck to be driven out from under, and then deposits the pod on the ground. (Or in our case, on a nearby street since it wouldn't fit in our Tucson driveway.) It is substantial feat of automation, allowing a single operator to unload an empty pod and, later, load a very much heavier pod back on the truck. Here's a brief video of part of the process. 

To load the pod we had great help from Justin, one of Mary Beth's adult students. Then for the rest of the process we hired two men who had experience loading pods. You have to load the back of the pod to the ceiling and then strap everything down to keep it stable. Then you rinse and repeat, layer by layer, until you reach the front of the pod. By the end it was jam-packed. The only things that wouldn't fit were a trash can and a garden cart. (Fortunately, we had downsized significantly--thanks Mary Beth!--or many more things would not have fit.) Pods are a crazy but marvelous thing that cost only a little more than third of what other moving companies quoted us. 

As the pod departed we finished cleaning the house and packing the bags, boxes, and backpacks that would fit in the car with us. The following day we departed. It was an odd feeling, leaving a house that you've lived in for over 15 years. It didn't seem quite real that we wouldn't be coming back to it--or to the city, or to the county, or the state. However, the feeling of a major break was eased somewhat by all the people who we were able to visit with in the weeks before we left. Thanks to you all! 

What can you say about a trip across (much of) the country--I'll just hit some high points. We decided to make the trip in four days, so that neither the dogs nor we had to be cooped up in the car too long each day. It's possible to make the trip in three days, as I found out in April when I made an initial trip there in our Tacoma. And probably for younger people it can be done in even less. But whatever number of days, it's grueling work. I joke sometimes that when I was young I had a car that had to stop pretty often to take on fuel. Now I have a car (a Prius V) that can go 400 miles between fillings but a bladder that has to stop twice as often to unfill. 

The first day we make the very familiar trip to Albuquerque and stayed at a Drury Inn, which costs more than some hotels but gives you dinner as well as breakfast. The dogs were on edge a lot of the time and had to be walked around the outside of the hotel upon arrival, before bed, and after waking up. They also were sensitive to nighttime sounds and barked sometimes. We had to give Dolce a mild sedative at night. 

Just as the dogs started getting a handle on the sights, sounds, and especially smells of the place, we had to move on. In all our hotel stops the only thing they really never got used to was elevators. After their first ride they decided this was the devil's work and would not come near unless we picked them up. I decided that never having experienced G forces, even the very slight ones in elevators, it must have been a completely new experience for them. Perhaps it was the sudden enclosure in a small room. Anyway, at our last hotel of the trip we were on the 1st floor--big improvement. 

Dolce, refusing to get on the elevator at a hotel. 

The second day was an eastward adventure on Interstate 40. I'm not sure I'd ever been on that stretch of highway. High desert turned to piñon-juniper woodland then then flattened into eastern New Mexico plains, then north Texas plains, feedlots, and crops. We penetrated pretty deeply into Oklahoma in the afternoon, and stopped at a town called Weatherford. 

The principle revelation of the Oklahoma portion of the trip was seeing hundreds and hundreds of wind turbines. Oklahoma produced oil from the 1850s and at one time produced more than any other state. It still produces a lot but those wind turbines--almost 6,000 of them--and the nationwide switch to natural gas have meant that now almost no electricity is produced with oil. In fact, almost half the electricity in the state is produced from low-carbon sources, and most of that comes from wind. It is after all "Ooooooooooooooooook-lahoma where the wind comes sweeping down the plains." 

This is a sign that in spite of the current administration's efforts to slow the move to wind and solar (now the least expensive sources of energy), the trend will continue. See Bill McKibbon's substack for his take on the move toward renewables (thank you Paul Green for this source). 

The dogs were much happier in the car than in hotels. Echo was content to sit on Mary Beth's lap and Dolce was just fine currled up at her feet. The only thing that worried us about the dogs riding in the car was a previous experience with Dolce. On a drive to Colorado I turned on the windshield wipers and she went nuts, barking and scratching Mary Beth. But this time we only had to turn on the windshield wipers briefly and, being on the floor, Dolce couldn't see them.  

Finally, on the fourth day of our trip we navigated around St. Louis (saw the arch!) and Indianapolis, and made our way to Richmond, Indiana. After leaving Tucson, our pod was shipped to Dayton, Ohio, and then driven to our new house in Richmond. It arrived a little over a week after we did. To unload we had help from a neighbor and again hired some helping hands.  We got everything into the house, or at least the garage, in two days. It was like unwrapping (and unboxing) every Christmas present that we'd ever received all over again. Then it was time to set up the house. More about that and other things in the next post.