Travel Time

The game is afoot!.
It's time to put some more of our plans into effect. This time it will involve the real McCoy of downsizing, and we're going to be left looking at a much leaner living environment after this upcoming week.
I'll be loading a U-Haul trailer and heading to Idaho and Washington this next week with a load of motorcycles, tool, and furniture to deliver to daughters, brothers, and friends. It was a long, fretful planning event trying to figure out how to get this stuff all moved across country to get it to the people we wanted to see have it, and it was looking like it wasn't even a reasonable proposition financially, but God provided a way (He's good about that sometimes) and now it's going to happen relatively painlessly for us.
Renting a U-Haul truck was going to be a $1,500 proposition, plus airfare home... Hauling a trailer with my own truck was going to be .. umm about a $1,500 proposition, and involve well over 2,500 driving miles (diesel being upwards of $4.75 a gallon out on the highway now).
So while I was whining about ..ermm .. I mean discussing the situation with some of my co-workers, a fellow controller named Matt told me that he had a real need to get his motorcycle and his own truck moved up to Seattle and it'd be perfect if I drove his truck and left it up there for him. He then offered to pay the fuel for the trip in return for my time at the wheel. So, problem solved! I'll drive his truck, pull a trailer, and haul all of our stuff to Couer D'Alene, then Spokane, and finally Tacoma and Seattle for drop-off. Quite the delivery run! I'm looking forward to hooking back up with family and meeting some new friends in the process.

On a sad note, my ex-mother-in-law (Mary Anne) is another primary reason for this trip's timing. She was recently diagnosed with aggressve and widespread cancer and is undergoing tough treatment but they are not planning on letting her come home from the hospital very soon. So, I'll ask for your prayers and support for a dear, dear lady and hope that it's OK for me to soap-box one time about the very real prospect that cigarettes cause this kind of ugly and painful mess. Please quit if you're smoking.

---

Stuff is stillf or sale on the website, and Iseem to be finding more and more stuff which can end up there. Pretty soon I'll have my own private 'Gary's List" going (grin).
We'll be thinned out pretty radically here in just a couple of weeks. The plan is still to 'evict' the renters at my old house, move in over there and get to painting and prepping to put it on the market asap. This house here has had several lookers, but no offers yet. I can only imagine that in this tough market, patience is gong to be paramount.