Waiting for the trash man
Things didn’t go quite as planned
It all slowly fell apart as the day moved on. The builders arrived, did their stuff and the inspector approved the work. The recycling guy turned up by 10 am, and then nothing happened. Tom tried (and failed) to get rid of the TVs and I sat and waited for the trash man to come. It started raining. The drive from Chicago to Springfield takes 8-9 hours so we were keen to get moving. Finally sometime after two pm the trash man arrived, took everything and we were free to go.
Then we discovered that there was a fault with the pick-up’s electrics which meant that U-Haul couldn’t let us have a trailer for safety reasons (no right indicators on the trailer). We decided to rent a truck and I’d drive the pick-up back to Springfield. Of course the U-Haul branch we were at didn’t have a truck available. Off we went to another branch which did have a truck available. By the time we’d got the truck, loaded it up (in the rain), given the house a final check over it was around four-thirty. We’d not be getting back to Springfield until after one am.
And so it was. The trip was almost without incident. Almost that is apart from while driving out of Chicago the Pick-ups speedometer went on the blink. At first I didn’t notice, but when a truck overtook me when I was apparently doing over 90 miles an hour my suspicions were confirmed. I called Tom and jokingly suggested we slow down, as the best I could tell we were travelling at over 140 mph – the speedo needle had by now gone right off the scale.
Coming up on 110mph - not quite what it appears
Apparently this is a known GMC fault, and at our first rest stop Tom managed to reset the speedo to 0mph and it worked perfectly for the rest of the trip.
I arrived home around one-thirty, but couldn’t settle down to sleep until around three am.
19 October 2011 | 365:292 | 365 Days blog | Copyright © 2011 Gary Allman
In the backyard – Berwyn, Illinois
Today we made major progress
The local vultures removed the defunct appliances we had left out for collecting tomorrow. The only items we couldn’t donate, and can’t be left for trash are a couple of TVs.
In the front yard - I think I look a little more chipper in the backyard picture.
18 October 2011 | 365:291 | 365 Days blog | Copyright © 2011 Gary Allman
Making Notes
We had a good first day clearing the house
We took a pick-up load of stuff to Goodwill and started the process of moving and clearing – especially in the basement which was very messy.
At the end of the day I had an opportunity to catch up on some reading (I should have brought my coursework with me) and make some notes in my Journal. I’m not very good at keeping my journal. Erratic would be a good word to describe it. I normally only write when I have issues to resolve, which results in a record of my angst and frustrations rather than a glowing record of all that’s well in my world. Today I was able to redress the balance a bit.
As all the beds have been broken down, I’m sleeping in my sleeping bag on a mattress on the floor. In a day or so the mattress will have to go too. I have my sleeping pad with me so that shouldn’t be a problem.
17 October 2011 | 365:290 | 365 Days blog | Copyright © 2011 Gary Allman
The quiet before the storm
Tomorrow the work begins
Ginger and Rebbie were up here a couple of weeks ago, and they sorted through all the papers and cleared out all the cupboards, drawers and stuff. We’re here to move everything out. Some things are to go back to Springfield, the remainder is to be donated to charity or trashed. We’ve four days to get it all done, as I’m due back in Springfield Friday pm.
Tomorrow we’re expecting people from Brown Elephant to come and take away some of the furniture, and a City inspector to come and check that the house is up to code before it is put on the market.
16 October 2011 | 365:289 | 365 Days blog | Copyright © 2011 Gary Allman
