This last weekend I was in a truck for about 800 miles round trip; from Bel Air, MD to New London, OH and back. A friend of TB's had moved there because her and her husband were going to work on her parents farm until they found other work and their own place to live and they had hired TB to move their stuff.
I had made Friday a half-day at work since I had to split my extra day off due to a meeting on my usual day. I drove up to Bel Air, we hopped in the truck, and took off. To give you an idea of what we were hauling, I believe it was a 15 26 foot box truck (TB can correct me if I was wrong). It was a long trip that for Friday took us up I-70, then up the PA Turnpike towards Ohio. This first part was fine for the most part. I got some pictures of the landscapes and TB and I chatted while listening to the radio as well. Around 8 PM TB started feeling a bit tired from being up for a long time and all the driving, so we abandoned our original plan to drive all the way to New London and instead grabbed a hotel room in Cranberry, PA.
While TB gassed up the truck and while heading to Wal-Mart to pick up a lock for the back door, I called around to a few hotels (thank you VZ Navigator search!) before settling on a nearby Motel 6. It had the lowest rate, plus the very nice front desk woman saved me some extra money by telling me if I requested the internet rate it would drop my bill by another $10. We got to the room, ordered some chinese food for delivery, and then a few minutes later decided that it might be best to switch rooms. We were snuggling and then noticed that apparently the last guest had bled for some reason and some of it had been wiped on the headboard and the wall next to it. These were not large streaks or spots, but they were noticeable. The front desk was very nice about switching our room and making a note so it got cleaned. I don't fault the hotel for this, I fault the pig of a guest who didn't clean up after themselves properly. TB and I would both sleep pretty hard that night after we got to our other room as we were tired out.
Saturday we got an early start since we had to be there by 9 AM. It was just our luck that it decided to rain that morning as well, though there was virtually no traffic on the turnpike at 6 AM to slow us down. We got out of PA, into Ohio, and eventually arrived at New London, where we met up with ToX so he could lead us to the farm we were heading to. We got there, slowly got up the driveway, trying to avoid the stupid dog that wanted to play chicken with the truck and first parked in front of the garage. We unloaded many of the items that the folks would need right away before driving over to a mini storage unit down the road to unload the rest. There was lots of handing off items and packing it up carefully to make things fit, but we got it all done in a few hours. It would have gone faster if the folks who were supposed to show up to help actually did show, but we did what we could.
Before driving back to Bel Air we made a stop at an abandoned house we had seen along the way in Ruggers, OH. I snapped some great pictures of how it looked from the outside and got some inside shots as well. The only thing I would not do was go upstairs because quite frankly, I didn't know how sturdy the stairs or the second floor was, and I didn't want to find out the hard way by coming crashing down through the floor. No hospital visits for me thank you.
The drive back to Bel Air was fine, though long of course. It was good to sit and just talk to TB because we did learn a lot more about one another, especially through discussion of hypothetical situations. It made for a good bonding experience. We didn't roll back in until nearly 11 PM. Since we were both so tired from the long drive we crashed at a friends house instead of driving the extra hour back to my place.
Sunday was spent in Havre de Grace, MD where we walked by the bay and explored a few stores. I picked up some fun items for the house as well before taking TB back to his place so he could sleep before work that evening. Then it was back home for me to rest a bit since I hadn't been home for the past two days.
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