Road Trip (part 1)

The Brothers Johnson head northwest.

Day 1 of the drive was to begin early on a Saturday morning in April.  The trouble began, however, on Day 0.

I had reserved a 22' Penske box truck for our part of the move, planning to take all of the breakable stuff and lots of garage/barn/yard tools as well as most of our clothes (because who better to entrust Simmons' finest for a cross-country adventure than two guys who had never done anything like it).

I picked up the truck on Friday morning.  The plan was to spend all day packing and be fresh and ready to ride when the sun came up Saturday morning.  So after arriving home with the truck on Friday morning, we packed about half of the load that included the things in our garage we intended to move.  On our way to our storage unit to pick up the rest of our load, Simmons noticed that one of the brake lights was out on the truck.

A brake light.  Pop in a new bulb and get on our way, right? RIGHT?

Uh, no.

It turns out that the Penske folks (we took it back to where we rented it), were completely stumped. Two hours into their "repair", it became clear they had no idea how long it would take to fix it (some sort of wiring issue between the engine compartment and the rear brake light.)

To make matters worse, that location didn't have a replacement vehicle for us.  The closest 22' footer was in Prosper.  So to Prosper we went, to pick up our second truck, unload the first and load the second, and head back to our storage unit to complete the load.

Once the dust had settled, our truck was finally fully packed around midnight, roughly eight hours later than our original target time.

As we were pulling out of town Saturday morning, we joked that we had gotten our major issue out of the way early and were headed for skies filled with unicorns and rainbows.  Which is exactly what happened -- until the end of day 2.

Pulling off the interstate in Flagstaff as we headed to our motel, our truck started wheezing and whirring like the shuttle at takeoff.  More distressingly, it seemed unable to engage in gear easily, leaving us to limp into the parking lot, tails between our legs and moods in the gutter.

After a sleepless night, we woke up, ate a motel breakfast, crossed our fingers, started the truck, and headed to the nearby Penske location to try to get some help.

And those guys were great.  They changed a fuel filter that was reaching its end of life, and more importantly, took it for a test drive to wring her out.  I sat shotgun for that test drive and learned a lot about how these engines work.

The ultimate verdict was a clean bill of health and a boost of confidence.  Onward...

The rest of the trip was relatively uneventful.  So smooth in fact that we were able to get to Seattle one day quicker than the original plan, driving about 12 hours on the last full day to a Best Western in Lynwood, a mere 20 miles from our storage unit in Stanwood.

Home at last.

Our last time together on Van Ness.

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