So instead of rushing through my early morning and starting off sleepy and grumpy, I woke in plenty of time and hit the road feeling chipper and well loved. There are worse things to happen.
I drove to my office and into the locked back lot to exchange my car for the rental truck and borrowed trailer. I then drove out to pick up my dad at his new apartment which I haven't visited before. Using my trusty navigator, I arrived at the place my verbal and dispassionate copilot directed and even found a long parking spot just before the corner. In three tries I managed to back the trailer into a perfect 6" parallel-to-the-curb park. I then got out, manually locked the truck from both sides, and walked a half block back to the front of the apartment building... to find that the address was considerably different from the one I'd directed my copilot to find.
Back into the truck, driving still in the dark and now by sheer determination, I find my way to the correct address... which is on a dead end street and has zero parking. Luckily, the end has a large culdesac so I was able to turn around and park in the center divider while my dad got dressed (excuse me?!? I was on time, damnit, despite the long drive I've already made) and came downstairs trailing sleepiness and coffee.
We then bounced on down the road, spilling a little of his coffee onto his lap or shirt front every few miles. No, I didn't aim for the bumps. But an empty truck towing an empty trailer is a jiggly kind of ride.
By now my stomach is thoroughly awake and demanding breakfast, and my new and hopefully more accurate copilot is always hungry (and I've inherited from him the tendency to low-blood-sugar-gumpiness). So we agree to keep our eyes open for a place we can manage to get this monstrosity in and out of.
Next thing we realize (several hours later, but still) we're passing the offramp we were supposed to take. No breakfast, and now we have to figure this out without using the precise directions from the guy we're going to see. Luckily, the offramp ends up taking us to the same street and we're back on course.
I then proceed to drive this awkward beast up some windy (no, that's supposed to be pronounced "Whine-Dee". How do you spell that so it doesn't look like a stiff breeze?) roads and ask my father the copilot to read me the line of directions from the sheet in my purse.
My father the copilot informs me that he elected not to bring his glasses.
I've got 3 cars behind me, no place to pull over, and a complete awareness that if I miss my turn I'll never be able to turn this train around. You think driving with a cellphone is dangerous, try towing a trailer up a curvy (that's one way to solve the spelling problem) road while reading small print.
But I'm one determined woman. In fact, that's kind of my theme for this little trip report.
We find our way to the correct place using the excellent directions provided by the gentleman who lives there and therefore oughtta know. We are there at 8:00 (for those of you doing the math, yes, I've been driving for about 4.5 hours by now, and nearly non-stop) because he has insisted that he *must* leave his place by 10:00. And since he's doing me the favor, I'm going to follow whatever restrictions he sets.
So here we are, and he says, "You got here plenty early! And we should have no problem loading everything by 10. Or it's fine even if we don't get done by 11. So why don't you disconnect the trailer and go have breakfast?" My years of poker stand me in good stead, as I manage to keep smiling while going to unhook.
Father and I have a 1 hour leisurely breakfast (which I order for him as he can't read the menu without his glasses) then drive back to the guy's house. My father and he hit it off and I'm obviously expected to stay out of the way, so I do a lot of listening. The guy is an ex polo player and is 50 years old. My father is a few years from 70, and not in what anyone would consider "fighting trim," while I am 120 pounds with arms like toothpicks. The guy seems to think we'll have no problem moving these *really heavy* wooden parts (fishtank and growbed) without additional help. He, having driven horse trailers around a lot during his polo career, offers to back our truck and trailer down his strangely situated driveway. I happily hand him the keys. I could probably do it, but it would be slow and painful. Particularly with my awareness of an audience.
So he whips the truck back to the trailer, we hook it back up, and he heads on up the street to turn around. He pulls partially into a side street, backs up in what is obviously intended to be a 3-point-turn, and I say to my father, "He's going to jackknife the trailer."
BAM!
He then pulls completely into the sidestreet and disappears for several minutes. I suspect he thought we didn't hear or see what happened, and he's pulled over the check the damage. For the curious: it caved in the side of the truck bed about 3 inches and left a lot of black trailer paint on the side of the brand new white truck. He does manage to get it into his driveway, with the passenger door and mirror only slightly jammed against his fence (more denting and paint exchange). I am maintaining my cheerful smile and imagining my later success at the World Series of Poker when I'm billed as The Woman Whose Face Never Reveals Anything.
The 50 year old, with minimal help from the 67 year old and the skinny chick, does manage to load everything onto our truck and trailer. I (not being completely unable to learn from my mistakes) choose to pull the truck and trailer out of the driveway myself.
We drive to the nearest gas station (yes, of course we should have done that earlier - either while the trailer was empty or while it was disconnected during our breakfast run - but I didn't think of it) where I expertly (yes, really) pull up to the pump, gas her up, and pull back out again. Without hitting anything. I do, however, take this time to walk around the truck and see the damage. Doing so in front of The Guy seemed like a bad idea, so this is my first opportunity to check it out. Ouch.
Then we have 2 hours of driving back to my dad's house, where I park (lots of parking now) and go up to see the new apartment. Then I get back into the truck, and my dad gets back into his car, and we head the additional 2 hours to my house.
This might be a good time to mention that I'd originally rented the truck at 4:00 pm on Friday for 24 hours. My father completely freaked out that I had left us with insufficient time to get everything done, and he *insisted* I rent the truck for an additional day. I did so. He was correct that I now felt calm and relaxed about the schedule. He, on the other hand, is now pushing me because he thinks I can get it returned within 24 hours if we hurry. Of course, I can't drive more than 60 MPH in this thing and feel safe (nor is he pushing me to). And the gentlemen, in their wisdom, ignored my suggestion that the 5 foot cube of fishtank should have its opening to the rear, not the front. So I'm driving the most un-aerodynamic thing on the planet: a giant wind catching cup. This isn't going to move quickly. And the whole thing weighs enough to push the truck around, so I'm following semi-trucks under the theory that they probably won't stop faster than I can handle, and no one will want to drive between me and the semi so I should be able to maintain the distance I think necessary. It's a slow drive, and a nervous one.
So we get back to my house, and now have NO way to remove these items from truck and trailer. And my father wants it done NOW so we can return the rental a day early. (I am again practicing my poker face. It's totally inappropriate to get irritable with people who are doing you favors.) I back my trailer most of the way up my long, narrow, curved driveway (I told you I knew how) and we both get into dad's car to drive about 20 minutes to Home Depot in the hopes of finding some muscle to hire. But 2 blocks from my house, there are 3 military-looking guys moving stuff out of a trailer. I tell my dad to stop. I get out and BEG for their help, offering money, beer and food if they'll please help us.
I am a very determined woman.
The men come over and I trustingly handed over the keys again. This time my trust was justified. They were fantastic. I brought out some of the big bottles from the purloined liquor collection and handed them over in thanks. My dad and I then rushed back to my office to drop off the borrowed trailer, and rushed over to U-Haul to return the rented truck. I'm SO glad I paid the $10 damage waiver, since that means I didn't have to pay for the dings, dents, scrapes, bashes, etc. On the other hand, I'm humiliated that they think I drove so badly. I didn't! But of course I can't tell them I allowed anyone else to drive the truck I rented, since I'm pretty sure the small print forbids that.
My father drove me from the rental place back to my office to pick up my car, and then he and I each headed to our respective homes. I had expected him to spend the night and help me on Sunday, but he was exhausted and eager to get home, and I can't blame him.
I got home and started filling the fishtank so the temperature in the tank and in the barrel of fish would equalize by morning and I'd be able to transfer the fish... and then I saw that the drain plug was leaking. I tightened it, I swore at it, I gave up on it. Tomorrow, Scarlett, is another day. I took a hot bath and was sound asleep by 8:30.
Sunday I had expected to have my dad around and things went a lot slower without him. There were things, like moving the greenhouse, that we could have done in 10 minutes together. But doing them alone takes more than twice as long, since arches fall apart, and I have to keep walking back and forth to straighten and check and tighten and shift things. So unfortunately I only got about a quarter of the stuff done that I'd hoped. Which means that I'll be working on things every evening when I get home in the dark. Which really sucks. A lot. But it *will* get done.
I am extremely determined.
So first thing in the morning I went to the hardware store and bought a new 1 1/2" pvc cap, some pipe tape, and a pipe wrench. I then went home and replaced the drain pipe and it stopped leaking. Whew. I don't know what I would have done if it hadn't. I also had purchased some fiberglass resin, with which I patched up a thin spot in the fishtank wall.
Oh, I should mention that the fishtank didn't fit between the house and the garage, so I couldn't place it all where I'd originally intended. Which turns out to be fortuitous, since other things have happened that require a larger space be used anyway, and the intended spot didn't have a lot of extra room. So when I moved the greenhouse (in pieces, accompanied by foul language) I discovered that it didn't fit over the top of the fish tank. I solved this by propping the back support on 8" cinderblocks. Of course, that left the center supports unsupported. So I went back to the hardware store and bought red bricks and propped up the center with those. The greenhouse claims to be 6'6" tall at the center, but if that were so I'm fairly certain I wouldn't be bumping my head on the ridge pole. I have now ordered a bigger greenhouse (yes, from a different company). And this one would never have fit in the old spot, even if the fishtank had. So it's really good that we set up on the other side of the garage instead. That area will fit the new greenhouse, and it's right next to the garden. It really is the better spot.
Sorry, I know my narrative is getting very disjointed now. But I want to get all the information out while it's fresh. I'm pretty determined.
So the food-grade barrels I'd purchased and paid extra to have delivered last week were not, in fact, food grade. In fact, the chemical they used to contain was specifically for killing fish and plants. The guy I bought them from is difficult to reach (read: "flaky as hell") and so here I am with a lot of useless barrels, and an immediate need for *something* to use as a sump tank. Back to the hardware store. I neded up purchasing 2 50-gallon rainbarrels. Wait. They seemed a hell of a lot smaller than those 55 gallon drums. Maybe I'd better read the labels again when I get home. Hmmm... In any case, these are big square containers. They already have fittings and hoses, but that's all much too small. I had the hardware guy help me work up some fittings for running 1-1/2" pipe between them. That way when the growbed dumps into one of them, they'll equalize quickly without overflowing. Of course, there was no way to fit those into my car. Not even individually. But as we walked out to try (and it was actually only 2" too big) a local pulled up in his pickup truck, and kindly offered to drive them to my house for me. Yay! Then, of course, I had to go back to the hardware store again (4th trip, I think) to purchase 16" cinderblocks. The growbed is already on 16" cinderblocks, but it's not up high enough to put the rainbarrels underneath. So I'm going to put a second layer of blocks. No, I'm not entirely sure how, yet. But ut will get done! I'm... yeah, you know.
This morning, before I left for work, I went out to the greenhouse and threw a handful of fish food pellets onto the water. I immediately heard splashing sounds. So it looks like the fish are alive. And really that's what it's all about. The rest is just details, and it will all get done.
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