Chapter 3 - Getting Out of Dodge
Chapter 3 | Getting Out of Dodge
Oakland New Jersey was a long way away from the Mountains where both our hearts yearned to be. So we packed up everything into a UHaul truck, put the Honda Del Sol onto a car carrier and drove away. It took us less than three days to pack up an entire household, three small children, all our precious belongings and hit the road headed West.
The direction we headed was back to Colorado. Outside of Boulder was a high mountain, funky little, town called Nederland and we had liked this place from the beginning when last we were in Colorado. That is where we had decided we were going to go. Though we were not sure that it would be where we would finally end up.
We caravanned it, LeeAnna would lead in the Chevy Suburban with the children and I would follow with the UHaul and car carrier. We left New Jersey with smiles on our faces and a little bit of concern in our hearts.
There were two reasons for concern, surely you can guess the first…what the heck were we going to do now – yes we had some savings, but not a lot. The second real life concern turned out to be the one we should have thought through a little better than the money issue and definitely before we left New Jersey. Either way, we were on our way.
We left in January. Perhaps the weather wouldn’t be a problem. Sure. No Problem at All.
Chapter 3 | The Long & Winding Road – in the Dead of Winter
Google maps, which wasn’t even around back then, today tells me that it’s a mere 1,804 miles from Oakland New Jersey to Nederland Colorado. It’s pretty much a straight shot headed West.
It took us, what normally could have been done in about two to three days, more than a week to make it across the seven states that were between ‘here’ and ‘there’.
When you’re ‘young’, in this case I was 35, you may do some stupid things. For instance you might leave a job that pays mid six figures, because you don’t like German spitballs pelting your face. Or because you love the outdoors, a job not typically know for paying much (if anything), thinking that you’re the best the world has ever seen, throwing caution to the wind, because a really nice guy named Nick said it’d be ‘ok’.
It’s amazing how much time you have to think about things (after the fact), driving along in a UHaul across the country in the dead of winter, by yourself in the cab of a truck. It’s where reality sets in and where you find yourself in white out conditions driving across a frozen wasteland watching your family slipping and sliding over the roadway with your three children in the vehicle in front of you, all of who think it’s just a bunch of fun. Maybe, just maybe, you begin to question just how sane you truly are.
To make things even more ‘sane’, you do something in hindsight that seems momentously crazy, and using all your winter hiking gear you decide it’ll be fun to spend the nights en-route sleeping in the back of the Suburban at Truck Stops in subzero conditions. I mean Greenland has nothing on what we encountered on this trip.
Before you judge us too harsh please take a moment to visualize the situation in your own mind. Hotels were very expensive, they knew they had a captive audience. Though the main reason we didn’t stay in them wasn’t because we didn’t want to, and at that time could easily afford it; it was because they were all completely booked due to the storms we encountered along the way. The smart people had stopped, checked in and planned on waiting the storms out.
We were traveling during a time, long, before things like Google Maps or cell phones were even around. And should you be lucky enough to have a cell phone (aka bricks from hell) coverage was spotty at best and virtually non-existent in reality. This leaves a traveller at the mercy of pulling off exits to check with local hotels, when you’ve decided to stop for the day.
Needless to say, this was a very long trip for the parents and a fantastic memory for the children. They say they remember it fondly and I’m wondering how many more years will go by before they forget it. One can only hope.
Chapter 3 | It’s Nice to Know Nice People
We were headed to Nederland with no real plan. There was no exact destination, as we’d not acquired housing arrangements before we left the east coast. This was the one thing we’d not though much on in the ‘moment’.
I always tell people, who for whatever reason seem to get along with me, that I’m the ‘mean’ one and LeeAnna (beloved spouse of the artist) is the ‘nice’ one. After all opposites attract, right? If any of you have ever encountered or had dealings with her you’ll know exactly what I mean, I’m definitely the ‘mean’ one. She’s super sweet and super nice. I’ve been known to tell people if you have angered her (as she is virtually un-anger-able) then you did something really wrong and probably owe her an apology for whatever it is ‘you’ did. Me on the other hand have been known to just yell back at you - because I’m ‘mean’.
It’s so easy for her to make friends and we (I mean she) had a lot of them in the Boulder area. If memory serves she made two phone calls en-route. The first call she made was to a friend, and the second call was to the realtor the friend recommended. And before we’d crossed the border out of Indiana we had rented a house. Sight unseen, comparatively inexpensive compared to New Jersey standards, with a view of the Indian Peaks Wilderness the likes of which ‘dreams are made of’, said the realtor.
We arrived. Three feet of new snow had fallen overnight. My reaction…“Hmmmm.”