Moving Adventures Day 1 & 2

In case you missed the memo, John & I are in the process of moving to Boston. I am going to graduate school there--MGH Institute of Health Professions--to study occupational therapy, and I am very excited!!!
We've had a crazy month prepping to move. John was busy with his final semester at Utah Valley University in addition to his two part time jobs and I worked until the week before the move. John's Dad came to visit for the weekend of John's graduation, and it was great to celebrate moving on to the next stage of our life.

The week after graduation was spent packing up and prepping for the move. Friday night found us in a frenzy trying to pack before our ward came to help us the next morning. We ended up getting a grand total of 1 1/2 hours of sleep that night, and the rest was spent packing. But we finished in time and had the help we needed to load our relocube, which will be shipped to Boston for us.

Great free box find: Barnes & Noble book store!!!

Playing with t3h Gnyardon at Grandma & Grandpa's. That cat sure does like catnip!!!

 That weekend was spent with my grandparents in SLC. It was a good test run during which we learned we had way too much stuff in the car and it was not going to work! So we halved the stuff we planned on bringing and loaded the extra stuff into our relocube. We had a hard time getting off since we had to install a hitch to haul our motorcycle on, but finally we left around 6pm.

On our way!!!

Day 1:

We are taking a round about way of getting to Boston, since we really wanted to visit John's sister Katie before her wedding. We will be unable to come to the wedding, so we thought we would drive down to Texas on our way to Boston. After spending a weekend with her, we will drive to Pennsylvania where we will spend a weekend with John's parents. The following Monday we will complete our journey to Boston.

We drove through southern Utah on the first day and enjoyed an incredible sunset! However, after about 20 miles driving into the sunset, we realized that something was not right. We thought we had missed our exit, but after a bit realized that we had made a wrong turn--we were supposed to be driving East towards Green River, but we were driving West towards Richfield!!! Whoops!!! So we turned around. It added about an hour to our trip. That night we stayed at my Great Aunt Mary's house in Kirtland, New Mexico. Even though she was out of town, she was gracious enough to let us sleep there.

Day 2:

This was a pretty rough day. We left Kirtland early so that we could arrive in Carlsbad, NM, by early afternoon to find a good campsite. Everything was going well when we stopped at a park for lunch, and we were feeling good.

Nice, warm park where we had a delicious lunch of sandwiches

Sugar Bear hitched to our Focus

A couple hours later we were cruising down a stretch of highway in the middle of no where, New Mexico. John was driving, and I was napping. Shortly after I woke up, John suddenly realized something was wrong. He pulled over as quickly as possible, and we realized that there was smoke coming out of the motorcycle!!! It was a little scary being on the small shoulder of the road where cars were whizzing by at 80 mph. I saw lots of shredded tires on the side of the road from other people's mishaps.

Upon inspection, we found that the motorcycle had somehow slipped out of neutral! How, we do not know. We should have taken off the chain before our trip, but we thought it would be ok left on. However, when the motorcycle had slipped out of neutral, it had gone into 1st gear. We thought the chain had seized because of that.

We unhitched the motorcycle and left it on the side of the road while we drove to the next stop in search of a repair shop. There we learned that the previous exit had the only auto shop for about a hundred miles either way. When we pulled over on the freeway, we had just passed the exit to Wagon Wheels--a town consisting of one auto shop. So we drove back to the auto shop and talked to them. They thought that the bike transmission had gotten jammed and the bike is now pretty much worthless. Shortly before our trip we had brought the engine back from the brink of death, and now all of that money, plus the money we spent on the hitch to tow the bike, was down the drain.

After considering our options, we decided that we would just do a trade with the auto shop. They would tow the bike away for us and in turn we would give them the motorcycle. At that point in time, we just wanted to be rid of the motorcycle. It has caused us so much trouble and cost us more than it is worth in repairs. The jammed transmission may have ruined the entire engine, and it would probably cost us the worth of the bike in repairs just to make it driveable again. We decided to cut our losses and then just save up for a brand new bike.

The repair shop that helped us

Good bye, Sugar Bear. We will miss you. :(

We were super bummed out after that & second guessed our decision for a while. But in the end we decided it was a good decision, no matter how hard. The rest of the drive to Carlsbad went without mishap, although it set us back and we didn't arrive until 9pm. We found an RV/camping park in Carlsbad and since we were super tired, we camped out there.

It was the end of a very rough, long day. But from there, our journey could only get better-at least we hoped. The front desk workers at the RV park were super duper nice, and one even gave us a little bit of chocolate. We lucked out because they were supposed to close before we got there, but were open later than usual because of a large group of teenagers there for a summer trip. Our cat also has survived so far, which is very important. And we were safe--we could have had a much more severe accident & we could have been injured or someone else could have been injured. I am grateful that we were protected and only lost a motorcycle (even if it was difficult to part with). We value our lives and our cat more.