When we got up this morning, we looked out the motel window hoping the weather had cleared. Not so. We got dressed and had some breakfast then went over to the U-Haul place to assess the damage. This first picture is what we saw when we unlocked and opened the door to the trailer.
Emptying the trailer was quite an ordeal. It was like a doing a puzzle only backwards. To add to the ordeal, it was still snowing and the ground was very muddy. I tried to capture the mud caked heavily on my sneakers but it didn't show up well so I didn't bother posting the photo. Since we had to sort through stuff to determine what needed to be discarded, we couldn't merely move everything from one trailer to the replacement trailer. Plus, we always try to put the light stuff close to the tongue and heavier items near the door which meant that we had to get to the back of the trailer to get what we wanted to load first. The U-Haul people were kind enough to let us temporarily borrow a larger trailer as an intermediary sorting space up out of the mud. We slowly and carefully started removing items that looked like they had been through a huge food processor. There was pasta, herbs and spices, spaghetti sauce, flour, sugar, and chicken gravy as well as Comet cleanser and dish soap splattered over various things. Just before leaving Arizona, Russ had purchased a new toaster because he had coveted the one Victoria had. It was one of the items tossed because it got bent up pretty badly. Our biggest concern was our digital piano (Clavinova) which was our primary reason for taking a trailer and also our most expensive belonging with us. It was only slightly damaged. We haven't plugged it in to be sure it works but other than a tear on the bench and the broken pieces where you insert discs, it looked okay. It had obviously been tossed around pretty hard because there were items underneath it which we had not loaded that way. The saddest loss was Russ's guitar, for mostly sentimental reasons. He has had it a long time and loves playing it. It got smashed. It had been on the top of the pile which at one point ended up the bottom of the pile before getting righted again. We don't plan to claim any of the food or smaller items that filled U-Haul's dumpster after 3 hours of sorting but we'll see if our auto insurance will cover the guitar and toaster. We'll have a LOT of laundry to do when we finally get to Nauvoo. I tried to wipe off some things with rags as I went but it soon became impossible. I got to laughing when I tried to get out of the back of the trailer because my shoes were so caked with mud and the bottom of the trailer was coated with chicken gravy, mud, and flour. I had to take off running to get to the door or my feet simply slid backward!
So this second picture shows the original trailer with the broken wheel on the left, the larger "sorting" trailer in the middle and the newly loaded trailer on the right.
What struck me the most today was how grateful I am to live in this age. When the pioneers crossed the plains in wagons or pulling handcarts, they didn't have a nice, warm motel to shower and sleep in. If they broke a wagon or spilled things in the mud, they couldn't look forward to an apartment with a washer and dryer to clean up their clothes and dirty items when they arrived at their destination. We have a pretty cushy life.
Maybe tomorrow the roads will be open and we can continue our journey east.
No comments:
Post a Comment