Chapter 2: Dangers of Packing

Tuesday, January 3

Alright, “let’s get down to the nitty gritty" (what movie guys?). We woke up at 8 a.m. (remember though that we went to bed at 2 a.m.), took showers, and prepared for the long day ahead. It was our goal to be all ready to head out at 3:45. Fighting back discouragement and morning grogginess, we started working on our list of things to do. First on the list, change the oil in the Baby Truck. Ha piece of cake... or so it should've been. A few days before, we had the option to buy an oil basin thingy. Buuut it was too expensive. We improvised. Hunter got some grungy clothes on, and I diligently went outside to watch him work… I mean help. With the quick efficiency of people who know exactly what they’re doing we went to work. I fired up Baby Truck so that the oil would drain more quickly. After a few minutes, I shut him off and Schunt started the oil changing process. After about 10 or 15 minutes, the process is complete. He wipes his hands off, and we go inside to finish packing, and head out. Right on time

……. Ha yeah flippin’ right, only in a perfect world. I had you fooled though didn’t I? Here’s what really happened……

“Ah cra! Tess bring me a better container!” I scrambled out of the Baby Truck grabbing the only logical thing (well, the only thing that was next to me) a plastic Safeway bag. I handed Hunter the bag and watched as he tried to catch the streaming oil in the plastic bag. I looked under under the Truck. “Schunt, you should probably take off your watch.” He looked up at me with a confused expression. “I’m not wearing a watch.” Upon closer inspection it is a ring of oil. We didn’t catch as much of the oil as we would’ve liked, but the plastic bag helped I think. Now on a side note, and in Hunter’s defense, we didn’t have a jack or anything. Therefore, maneuvering underneath my aptly named Baby Truck was difficult for bro. Alright, so we got the oil drained, and apart from Hunter being dirtier than he’d probably intended, things were going not as bad as they could’ve been. We checked the oil before putting in the new stuff. “Are we still supposed to have this much?” Hmmm…. Good question. The answer was “no”. It was a little chilly outside so maybe the oil was just slower to drain then we expected. Schunt crawled back under the Baby, and I followed my instructions to start him back up. Only moments later came the yell. “Turn it off! Turn it off!” Quickly, I did so, but it was too late. I saw something next to the passenger window. It must’ve been “da tar baby”, because there was no way that dark, sticky creature could’ve been my brother. It was. He came around to the driver’s side. “Is it in my hair?” It was. I once again went to inspect the undercarriage of my Baby Truck. Oh goodness. It was bad. Laughter overtook us. How could things have turned out that badly? Why was it so funny? It just really was. A pool of black blood was oozing out from under my Truck. That was unfortunate. After finishing the job, we moved my Baby over a couple of parking spots and assessed the situation. We didn’t have any sawdust…. But there were a lot of leaves and other debris next to the sidewalk. We went to work sopping up our oil catastrophe. After doing what we could, we quickly gathered all of our evidence and ran away from the scene of the crime.

3 hours later…

Our deadline was almost up, but we were making fairly good time. The bed of my Baby Truck was full to bursting. The tailgate closed, but only just. While Hunter threw out the rest all of the trash in the apartment (including all the stuff I had to leave for lack of room), I was trying to organize the cab of the Baby. That was no small feat, let me tell ya. It was already full in the cab, but there were still bags of bedding, some food, and some odds ‘n’ ends that needed a home in the Truck. It was my job to make room. I took the bedding (blankets, pillows, and such) out of the trash bags and stuffed them into their own spaces. Next, I took the bag of food and utensils. It was too big. I divvied it out as well. After finding small places to stuff some silverware in the bed of the truck, I then found myself cramming packs of ramen noodles and boxes of macaroni into every available crack in the cab that I could find. Once even the cracks of cracks were filled, I realized that never before had I wished that my Baby Truck wasn’t quite so baby.

We were finally ready to go. What a glorious occasion… with a few minor setbacks. Such as:  

·         Neither seat could be leaned back, scooted back, or in any way made to be comfortable.

·         We couldn’t see anything out of the rearview mirror… except cra in the back of the truck.

·         The person in the passenger seat had to sit with 3 pillows and a basketball on his/her lap,  

as well as a 5L container of oil, a toaster, and various other items under foot.

·         The passenger and driver seats were separated by a cooler full of stuff that was probably

going to rot anyway (along with a few packs of ramen that wouldn’t fit elsewhere), and a

laptop.

The situation was really quite ridiculous. Movement inside the Truck was nearly impossible, and leaving the vehicle was no small feat either. We were laughing. It was the hysterical, crazed laughter of two people who had no hopes of survival, not really. “I’m so tired.” Hunter barely managed to say between bouts of giggling. After a few jokes such as, “well Tess, we’ve had a good run (of 4 days)” or “Schunt, we should just call of our friends and tell them good-bye...cause we’re not gonna make it”, we pulled away from my ghetto little studio and headed towards the scorching unknown.

                                                …to be continued…