The Storm and the Blackout

So two weeks later, I’m back to write up the next part of my story. In my defense, our hotel internet was spotty all week because of the storms and then when we moved into our apartment, it took a little over a week to get internet installed here. But let’s see, where was I?

Oh yes.

We left Georgia at about 3 in the afternoon to make what should have been an 8 or 9 hour drive. Everything was going smoothly until we approached Richmond – and then it started pouring, thunder, lightning, big gusting winds, and all that. We slowed down to a crawl and traffic backed up due to downed trees and low visibility. I don’t have any of my own pictures, but the Washington Post has a good gallery.

It looked like this – but this is not my picture. Credit goes to @RyHickey3 and the Washington Post gallery

My brother called to check in and mentioned – this is key for later in the story, so remember this! – that he was on my sister’s cell phone because his was dead, but hers was running low too.

We made it past the traffic and got on the 295 and things cleared up a little. Then Chris made a wrong turn (partly my fault, partly his fault, mostly the GPS’ fault) and we ended up driving through the middle of DC, where traffic signals and street lights were out, streets were closed with confusing detours, and cops were all over the place. Somehow, we got back on track and a little before 3 in the morning, we saw our exit.

Sort of. And by sort of, I mean that our exit was the one that had a complete black out. No lights at all, anywhere. We couldn’t see ANYTHING. And lucky us, our hotel was set off from the street, behind an office complex, so we just had to trust that would GPS tell us when to turn and be right. Eventually, we navigated to the front of the hotel and I ran in to check in. They had made the keys for us earlier when we’d called to request a late check in. Luckily we’d called before the power went down because otherwise, they wouldn’t have been able to make us keys until the power came back and we’d have had to sleep in the car. She told me how to get around to our room and then offered me a glow stick to navigate because they were out of flashlights. In the meantime, Bones was outside scaring people by moving silently up to them, then putting her nose against them. She made at least 2 different staff members scream… glow sticks don’t provide much light

Anyway. Chris, Bones, Shecky, and I took our one backpack [best tip I can give for a move: put one to two day's worth of clothes and toiletries in a bag you can grab easily, so you don't have to dig for your suitcase and all that in the back of your packed car] and laptops and navigated through the halls to our room, ready to get out of the nasty humidity and hot rain and into some cool A/C.

Except I’m sure you see where this is going right? The power was out, so there was no A/C. It was at least as humid and hot in our room as it was outside – probably in the upper 90s for both temp and humidity. Gross. At that point, I didn’t care. I was just tired and glad to be out of a car, so I flopped down on the bed and pulled out my phone to tell my dad we’d finally arrived safely.

A picture of my brother to help break up all this text. And it’s even relevant, because I think he took this at a random gas station somewhere on the drive!

Then it occurred to me that my brother and sister had been ahead of us and I hadn’t heard from them in a while. I knew they hadn’t take the wrong turn we did, so where were they? I tried to call them and it went straight to voicemail. Uh oh.

I wasn’t sure what to do, so I fell asleep.

Eventually, my sister called me. What happened to them? She’d been using her phone for GPS, so when it died, she lost that. They’d taken a wrong turn somewhere and in the process of trying to turn themselves around, had looped around the entire Beltway again and ended up back in Virginia. They didn’t have a map or any way to call me until they stopped at a gas station and picked up a car charger for her phone. When I talked to her, she said they finally had directions and were back on track, so I told them to call me when they got there.

She called me at 5:15 AM. We’d left the day before at 3 in the afternoon. Ugh. She was (understandably) unhappy and when she realized there was no A/C in the room, she was even less happy.

Happily, the A/C (and lights) came back on the next morning at about 9 and the room instantly cooled off. We were super lucky though, because I knew people nearby who were without power for almost a week!

If you made it through this, you deserve a prize. And that prize will come very soon in the form of a post about Bawlmer, Philly, and DC that will be mostly pictures

GA to DC: Getting Ready to Move!

Hello! I’m sure you’ve all missed me, but I forgot how much work a PCS entails. Especially when you actually have stuff and own a house.

We spent the week or so before we left Georgia fixing up all the little things in our house that needed repair, throwing out stuff that wasn’t coming with us, and replacing the hardwood floor in our house with ceramic tile that looks like hardwood – I saw it on Pinterest a while ago and thought it looked awesome, so when I saw it in the flooring store, I was all over it. But a word of advice? You don’t want people in the house ripping up your floors the day you’re trying to clean everything and leave. Also, I don’t care how much money it saves to do it yourself: let someone else clean your carpets.

My brother and sister flew in two days before we left and they were a huge help with cleaning and organizing everything to get ready for moving.

As for the movers? Well… that was an unpleasant experience.

They sent two packers the first day to pack up our five bedroom house. We had more than that to pack up our two bedroom apartment in Monterey. But they seemed to do a good — albeit very slow — job.

And then the people came two days later to pick up the shipment and asked why our bed was still assembled. Hmm? Apparently, the first people who came to pack everything were supposed to disassemble and wrap everything that needed disassembling. And since that was supposed to already be done, the second crew didn’t have any tools. So they left and came back two hours later. And then they realized that their dolly had a flat tire and that the lift on their truck didn’t work. Sigh.

At some point, the operations manager came by to check out the situation and we learned that we were supposed to have a lot more movers, but only two of them showed up at work for the day. And we also learned that the girl making the inventory of our furniture was marking everything as scratched or dented even when it wasn’t. Worst part about that? She was a milspouse – and not just any milspouse, she was a Navy sub wife. Nice.

Anyway, The ops manager made her start completely over and we assured him that we fully intended to inspect everything ourselves before we signed off on the paper. Eventually, they told us they needed to come back a second day – not because they were out of time, but because the truck they had wasn’t big enough for all our stuff. The guy assures us that he will be there around 7 am, and definitely no later than 8.

So at 9 the next morning (yep.) two guys showed up to finish the job, along with the ops manager, who wanted to go over the inventory with me. Within five seconds of looking at the list, we realized how much the girl had screwed it up the day before. Things were missing from the list (she listed our washer, but not dryer; the King bed frame, but not the mattress and so on), things were mislabeled (she skipped a sticker at some point), and she kept listing everything as damaged even after the ops manager told her to stop (she wrote that our GLASS tv stand was gouged – how is that even possible??). I spent the morning correcting her list with the ops manager and finally signed off on everything, but I’m still paranoid that we’re going to end up missing something big.

But finally, they loaded everything and our house was empty. We finished cleaning the next day, packed up and weighed our cars (we did a partial DITY), and finally hit the road at about 3 PM.

Next to come: Driving forever through a thunderstorm and checking into a hotel with no power, exploring Baltimore and Philadelphia, and DC on the Fourth!