The Trip Day One

DAY 1
How exciting to have the chance to drive across the country with your son and spend some quality time together. Here we were two guys with A.D.D heading across the country. Who know what could happen or where we would end up.
Amy and I arrived from a wedding shoot on the coast in Durham on Sunday afternoon to see the truck half loaded and Lori’s dad Angelo breaking a sweat while walking a large box to the driveway. Amy first comment as we approached the house was “ that truck sure looks smaller then I though”. Boxes everywhere it was truly moving day.
Ian’s life long talent as the Tetris game king gave him the ability to pack that truck tight.
It was packed from top to bottom with every available air space filled. It was an awesome pack job to fit the total contents of his house into a 17ft Uhaul truck.
Monday morning October 1st at 10:45 we hit the road. Lori had just left for the airport to fly back to San Francisco and Amy was left to say the farewells.
I figured we had three and half good days of driving and I needed to get back by Friday. We had the right music, a few books on tape, maps, GPS, cameras and video ready to go. All the toys were set. We were also pulling his car on a car trailer. Right before we left I walked of the length of the rig to be 39 feet. That made us official truckers.
We said our goodbyes to tearful Amy and heading out to highway 40 West. I have driven many types of trucks; cars and cars pulling trailers in my life but this one felt different right from the start. We turned the corner to the main road as Amy was following behind us. As we headed down that first street to the exit ramp the truck hit a small bump in the road. The top of the truck begins to sway a little and felt very top heavy as the trailer started fishtailing a little back and forth. The cell phone rang and Amy was asking if everything was ok! Fine no problem was the reply.
We decided to take a quick stop to the Uhaul place so they can take a look a the truck to make sure everything was on go before we started the trip. At times it felt like the front wheels were just about touching the ground. The guy at the dealership reassured us that this type truck does feel a little top heavy. No problem. We made a quick stop over to Best Buy to pick up a power converter to help power our toys so we were off again.

The truck did not feel right. At one point we were in the Greensboro area and came across a bad spot in the road as the top of the truck started to sway the trailer stated to fishtail again. This time we were going in one direction as the trailer went in the other. The cars behind us kept their distance I am sure not knowing what was going on. So we knew going over 55 mph was going to be a problem. We decided the North Carolina and Tennessee Mountains were going to be very hard to say the least. At this point I was thinking this was not going to be a fun week and I would be lucky to make it back by Sunday going at this pace.What came to my mind was the segment of the movie Anchormn when Ron Burgundy is put down by his friends while drinking a milk in the stree on a hot day. " Milk bad choice".
By Ashville the pressure was on. We made the call to take the car off the trailer and Ian would drive the car over the mountains and I would drive the truck since I was used to the feel of it.
We would get as far as we could and then set the car to the trailer once we were on flat land. It was a long night but we somehow made it as far as Nashville Tennessee. I was doing the white knuckle ride in the truck not trying to hit any bumps in the road that would set the top of truck into a sway and Ian was behind me in the car helping to keep the pace 50 to 55 mph. That was as fast as I could go safely. Nashville was going to be all I could take for one day so we found a place to stay.
Ian was on the phone for a while as we approached Nashville and arranged to meet at the Uhaul dealer first thing in the morning as so we could change trucks. The though of taking everything out of one truck to the other was not sounding bad at this point. We knew we could make it up in speed if we could get a faster ride. We only drove 506 miles that day. It was a long 506 miles.