The Road Chronicles: Packing for Day 4

Bleh, repacking the car today was not very fun at all.

It is stupidly hot and muggy outside today; according to the weather it is 95 degrees but feels like 107.  And of course we didn't really think to do the packing later tonight when it was a bit cooler.  We just thought "We want to get on the road early tomorrow so we need to pack today instead of tomorrow morning."  Woops.

Also, cuz it was late and dark when we actually got to William's house, I forgot to put up the sunshade.  Then, we haven't had to get in the car for the past two days at all, so I didn't think to put it up then either.  Needless to say, when I got in it today to back it up the driveway so we could pack, the entire car was horribly hot.  The steering wheel (which isn't even black) was so hot I couldn't really hold onto it firmly with both hands for more than about ten seconds at a time.  Luckily I just had to turn the car around in the driveway and back it up a few feet.

But, half an hour, three bottles of water, and about ten gallons of sweat later, the car is packed!  It is full to the brim, there is maybe room for the two pillows that are inside the house still, and that only because pillows are fairly squishy and forgiving.

After three days of driving with the van seat on top of the car, we decided we didn't actually want to put anything else up there.  There were a few things that didn't fit into the car that would have, had we been willing to put more up on the top.  But Dad and JonMarke did a really good job of tying that seat down, and then we did a really good job of getting the tarp bungeed down on top of it.  So I'd rather not mess with it at this point.  When we were driving through New Mexico there were a bunch of lighted warning signs that said things like "High wind area next 75 miles" and a bunch of cars passed us in those areas that did not have their roof cargo tied down very well.  One large black SUV had two large suitcases on their roof rack.  The suitcase were very well wrapped around with rope and tied down to the left and right sides of the car, but the owners did nothing about the front and back of the suitcases.  So this SUV flies past us and the suitcases are blown up at about a 60 degree angle on the top of the car, but held on at the sides, just not the top.

It was all fairly scary and I'd rather leave well enough alone.  So there are three boxes of JonMarke's books and one of his guitars that William will mail to us in Chicago.  I offered to repack the car so that the guitar would fit, but JonMarke swears that mailing it is how he got it to Tulsa in the first place and that it will be fine.  So that's the plan.

So now, an hour and a half later, we are finally almost comfortable in our skin again, after drinking much more water and sitting under the fans in the air-conditioned house.

We're going to bed early today and hopefully we'll be on the road by about 6:30 tomorrow!