Ready to go

Well, tomorrow’s the day I hit the road. Friday the 13th. That should be auspicious.

Boy, from all the comments on yesterday’s “Stuff!” post, this topic of moving possessions really resonates. And some of you put my little trailer-stuff problem in perspective. Man … all that talk of 55-foot semis and reducing a life-long heritage to a few square feet of keepers. That’s depressing. Makes me glad I don’t have much more than one small trailer’s worth.

As you can see, we loaded that puppy and then some. Neighbor Joel was invaluable, both in helping me shift stuff and in keeping me well grounded. I am really, really going to miss having him as my fellow hermit.

Oh yeah, most of the packing was much neater than what you see in the rear of the trailer. Wedging in those last items wasn’t pretty. That thing that looks like an explosion in a bicycle factory is one of my three items of furniture — a two-seater lawn glider than had to be taken all the way down to its seat slats and tubing to fit in (also Joel’s work).

Quite a lot of stuff didn’t make the cut, including all of my bulk storage foods. What you see in the photo are (among other things) the three buckets we’d hopefully loaded on the trailer then had to pull off. The rest never even left the barn. Ah well, all that wheat isn’t on my primal diet, anyhow, right? The wheat, beans, sugar, salt, and TVP will serve the Last-Chance Gulch community well in an emergency. And Joel will make fine use out of all the regular canned foods I left behind. In a couple of months, I’ll hit the fall canned-goods sales and begin stocking up again.

Joel threatened to put that rocking chair in the background on top of my vehicle just like Ma Clampett, but I declined. I figured dog crates were rednecky enough without having to hum the Beverly Hillbillies theme song all the way across country.

Now … on the road tomorrow!