The next day dawned, sunny, snow-covered, and depressing. I had managed to scrouge up a toothbrush and some pajamas, but everything else I owned – literally, everything, aside from what was in my purse – was in the UHaul, covered in snow and blocked in my eighteen more inches of snow, in the parking lot of a shopping center two miles from my house.
I spent the morning moping and getting in touch with people to let them know I had, in fact, arrived home alive. I helped Ben shovel the driveway briefly (he did most of it himself!) and helped my father try to back his car out of the driveway, which he couldn't. (The drifts at the side of the driveway were too high for him to back over. And the street would have been too slippery at that point, I think, anyway.) The street by the side of our house hadn't been plowed, though the one in front had, so I figured we'd have a hard time even getting to the truck, let alone getting it back home.
At about four in the afternoon, though, our neighbor offered to help us try to get the truck out with his SUV, and we took him up on it. He had no trouble getting us to the parking lot, which had been partially plowed, though not around the truck itself. I thought we'd be unable to get it out, but after a couple hairy moments, he did! He just gunned it right over the snow and got it home – and albeit pointed towards the house – into the driveway. I spent the waning sunlit hours and some of the dark ones shoveling out a path by the side of the truck so we could carry things in from it and then carried in probably about two thirds of what was in there, including my suitcases, which I had yet to really pack. Things were looking up! Tasks remaining: unpack the truck, pack my suitcases, return the truck, get my car from Meg's house, and get to the airport. At least half of them looked insurmountable, but then so had the tasks that came before.
The next morning, my mother and Ben helped me unload the rest of my things from the truck. Then Uncle Dick and my cousin Annie came over to say hi (Annie was about to drive to Atlanta to get her Uncle Steve), and we all decided we should try to get the truck back out of the driveway so that we could return it. (It was supposed to be returned that day, Sunday.) This did not go so well. We backed it out and…got stuck. And spun. And slid. And got stuck some more. Eventually Mr. Lindsay, the neighbor, came over again and helped, and we got the truck at least pointed the right way on the street, but still had no luck in getting it to move forward until three guys in a huge pickup came and sprinkled sand underneath its wheels. We then all of us – Mama, Ben, Uncle Dick, and the three guys from the pickup truck pushed that damn thing down the street to the plowed corner. Addition to list of things I have done: pushed a 14' UHaul truck at least ten feet.
I got in and, followed by my mother (who had managed to get her car from 7-11 to the church parking lot across the street, which had become a depot for neighborhood cars), drove through plowed roads to where we were supposed to drop off the truck, at which point we found that the UHaul people hadn't come in to work and the parking lot was unplowed. I spent half an hour on the phone with UHaul customer service and finally was granted an extension until Tuesday, at which point I hoped my mother and sister would be able to return the truck for me. So it was back to the church parking lot to park the truck.
Next task: my car. Meg and some of her friends came by and picked me up in an SUV. My car was stuck in the entrance to the parking lot across the street from her house, only a few feet from the plowed half of the lot, but currently surrounded by snow and unplowed streets. At first I didn't want to try to get it out, but after a neighbor asked us to try because it was blocking her car in, we started shoveling. The snow, at this point, was actually pretty easy to shovel. It was deep, but, in parts where no one had driven over it, unpacked and mostly not icy. Another neighbor came and helped us, and things were going well, but then the first neighbor began to feel faint.
She sat down in my car for a while, but things were only getting worse, so I helped her back to her house, where she became even more ill. Eventually, I helped her get to bed and called 911 – who responded immediately. I stayed long enough to make sure she would be ok. (As it turned out she had multiple sclerosis, and had overextended herself.) During that time, Meg managed to get a path shoveled out for my car, and I simply coasted down the unplowed streets back home.
Next task was to be dinner at Grandma's, which had already been postponed twice. After the triumph with the car, I suppose we were due a defeat, and this was to be it. We successfully got my father's car out of the driveway, but then the street up to Grandma's house was completely impassable, either by car or by foot. Meg, Ben, and I made it up to tell poor Grandma that we couldn't stay, but the streets were fast icing over again and to stay for dinner would have been too dangerous. She was disappointed, but of course would rather see food go to waste than us crash! On the way home the car did indeed slide and skid a few times, but we made it – Meg to her house and Ben and me to my father's.
That night I exhaustedly packed my suitcases, but without much hope that we'd make it all the way to Charlottesville to collect Ernest and then to Dulles Airport by 2 p.m. the next day. I had realized that if Ernest and I didn't make our flight on the 21st, we'd have to wait until after Christmas – the people who receive animals at Heathrow wouldn't be in from the 23rd to the 27th. I'd been keeping Nick updated with scattershot e-mails, but hadn't had time for much more. (As it turns out, most of his family had last heard that I wasn't going to make it until they saw me Christmas day!) Mama and I agreed to meet (and to take my car, rather than hers), at five the next morning.
On time the next morning I said goodbye to my father, and we dragged my three suitcases and carryon to the parking lot where my car was in the pre-dawn darkness. We'd decided that, rather than risk traffic on the major interstates again, we'd take Rt. 460 to Lynchburg, and then 29 to Charlottesville. I'd heard from Charlottesville friends that things were even worse there than in Roanoke – 28 inches of snow and hundreds of people forced to abandon their cars. We didn't know what we'd find in terms of road quality, but we decided we'd try.
As it turned out, though, the last part of the journey was the easiest! 460 to Lynchburg was almost completely clear. 29 was not quite as good, especially in Albemarle County, but it was passable. We did, however, see at least 50 cars that had been abandoned and pulled off the side of the road by the highway patrol. I finally began to think, seeing how bad Charlottesville was, that we had made the right decision after all. The journey on Friday night was hellish, but had we waited even a few hours more, the truck wouldn't have been stuck in the Towers Shopping Center parking lot, it would have been stuck somewhere on Interstate 64 west of Charlottesville, which would have been much, much worse. Because Charlottesville was bad. The roads were sort of plowed, but 28 inches wasn't an exaggeration. It might even have been an understatement. We made it – gingerly and slowly, but successfully – to the vicinity of my house, where we parked on Burnley Ave. and walked down the hill. The drifts at my door came well above my knees, but when we got in the house the cats were, of course, fine. (Although Moses definitely knew what was going on and was not happy about it.)
We left Moses with even more extra food and water, in case the cat sitter couldn't get to him for a few more days, and packed Ernest up in his crate (which he was not happy about), and left again. The road out of Charlottesville remained bad for another twenty miles or so, but then became absolutely clear – and as we approached DC, it was almost as if it had never snowed! We arrived at the Virgin Atlantic Cargo building at Dulles Airport at 1 p.m. in plenty of time, and after a little rigmarole (I did have to assemble Ernest's larger carrier, but they didn't charge me any more), he was checked in, I was checked in (minus one carryon, which was "too heavy"), and I was actually on track to leave!
And we did. The flight was completely smooth – no delays, no problems, no extra baggage charges, no issues picking Ernest up at the end. All in all, the work we did over those four days paid off – we got everything done more or less the way it needed to be done, and I'm really glad for it – and so thankful to all the people who helped out!
I will never, though, and I mean NEVER try to move in the snow again. Never.
And that, ladies and gentlemen, is the (perhaps less than riveting) story of DisasterMove '09
I spent the morning moping and getting in touch with people to let them know I had, in fact, arrived home alive. I helped Ben shovel the driveway briefly (he did most of it himself!) and helped my father try to back his car out of the driveway, which he couldn't. (The drifts at the side of the driveway were too high for him to back over. And the street would have been too slippery at that point, I think, anyway.) The street by the side of our house hadn't been plowed, though the one in front had, so I figured we'd have a hard time even getting to the truck, let alone getting it back home.
At about four in the afternoon, though, our neighbor offered to help us try to get the truck out with his SUV, and we took him up on it. He had no trouble getting us to the parking lot, which had been partially plowed, though not around the truck itself. I thought we'd be unable to get it out, but after a couple hairy moments, he did! He just gunned it right over the snow and got it home – and albeit pointed towards the house – into the driveway. I spent the waning sunlit hours and some of the dark ones shoveling out a path by the side of the truck so we could carry things in from it and then carried in probably about two thirds of what was in there, including my suitcases, which I had yet to really pack. Things were looking up! Tasks remaining: unpack the truck, pack my suitcases, return the truck, get my car from Meg's house, and get to the airport. At least half of them looked insurmountable, but then so had the tasks that came before.
The next morning, my mother and Ben helped me unload the rest of my things from the truck. Then Uncle Dick and my cousin Annie came over to say hi (Annie was about to drive to Atlanta to get her Uncle Steve), and we all decided we should try to get the truck back out of the driveway so that we could return it. (It was supposed to be returned that day, Sunday.) This did not go so well. We backed it out and…got stuck. And spun. And slid. And got stuck some more. Eventually Mr. Lindsay, the neighbor, came over again and helped, and we got the truck at least pointed the right way on the street, but still had no luck in getting it to move forward until three guys in a huge pickup came and sprinkled sand underneath its wheels. We then all of us – Mama, Ben, Uncle Dick, and the three guys from the pickup truck pushed that damn thing down the street to the plowed corner. Addition to list of things I have done: pushed a 14' UHaul truck at least ten feet.
I got in and, followed by my mother (who had managed to get her car from 7-11 to the church parking lot across the street, which had become a depot for neighborhood cars), drove through plowed roads to where we were supposed to drop off the truck, at which point we found that the UHaul people hadn't come in to work and the parking lot was unplowed. I spent half an hour on the phone with UHaul customer service and finally was granted an extension until Tuesday, at which point I hoped my mother and sister would be able to return the truck for me. So it was back to the church parking lot to park the truck.
Next task: my car. Meg and some of her friends came by and picked me up in an SUV. My car was stuck in the entrance to the parking lot across the street from her house, only a few feet from the plowed half of the lot, but currently surrounded by snow and unplowed streets. At first I didn't want to try to get it out, but after a neighbor asked us to try because it was blocking her car in, we started shoveling. The snow, at this point, was actually pretty easy to shovel. It was deep, but, in parts where no one had driven over it, unpacked and mostly not icy. Another neighbor came and helped us, and things were going well, but then the first neighbor began to feel faint.
She sat down in my car for a while, but things were only getting worse, so I helped her back to her house, where she became even more ill. Eventually, I helped her get to bed and called 911 – who responded immediately. I stayed long enough to make sure she would be ok. (As it turned out she had multiple sclerosis, and had overextended herself.) During that time, Meg managed to get a path shoveled out for my car, and I simply coasted down the unplowed streets back home.
Next task was to be dinner at Grandma's, which had already been postponed twice. After the triumph with the car, I suppose we were due a defeat, and this was to be it. We successfully got my father's car out of the driveway, but then the street up to Grandma's house was completely impassable, either by car or by foot. Meg, Ben, and I made it up to tell poor Grandma that we couldn't stay, but the streets were fast icing over again and to stay for dinner would have been too dangerous. She was disappointed, but of course would rather see food go to waste than us crash! On the way home the car did indeed slide and skid a few times, but we made it – Meg to her house and Ben and me to my father's.
That night I exhaustedly packed my suitcases, but without much hope that we'd make it all the way to Charlottesville to collect Ernest and then to Dulles Airport by 2 p.m. the next day. I had realized that if Ernest and I didn't make our flight on the 21st, we'd have to wait until after Christmas – the people who receive animals at Heathrow wouldn't be in from the 23rd to the 27th. I'd been keeping Nick updated with scattershot e-mails, but hadn't had time for much more. (As it turns out, most of his family had last heard that I wasn't going to make it until they saw me Christmas day!) Mama and I agreed to meet (and to take my car, rather than hers), at five the next morning.
On time the next morning I said goodbye to my father, and we dragged my three suitcases and carryon to the parking lot where my car was in the pre-dawn darkness. We'd decided that, rather than risk traffic on the major interstates again, we'd take Rt. 460 to Lynchburg, and then 29 to Charlottesville. I'd heard from Charlottesville friends that things were even worse there than in Roanoke – 28 inches of snow and hundreds of people forced to abandon their cars. We didn't know what we'd find in terms of road quality, but we decided we'd try.
As it turned out, though, the last part of the journey was the easiest! 460 to Lynchburg was almost completely clear. 29 was not quite as good, especially in Albemarle County, but it was passable. We did, however, see at least 50 cars that had been abandoned and pulled off the side of the road by the highway patrol. I finally began to think, seeing how bad Charlottesville was, that we had made the right decision after all. The journey on Friday night was hellish, but had we waited even a few hours more, the truck wouldn't have been stuck in the Towers Shopping Center parking lot, it would have been stuck somewhere on Interstate 64 west of Charlottesville, which would have been much, much worse. Because Charlottesville was bad. The roads were sort of plowed, but 28 inches wasn't an exaggeration. It might even have been an understatement. We made it – gingerly and slowly, but successfully – to the vicinity of my house, where we parked on Burnley Ave. and walked down the hill. The drifts at my door came well above my knees, but when we got in the house the cats were, of course, fine. (Although Moses definitely knew what was going on and was not happy about it.)
We left Moses with even more extra food and water, in case the cat sitter couldn't get to him for a few more days, and packed Ernest up in his crate (which he was not happy about), and left again. The road out of Charlottesville remained bad for another twenty miles or so, but then became absolutely clear – and as we approached DC, it was almost as if it had never snowed! We arrived at the Virgin Atlantic Cargo building at Dulles Airport at 1 p.m. in plenty of time, and after a little rigmarole (I did have to assemble Ernest's larger carrier, but they didn't charge me any more), he was checked in, I was checked in (minus one carryon, which was "too heavy"), and I was actually on track to leave!
And we did. The flight was completely smooth – no delays, no problems, no extra baggage charges, no issues picking Ernest up at the end. All in all, the work we did over those four days paid off – we got everything done more or less the way it needed to be done, and I'm really glad for it – and so thankful to all the people who helped out!
I will never, though, and I mean NEVER try to move in the snow again. Never.
And that, ladies and gentlemen, is the (perhaps less than riveting) story of DisasterMove '09
I am speechless! So glad (and amazed) that you made it as planned, with Ernest! My favorite part is when you mention that everyone on the road thought they were above-average snow drivers, but weren't. :)
This. was. horrifying. I'm glad you made it though, and on the plus side, your new place is very cute!