Ode to a Volvo

Ode to a Volvo

Before we left for Washington, I was talking to Mike's family about my U-haul worries. I said that, since Mike was going to be the driver, I needed to soak up all my worries and stress and not stress him out. I said I felt like one of those towels that soaks up a ton of water (a Sham-Wow, as seen on TV). But what I said was, "I feel like a huge Stress Shamu." Oops.

I realized over the course of these past few days that I didn't really need to be worried about the back of the car/trailer. Something about doing a ton of test and ensuring safety before allowing your U-haul product to be manufactured and hitched to a vehicle. No, I didn't need to be focused on the back of the car; I needed to be focused on the front. That wonderful, awesome Volvo engine. It was having some issues with heating, so we pulled off the highway. This guardian angel man in a camper pulled off too and told us to try driving with the heat blasting out of the vents. Apparently this allows the engine to get rid of some of its excess heat. So we drove for at least six hours with heat being blown around the car and whipped out the open windows. No music either, so Mike could pay attention to the sounds of the car. It wasn't bad.

Without music, I had to fill the time somehow, and what better way than with made-up songs!

Here is my favorite one:

Ode to a Volvo (made up on the spot)

-Sung to the tune of some Lutheran hymn-

Verse:
I love you, Volvo. I hope you will be kind.
I hope you don't poop out on us and make me lose my mind.
I just want you to keep doing the good things that you do
And get us safe and sound to our apartment in Bellevue.

Chorus:
Volvo V 70 XC!
I love you; I hope that you love me!
We want you to succeed and go as far as you can go!
We promise never ever ever again to make you tow!

Nice, huh? That got me through at least half an hour.

The Scavenger Hunt

A week before we left, Julia casually slipped me a Scavenger Hunt to complete on our road trip. It was fun to look out for these various topics. Here are a few (plus my comments):

• Drive past a cornfield in North Dakota. (People who live in/love North Dakota, please step away for two minutes.... North Dakota is BORING! I tried to come up with a song about North Dakota and corn, but it ended up being too boring. The end of North Dakota was almost cool enough to be worth driving through the state. Almost. We drove through Theodore Roosevelt National Park. See?)

• Fill up gas in the middle of nowhere. (This happened a lot. Especially in Montana. Because twelve people live there. We stopped in a small town called Wibaux, MT, and the gas station was so remote-feeling, it was one of those times that when we walked in, the two old tobacco-chewing men in cowboy hats looked at us like we didn't belong in these parts.)

• Speaking of Montana! Drive through Montana and make a comment about how nice it actually is. (Montana was beautiful and exactly what you would imagine (think "Home on the Range.")) Montana was where we checked off a lot of items on our scavenger hunt: 
• See someone with a cowboy hat and boots. 
• See an antelope. 
• See a sign for anything relating to Lewis and Clark. 
• See a sign for a ranch. 
• Sarah, make up a song when you get bored -- bonus points if Mike gets annoyed. 

Montana was never-ending, but every single part of it was interesting to look at. Here, see for yourself!

Tonight, we finally made it to Spokane, Washington! Only four more hours! Oh, and in case you were wondering, this is what I look like after twelve hours of driving (and six hours with the heat blasting and the windows down). Note the wings of hair sticking up off the top of my head.

Peace!

The Art of Chilling Out

I thought a blog would be a good way to keep people up-to-date about our move and transition to Seattle. A blog would also be a good way for me to process all these changes because

New City + Apartment + Job = One million new things to worry about!

Mike and I are moving out of our first apartment (cute, good location, TINY!). Unfortunately, I don't have many great pictures of this first apartment, but here are a few:

Tomorrow, we are beginning the 32-hour trek to the Pacific Northwest. 

Here are a few things I am sad about:

• Leaving awesome family (who have been so helpful these past few weeks!)
• Leaving really good friends and great people I have met throughout my three years in GRPS.
• Leaving Grand Rapids, especially since, in our old apartment, we could basically walk anywhere downtown.

Here are a few things I am excited about:

• Road trip! I love road trips (even though these will be driving days of at least 10 hours). We have tons of music and audio books (Amy Poehler's book, the Maze Runner, a Miles Davis biography).
• I LOVE setting up and decorating new places, so I'm looking forward to getting to our apartment and putting up my cute turquoise mirror and frames.
• Doing a crazy adventure with Mike. He's been really good about getting all the logistics figured out for this trip, and we are ready to get going now that we've figured everything out.

Speaking of Michael, I think this process has been a wonderful test of his patience and loyalty to our marriage, since apparently the concept of moving across the country has turned me into a crazy person. I have the normal worries about the new job and money and all that jazz, but the fears I am focusing on have been completely irrational. 

Sarah's Top 5 (Irrational) Fears that She Really Needs to Get Over

1. Today or tomorrow, I drive somewhere boring like Walgreens and get into a fender-bender and then we will have to shell out a fortune to fix our car before we can leave.
2. I go to my first Professional Development training, and the HR department tells me they made a mistake and they meant to hire someone else, sorry.
3. We arrive at the apartment on Monday and our landlady tells us that she decided she doesn't actually like us and she rented the apartment out to different tenants, sorry.
4. We will be driving up a hill on the highway and the hitch will come undone and the U-Haul trailer will roll down the highway toward the other cars and we will be responsible for approximately 20 deaths.
5. We will be driving on a mountain and the trailer will start to wiggle back and forth and the wiggle will gain momentum and eventually it will flip over and it and the car will spin side-over-side and we'll fall off the cliff and die. ( I shared this fear with Linnea when we picked up the U-Haul, and she couldn't stop laughing for some reason).

I joked with Mike that I need to take a Valium or at least three Dramamine pills before we leave so that I can just be unconscious during the drive. I knew we were perfectly safe when Mike driving the car and trailer back from the the U-Haul place, but he had to deal with an unending stream of Sarah-panic (what-was-that-noise?-is-it-just-a-quirk-of-the-car-or-is-it-something-that-needs-fixing?-do-you-need-to-pull-over?-you-see-the-brake-lights-up-ahead-right?-make-sure-you-give-yourself-extra-room-to-brake-MAKE-SURE-THE-TRAILER-DOESN'T-WIGGLE-BACK-AND-FORTH-AND-FLIP-US-OVER!)

So I need to practice the Art of Chilling Out. Things will go wrong: we'll miss an exit and get lost, and plates will probably brake during transport (although maybe not because Mike's dad is some kind of Tetris-ninja when it comes to packing boxes snugly into trailers!). But this is an adventure, and one that we're going to enjoy.