So, we made it to Kansas!
We left Maryland mid-morning on Monday and drove 14 hours to Terra Haute, Indiana. We arrived around midnight at the hotel, thoroughly exhausted. The day saw us cross the Appalachin mountains (Driving a fully-loaded box truck that has a max speed of 75mph and is gutless up and over mountains isn't fun, fyi) and leave the comforts of the east coast far behind. Ryser rode with me in the moving truck, and Chauncey got the back seat to himself in the car. Leah and I had walkie-talkies to converse as we drove, and we stopped every 200 miles or so to fill the truck up on gas (note to self: get a diesel next time).
Day 2 of the drive saw us hit bad weather once or twice, the dogs get a little more restless, and traffic around St. Louis. I did see food and drink products in the convenience stores of the midwest that I had thought were discontinued 20 or more years ago. Sadly I did not see Kissle on any of the shelves.
After 10 hours of driving that day, we finally pulled onto the stretch of road that would take us to our new home in Alta Vista, KS. I'll be posting pictures of that road at some point, because it's a beautiful road to drive down. Things were great ...
...until we reached town.
It turns out that Alta Vista isn't exactly much of a town per se, as it is a place where a town used to be. There are approximately 5 businesses on the main street. Fortunately for us one of them was a bar (that was open from 11-2,closed til 5, and then open from 5-9pm, closed on Sundays), but that's a different story altogether. Our house was pretty decent from the outside, and looked to be what we were expecting. Since we had never actually seen the inside, we were anxious to see the layout. As it turned out the layout didn't matter much (the layout was in fact fine). What did matter was the unmistakable stench of cat urine. No, I don't think you understand, CAT URINE (bold,exclamation point,italicize and underline). I mean you couldn't even go into either of the bedrooms, which were carpeted (anyone who's ever been around urine-stained carpet knows the difference I'm talking about here), the bathroom or the basement. That leaves us with only the living room and kitchen that don't absolutely reek like, well you know, pee.
Well we were so exhausted from the trip that we unloaded the bed, threw it in the living room for the night, and went to sleep. (Well, we went to the bar, drank steady for an hour until they were going to close, and then laid in bed in the living room wondering what the &*!# we had possibly done. The next morning, Leah and I had a very serious conversation about what we were going to do about this, and decided to go into Manhattan, KS so I could find the school and the English department building so I'd be prepared for Thursday. We also decided we should see if we could find an alternate form of housing, and so spent almost all of Wednesday searching for a new home instead of moving into the one we thought we'd have for at least the next year. Before we left for the day I of course wanted to shower. As I turned on the shower and heard the pipes explode I knew it was going to be a long day. On a positive note (I write with intense sarcasm), I enjoyed my first bath in about 10 years.
Finding no good housing options after an entire day of searching, we headed back to Alta Vista, resigned to the idea that we would have to stay there for the forseeable future. Another night sleeping in the living room and checking the bedrooms periodically to see if they still smelled atrocious (they did) left me in great condition for my first day on campus. As I sat there being thoroughly overwhelmed by all of the information being thrown at me I decided to call Leah and see how the plumber was making out fixing the shower. He fixed it, but our landlord dropped off a paper that listed possible solutions for our pee problem. The solutions offered by our landlord were as follows:
1) We could buy the house, and then do whatever we wanted to with the floors and basement.
2) They would replace the carpet in the bedrooms with laminate flooring- if we agreed to get rid of the dogs!
They required us to meet with them at their house that evening to discuss these options.
For those of you who know me well, you can imagine how hard it was for me not to do something regrettable in this situation. It was solely because of Leah that I was able to maintain my sanity (mostly because I had to keep her sane).
After Leah got the letter from the landlord she decided to call the last 2 numbers on our list of possible places to rent from the day before. By the time I got out of school we were on our way to Wamego to check out another place.
Wamego was the greatest town I had ever seen, at least in comparison to where we currently were. The house we looked at was right across from a beautiful park, along a tree-lined street. The neighbors all had dogs, and the inside had just recently been redone. In short, it was everything we were looking for from the very beginning, and kind of what we thought we were getting in Alta Vista. After a lengthy negotiation, we decided to make the move. But we still had to deal with the other house. I'll skip the details of the trip to the landlords house, but I will mention that my character was attacked quite harshly, and I was accused of being "a slick talking easterner." Seriously. If that guy weren't as old as he was, we'd have gone outside that night. I mean, they completely screw us over, but somehow it was our fault because we had dogs and weren't okay with living out of the kitchen and living room for who knows how long until the house was re-rented or possibly renovated. I mean, it's not like I was starting grad school or teaching or anything like that :-(
So, we packed up the truck (I had 90% of it unpacked at this point) Thursday night, cleaned the house that reeked of urine, and drove an hour to the other house and unpacked enough stuff to go to bed. Friday morning was spent unpacking the truck instead of attending a pretty important orientation session at school, because the rental truck had to be back by 11:30am or we had to pay an additional fee. But we did it, and I made it to school for the afternoon session and convinced my boss and program director that I was not going to drop out on the second day on the job.
I can honestly tell you that Leah and I have probably never been more exhausted in all of our lives. We still haven't recovered.
We got some of the money back from the first house, but not even close to all of it so far. I'm not sure we ever will, but again, that's another story. Our new house is small but great, and we love it here. We have been through an awful lot in the first two weeks of our marriage, but the only thing that's happened is that we've learned we can really count on one another in tough times. Life is good.
More to come later. - John & Leah
We left Maryland mid-morning on Monday and drove 14 hours to Terra Haute, Indiana. We arrived around midnight at the hotel, thoroughly exhausted. The day saw us cross the Appalachin mountains (Driving a fully-loaded box truck that has a max speed of 75mph and is gutless up and over mountains isn't fun, fyi) and leave the comforts of the east coast far behind. Ryser rode with me in the moving truck, and Chauncey got the back seat to himself in the car. Leah and I had walkie-talkies to converse as we drove, and we stopped every 200 miles or so to fill the truck up on gas (note to self: get a diesel next time).
Day 2 of the drive saw us hit bad weather once or twice, the dogs get a little more restless, and traffic around St. Louis. I did see food and drink products in the convenience stores of the midwest that I had thought were discontinued 20 or more years ago. Sadly I did not see Kissle on any of the shelves.
After 10 hours of driving that day, we finally pulled onto the stretch of road that would take us to our new home in Alta Vista, KS. I'll be posting pictures of that road at some point, because it's a beautiful road to drive down. Things were great ...
...until we reached town.
It turns out that Alta Vista isn't exactly much of a town per se, as it is a place where a town used to be. There are approximately 5 businesses on the main street. Fortunately for us one of them was a bar (that was open from 11-2,closed til 5, and then open from 5-9pm, closed on Sundays), but that's a different story altogether. Our house was pretty decent from the outside, and looked to be what we were expecting. Since we had never actually seen the inside, we were anxious to see the layout. As it turned out the layout didn't matter much (the layout was in fact fine). What did matter was the unmistakable stench of cat urine. No, I don't think you understand, CAT URINE (bold,exclamation point,italicize and underline). I mean you couldn't even go into either of the bedrooms, which were carpeted (anyone who's ever been around urine-stained carpet knows the difference I'm talking about here), the bathroom or the basement. That leaves us with only the living room and kitchen that don't absolutely reek like, well you know, pee.
Well we were so exhausted from the trip that we unloaded the bed, threw it in the living room for the night, and went to sleep. (Well, we went to the bar, drank steady for an hour until they were going to close, and then laid in bed in the living room wondering what the &*!# we had possibly done. The next morning, Leah and I had a very serious conversation about what we were going to do about this, and decided to go into Manhattan, KS so I could find the school and the English department building so I'd be prepared for Thursday. We also decided we should see if we could find an alternate form of housing, and so spent almost all of Wednesday searching for a new home instead of moving into the one we thought we'd have for at least the next year. Before we left for the day I of course wanted to shower. As I turned on the shower and heard the pipes explode I knew it was going to be a long day. On a positive note (I write with intense sarcasm), I enjoyed my first bath in about 10 years.
Finding no good housing options after an entire day of searching, we headed back to Alta Vista, resigned to the idea that we would have to stay there for the forseeable future. Another night sleeping in the living room and checking the bedrooms periodically to see if they still smelled atrocious (they did) left me in great condition for my first day on campus. As I sat there being thoroughly overwhelmed by all of the information being thrown at me I decided to call Leah and see how the plumber was making out fixing the shower. He fixed it, but our landlord dropped off a paper that listed possible solutions for our pee problem. The solutions offered by our landlord were as follows:
1) We could buy the house, and then do whatever we wanted to with the floors and basement.
2) They would replace the carpet in the bedrooms with laminate flooring- if we agreed to get rid of the dogs!
They required us to meet with them at their house that evening to discuss these options.
For those of you who know me well, you can imagine how hard it was for me not to do something regrettable in this situation. It was solely because of Leah that I was able to maintain my sanity (mostly because I had to keep her sane).
After Leah got the letter from the landlord she decided to call the last 2 numbers on our list of possible places to rent from the day before. By the time I got out of school we were on our way to Wamego to check out another place.
Wamego was the greatest town I had ever seen, at least in comparison to where we currently were. The house we looked at was right across from a beautiful park, along a tree-lined street. The neighbors all had dogs, and the inside had just recently been redone. In short, it was everything we were looking for from the very beginning, and kind of what we thought we were getting in Alta Vista. After a lengthy negotiation, we decided to make the move. But we still had to deal with the other house. I'll skip the details of the trip to the landlords house, but I will mention that my character was attacked quite harshly, and I was accused of being "a slick talking easterner." Seriously. If that guy weren't as old as he was, we'd have gone outside that night. I mean, they completely screw us over, but somehow it was our fault because we had dogs and weren't okay with living out of the kitchen and living room for who knows how long until the house was re-rented or possibly renovated. I mean, it's not like I was starting grad school or teaching or anything like that :-(
So, we packed up the truck (I had 90% of it unpacked at this point) Thursday night, cleaned the house that reeked of urine, and drove an hour to the other house and unpacked enough stuff to go to bed. Friday morning was spent unpacking the truck instead of attending a pretty important orientation session at school, because the rental truck had to be back by 11:30am or we had to pay an additional fee. But we did it, and I made it to school for the afternoon session and convinced my boss and program director that I was not going to drop out on the second day on the job.
I can honestly tell you that Leah and I have probably never been more exhausted in all of our lives. We still haven't recovered.
We got some of the money back from the first house, but not even close to all of it so far. I'm not sure we ever will, but again, that's another story. Our new house is small but great, and we love it here. We have been through an awful lot in the first two weeks of our marriage, but the only thing that's happened is that we've learned we can really count on one another in tough times. Life is good.
More to come later. - John & Leah
(The house pictured above is our new house in Wamego.)
