On The Road Again

For as much grief as I've given Kansas, arriving back to it, with all of its familiar sites, was nice.  I guess a small piece of me was fond of it afterall, or maybe the spring weather just brings you a sense of endless possibilities, no matter where you are.  However, we had a job to do there and here's what we were up against:

Our storage unit - 1/4th excavated

Mom and Dad came down and helped us sift through this junk and get it moved onto a U-Haul.  We will forever be grateful for their help with this move as we have no idea what we would have done without them!  Spending a week in the car and trying to sleep in the same room as a six-month-old is not considered traveling in the lap of luxury.

2-19-11 - Early-morning wake-up call for Grandpa

Kevin and George, coworkers from Fort Larned, also win the  "best surprise help" award as they helped us haul off a bunch of the things we couldn't take and made sure everything was packed into the truck a day early.  Wow!

On Saturday, we drove to Independence, MO, home of the Harry S Truman National Historic Site.  Nathan and I were almost late for the 9am Sunday tour of Truman's Mother-In-Law's house (coincidentally, he lived much of his life there and never purchased his own home), but Nathan mentioned where he worked and they made sure we got a spot on the tour!  Ah, the benefits of knowing a Park Ranger.

President Truman's House

Later Sunday, we also stopped in St. Louis and I made everyone tour the Old Courthouse and see the Arch (a.k.a. Jefferson National Expansion Memorial).  We didn't go up to the top, but I was OK with that when I heard that it sways in the slightest of breezes!

The Arch

On our third day we ended up driving just below a giant snow and ice storm, escaping horrible weather, but getting drenched the entire drive.  The fourth day, we made it to my sister, Samantha's, new house and got to meet her boa constrictor and street cats.  We did eventually make it down to our new place in Alexandria, VA.  I haven't seen any snow since because the weather has been in the 50's (at least) and the streets are made of cheese.  Just kidding, I will have the full report on our first impressions (good and bad) soon.

TIK - This Is Kansas

TIA is a common expression in Africa, used when something goes really unexpectedly wrong - beyond what you might expect in the Western world.  For example, the lights on the runway at Kilimanjaro International Airport aren't lit up and you have to turn back to Nairobi, you find out the road from Dodoma to Arusha is all dirt and your driver finds it important to back-up for a better view of the Mozambique Spitting Cobra 10 feet away from the car and your open windows, or the fact that hot water is unavailable because the rainstorm put out the fire heating it.  This. Is. Africa.

Well, I found myself adapting the phrase for Kansas as Nathan and I moved here on Wednesday.  The ride took us 14 hours and was actually a beautiful ride.  Kansas is not entirely flat and wheat-filled.  It's especially gorgeous this time of year when everything is green and migrating birds are abundant.

Everything was going well until we got close to Larned, our new home.

We found out while driving to Larned with the 24-foot truck filled with everything we own that the house we're renting was not ready yet.  The owners were trying to get some new carpet laid (the company brought the wrong carpet the day before) and so they'd be working on it Wednesday night.  TIK.  That's fine.  We figured we could grab a room at the local Best Western and stop by Thursday.  Not a big deal as there should be plenty of room at the inn because who would be staying in a hotel in Larned?!

EVERYONE, apparently.  Due to a giant farm equipment show, all the rooms in Larned, Great Bend, and even two hours away in Hays were completely booked.  TIK.  We had to stay at the house that night, and luckily we were able to get in.

I expected the house to be a little out of order, but what I did NOT expect was to walk into a full-on construction site.  The carpet was laid, but there was no refrigerator, the stove wasn't hooked up, dust covered almost everything, the electrical sockets weren't covered, there were no baseboards, the floor covering was half-done in the sun room, and the list could go on.  TIK - now I'm getting worried and making a mental note never to let Nathan line-up housing ever again.

First room we ever saw in the new house.

Kitchen: A day later we at least had a fridge!  That's the stove still in the foreground.

I forgot to mention that the owners still have a bunch of stuff in the house.

My favorite feature: the second bathroom is really a toilet in the corner of a giant storage room with no doorlock.  Yeah, Nathan and I will be able to share the upstairs bathroom just fine.

Let's make a long story short and just say our new landlords, who are actually Nathan's new co-workers, were able to get the place cleaned up pretty fast.  It cleans up really nice (more pictures to come when we get the boxes out of here.)  They had done the best they could to get the house ready before we got there, but a complete renovation of a very old house takes a long time.  We're living without baseboards, but at least we've got a working kitchen (except for the garbage disposal leakage issue - TIK).  We're getting a good deal, so I guess I should have been prepared to help with a little construction work.

Other things haven't gone exactly right.  We've learned that auctions are a big deal out here and when we tried to drop off our U-Haul on Friday, we were met with a closed shop and this sign.

TIK

I am really liking the town, aside from the rocky start.  The people here are amazingly friendly.  Nathan pointed out there's a difference between the Kansans and North Dakotans in that in North Dakota, if people don't know who you are, they're usually too embarrassed to ask (Medora IS a smaller town by about 4500 people - so maybe they really think they should know you).  In Kansas, they just come right up and ask who you are, so you meet new people every time you leave the house.  The city is really cute, and has a lot of amenities (nice tennis courts one block away!), which makes it easy to skip extra trips up to the much larger city of Great Bend (30 minutes away).  I'm still skeptical, but there are a lot of things I like about this place.  I guess my time in Africa taught me how to better roll with the punches and above all, to ignore the giant spiders on the walls.