Trailer Trash

The nicest benefit of having your departure continually and involuntarily delayed is that you get to see and say goodbye to family over and over and over. I don't think they're getting completely annoyed about this yet. But they do seem a little surprised that we keep showing up at their door.

Self-trailering your furniture and personal belongings to anywhere is not for the feint of heart, and I cannot recommend it to anyone. It only matters a little that the distance is enormous. Even if the distances were smaller, the calculations are the same.

I was so happy last Saturday when I found the drive-on scale in Mississauga, and confirmed that both truck and trailer were well under their maximum spec. Good to go! Unfortunately, I had not fully considered the gross maximum combined weight of truck, trailer, all passengers, all payload, and a full tank of gas.

I did know all along what that number is. I had just never fully considered it.

So, trailer trash, as it turns out, is all the stuff you thought you could never live without but now will do so anyway. On the whole, the stuff is not all that important, with a couple of exceptions, which we invariably discovered were packed into the same boxes as all the less important stuff. The saving grace is we have a manifest, so we know where stuff is in two languages.

When you have to pack under pressure, this is the point at which you start unpacking those selected boxes on the front lawn of your Mother's house, as passersby ask whether Mother is moving. I just say no, it's us. Trailer trash.

But we are done with that now. (Probably.) I have graduated to looking at alternate routes, with stops at motels that have big really parking lots. Wednesday is Go-Day. Maybe.