Travel Day 9 — that’s not horse manure…
…though, mostly, this trip has been.
We’re on our last day in Lexington, where all the restaurants are Taco Bell. We’re packing the truck and have made plane reservations, hotel reservations in Colorado, storage reservations for the truck, and a rental car reservation for our arrival in Portland.
All that’s left is finalizing the pickup of the truck by the shipping agency which is in progress, and packing the truck, which will happen this afternoon.
The odor I mentioned in one of my picture captions yesterday turned out to be from the Tyson food processing plant about a hlf-mile up the road. It seems to pervade the entirety if this side of talon, south of the tracks and while not strong, it’s enough to explain while all the homes are on the NORTH side of the tracks. I presume, and hope, that the prevailing winds are out of the north.
The plant also produces an amazing amount of steam which gives this whole area a bizarre “Silent Hill” feel. If you don’t know what I’m talking about, “Silent Hill” was a horror movie based on a video game.
Maya worked extremely hard packing the trailer for travel and is feeling exhausted today. The trailer is small enough that it’s not really possible for us to both be in there packing at the same time, so I focused on other areas (the pass through storage area, the truck). So she’s relaxing today while I take care of the odds and ends. Its always fun to listen to her on teh phone making travel arrangements. She’s so much more chatty than I am, and tells our story to each person she talks to and generally makes her calls feel sort of cozy. She has amazing amounts of sweetness, even while she practices Scottish levels of penny pinching. I cannot imagine life without her.
The cats, like me, have decided they like hotels. We have a play session in the morning, after which they sleep most of the day. We finally found their normal food, so they are no longer eating the emergency rations we got at the loca big box store. The tabby in particular is pleased about this.
Most importantly, perhaps, our house closing went smoothly yesterday. Our realtor told us that the lady who bought our place was so happy she cried at closing, which really touched me. We invited her over one night before we left and chatted for about an hour and she seemed wonderful. She grew up in Lindenwold, and this is her first home, so it’s really special for her. I hope she’ll be as happy there as we were.She told us she’d missed out on several houses and was beginning to lose hope. I can understand this given how little inventory there is throughout the area. She likes to cook, so our renovated kitchen really got her where she lives, and we had a lot of fun describing what we found when we moved in. (Basically Pepto-Bismol pink tiles from the Eisenhower era).
So all that’s ended well, and I am happy and satisfied. And it’s nice to have only one mortgage again.