forgotten_aria

On Sunday I drove with my mom to Pittsburgh. We picked up a 15ft u-haul van (It was almost new 6700 miles and only the smallest of scratches) and with a friends help, loaded the really heavy things into the truck. The truck was selected for weight capacity, more than volume. The next day she and I continued to load it. Wednesday, we drove it to her storage locker and I loaded what I could reasonably do in a few hours in to the truck and drove it back.

I was very anxious about this. I was very short of sleep and hungry that morning and had no filter, so I said something things that was my pure anxiety talking. Sadly my anxiety meant also I missed a good bye hug, because I was "testing" if I could drive and it was good enough, so I went on.

Luckily I got warmed up on the Wexford flats before I had to go highway speeds. Once on the highway, I had trouble being comfortable going 60 for the first hour. I got warmed up before I hit the first construction with a lane split and and narrowing. Since semi-trucks could do it, I could, but it was tense. I stopped a lot at rest stops to do things I would normally do on the road, like take bites of my lunch wrap.

I almost had an accident because the construction cause one of those stop signs at the end of a ramp and I thought I had enough space, but a pick up was coming faster than I realize. I thought he had lots of time to see me and slow down, so i tried to speed up, but he decided he wanted to be in front of me, so he sped up too and I ran him on to the shoulder. Nothing bad happened and I didn't even get that spike of "close call" adrenaline, but maybe that's because I was already so anxious in general.

More construction, some trying to pass semis. It started to get less anxious, but very far away from comfortable.

Connecticut was my last big fear. There are a lot of tight, fast, winding bits where the drives go faster than the speed limit and there's even one place where there is a wall on both sides which is sometime tense in a normal sized vehicle. The first of these, I came in late enough there was no other car, which was great! The second place was scary, but much less populated because of the time of day.

I spent the first 3 hours tense enough, that a few places on my back really hurt. I had brought a portable speaker so I could have music, but I bought one with no media in it, so it didn't work. The radio was poor quality and the seek controls were inconvenient. I couldn't hear my phone enough to use it to play media. So I had nothing but me and the driving. My legs stuck to the seat, so it was sometimes painful to switch from gas to brake. I should have switched to pants at a rest stop, even in this heat, even changing in a public bathroom.

I spent the night in Shirley. The next day I went food shopping and slowly unload the van. At 6 my Sister and her husband showed up having driven down from Ottawa. We finished unloading the van, got the things I couldn't easily solo, and had dinner. We then did a very quick moving of all the book boxes to the basement.

We all spent the night in Shirley. In the morning we returned the truck. I was so glad to be done.

They headed off, but had to drive through the flooding in Vermont, so it took them a long time, but they got home safe.

It was a long drive for them to come help, and I might have been able to solo unloading the van, but it would have been very difficult. I also would have had to walk from the van return place. which would have been an hour and a half. So I really appreciate them coming.