Departure day

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Our time in Lowell wasn't quite the relaxing respite we had hoped for after a week of scrambling and scarce sleep. Since we had given up our beds--Mandy's sold and mine given back to Gregg--what sleep we had gotten that last week in Indy was on the floors of our bedrooms, and I had gone two nights without sleep at all thanks to the Steven Segal energy drink I found on one late night run to Walmart. We managed to get all the essentials done--needed objects in hand, storage thoughtfully crammed floor to ceiling with the surprising amount of crap we still have after garage sale and donations, bags packed well enough for now--albeit with quite a mess left at my old place (sorry Adrian and Toby) and about 5 hours behind schedule. So Lowell was anticipated as four days of rest and leisurely collecting whatever last minute purchases we needed. Not exactly so. Sleeping on beds and couches and eating good homecooked meals was relative bliss, but shopping is shopping and shopping sucks, especially when I'm looking for specialty items that aren't so available in good ol' Merrilville. The only places, to my knowledge anyway, to find decent backpacking gear are big chain stores that just don't have the good stuff we found at Rusted Moon Outfitters in Broad Ripple or Extreme Outfitters in Carmel. (Let me take this moment to give a plug for Rusted Moon: they have great stuff and friendly,knowledgeable staff. It's a relatively small, cramped space, but I don't know what we would have done without the excellent, pressure-free assistance of Ron. They rock.) I can blame some of this on Gregg Stump and Jen Duckworth, I guess, since they're the ones who enthusiastically introduced us to the world of high tech underwear and Smartwool socks--stuff you can wear several consecutive days without big odor problems or discomfort, perfect for travelling light. Anyway, shopping took longer than we wanted, but we ultimately got what we needed, even the odor-controlling high-tech undies. Besides the shopping we ran into some other setbacks and stressors: the sales associate hadn't removed the safety device from my new pants, my laptop hates me and wouldn't let me do a complete backup to DVD but kept me up most of the night trying, Mandy's laptop hates her and wouldn't connect to her dad's satelite internet service, despite our pack light ethic we still ended up with too much stuff, and I have a problem of over-prioritizing the least important things, like ukuleles. In the end, though, everything came together.

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One expected stressor, getting to O'Hare during the workday, was relieved for us by Mandy's dad who took the afternoon off for that purpose. He was being really stern about the impossibility of stopping anywhere on the way or adjusting the time schedule at all; it turned out that he had a secret... he wasn't driving us--he had hired a limousine. Wooly Pa sent us out in style!