On the Road to Retirement

Sometimes, when you’re trying to figure out how you’re going to get it all done, an angel comes along and loans you her car.  Not only does she loan you her car, but she tells you to keep it until the day before you leave.  Sometimes, “thank you” doesn’t even begin to cut it.

Sometimes, things don’t go according to plan.  And it makes me wonder why we plan at all, but hey, there’s gotta be some kind of game plan don’t ya think?  Otherwise, all of us might just be out there bumbling around with no direction whatsoever.  I used to be a serious planner.  Now, I only plan – or attempt to plan – the big ticket items.

We didn’t plan to be working the Inn full time right up until the day we leave, but sometimes, ya just gotta shake it off, give up trying to reason it out and just go with the flow.  And that’s what we’re doing.  Going with the flow.

Ya can’t really take on a move such as we’re about to do and not make any plans, so we did reserve a big yellow Penske truck.  While researching options, we found reviews for Penske, U-Haul and Budget, all pretty much sucked – BIG time.  And because they all had pages of equally poor reviews, we decided to go with the company that would give us the best deal – Penske.  Abi is the great negotiator and he scored us a 12-day deal with unlimited miles and a damage waiver for $680, which calculates to a 33% discount and the 12th day for free.  Score!  The other companies weren’t even in the ballpark.  And since all of the major companies had equally bad reviews for customer service, guarantees, roadside service and engine problems, we figure we’ll hope for the best for the least amount of money.  😉

This is a 16-foot truck.  It’s too big for what we need, but it’s probably the size we’ll end up with.

Today, we used our angel car to head over to the Penske office to make an in-person plea for a 12-foot truck, and to take care of all the paperwork in advance of our pick-up date.  What we learned in our research is that smaller trucks are much harder to come by.  All of the major companies will “guarantee” you a truck, but when you go to pick up the truck you think you reserved, you find out they guarantee you a truck, but not necessarily the size of said truck.

I can’t imagine driving this monster truck across the country.

So I put on my best pouty face pleading, in-person, for a 12-foot truck and we will hope for the best.  If we get stuck with a 16-foot truck, we’ll have enough room to set up our king-size bed and sleep in the back of the truck in Wal-Mart parking lots across the country.  Not.

Anyway, here we are just 8 sleeps away from the start of what promises to be the next great adventure – a new chapter – retirement – and we couldn’t be more excited.  It’s the unknown that can be the most fun, don’t you think?

Our proposed route across the country, about 2,900 miles. We are hoping to make the drive in 7 – 8 days since our 12-day rental includes days for loading and unloading.

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