36 steps...

one week ago today i set out on an adventure that i will most certainly never forget. i helped my friends rockstar and poet move to the desert! now that in itself does not sound like much of an adventure, but the story is good and it's worth the price of admission.

i was not part of the "loading" party, which i must admit, doesn't bother me. i wasn't even going to be a part of the "moving" team either, but i thought (and was right) that they lacked sufficient help for the job ahead. so i got on line and booked a ticket to fly back from chandler, az. (the desert) with "mr. green" (i call him this because he has decided that saving the environment is his newest calling; by changing all bulbs with florescent bulbs and owning one of those hi-brid cars, but he doesn't yet recycle - go figure). anyway, i get a ticket for the same plane home that green is on. all is ok at this point. we were scheduled to leave mr. greens house around 8pm to make the drive less stressful on the poet's children (theoretically, they would sleep - nice thought, but restless) and less traffic. so the poet heads out before us to collect her thoughts (it is very sad to leave your known life behind to start a fresh one) and rockstar, mr. green and i load our butts into the big ass moving truck to start our trip. motor starts, stereo works, lights wo... what the hell, we do not have any low beam head lights. we start taking the truck apart to find a fuse or a relay or something that will fix our problem. we even started reading the truck manual. talk about useless! 1/3 of the entire manual was dedicated to how to operate the frickin radio!! we finally called the support services and they sent out a man to fix it. two burned out bulbs! not one, but two. i have never seen that happen in all my life. needless to say it is now 11:45pm and we are just starting our 12 hour drive to the desert.
rockstar drove for about 2 1/2 hours to mojave where we picked up fuel and i thought i should drive so rockstar could rest. we made it to victorville about 4 in the morning, thinking that poet was there waiting for us. come to find out that she was over an hour behind us in landcaster catching a couple hours of sleep at the tuxman's house. so with her behind us and exhaustion setting in, we decide to sleep for a while in victorville. mr. green climbed into the back seat of the car we were towing and was out as if he had gone 10 rounds with ali. rockstar fought sleeping for about 20 minutes, probably worried about the rest of his crew now behind us, but finally crashed. i couldn't sleep from simple paranoia (freak) and sleeping unprotected in a parking lot of a town i don't know. i think i managed to sleep for a half hour. (that is 30 minutes in almost 24 hours since i woke up last). we head out again around 5 am and find that poet is now 15 minutes ahead of us and is not sure where she should go and which freeways to take (come on so cal only has 80 thousand different freeways, how could you get lost in trying to pick the right one at 6am with little sleep). so we drive and we drive and we drive. i think i drove the remaining 7 hours from victorville to the desert (i drove a big truck for a living. so i was used to it). we finally pulled into the desert town around 11:30am on tues. i should have given poet a better map, because she went the wrong direction off the freeway, but she was able to locate a wonderful indian reservation. i forgot to ask if it had a casino.
so we pull up to the apartment complex were my friends are going to stay (for less than a year) and find that it is on the 3rd floor. this might not be so bad for someone 20, but 40 is a coronary just waiting to happen. so we get started moving the stuff from the truck to the palace on high... 36 steps to the top (i know this because i like to count things). poet hurried off to get the group some much needed food, since all we ate since dinner was an egg sandwich from a gas station (mr. green) and some glazed donut holes called "popem's". they make great floating spheres of dough at 60 miles an hour before they come back and hit our windshield (insert giddy laugher from tired people). anyway, we continue to move and move and climb stairs and so on and so on.... finally the truck is empty! i can't remember being so happy to see an empty truck! it was about 5:30 or so and we were all exhausted! even the kids, who by the way were very big helpers and did a great job.
so we sit down for a few minutes to rest our worn out bodies and just laugh about what a day it has been so far. mr. green decides to take a shower and get cleaned up for our flight home, so rockstar and i go fill the truck up with fuel and take it back to the rental place. the rental place could not have been any farther away from the palace. of course the rental place is closed, so rockstar fills out the return paperwork and we throw it and the keys in the door slot. cool we are finished!!!! my phone rings and it is green asking if we have seen his wallet? "did you check the overhead bins for stuff?" i thought that rockstar did it earlier, because he handed us stuff that was up there. well anyway, we had not checked up there before we turned in the keys. i told green that they would just have to mail it to him back home and he reminded me that we had to catch a flight home in 2 hours! i need my id duh... i was tired! so we call the rental company to see if they can call the owner of the rental yard to let us in to get the keys. "no way" we have no way of contacting them. ok! green gets on the phone with roadside ass-istance and they will come out for $105.00!!! i flipped a gasket because i hate it when others rip people off. we go to the rental yard to wait for the rip off artist. i had grabbed a wire hanger from the palace and thought that i could just snag the keys through the slot, but when we got there you would think that they minted gold inside from all the cameras they had going. screwed again. so i got on my phone and called 411 for non-emergency chandler police. i get a man and give him the story... we locked the wallet inside, need to catch an airplane, can see the keys, have a hanger, please sent a cop to witness my thievery. not 3 minutes later a cop shows up, takes our names, id and the like and says go for it! i stick the hanger in, make one minor adjustment and boom we have keys!!! the cop opens the door and looks around, then begins to chuckle, "did you have a walkie-talkie? some glasses and yes a wallet." we would have left our heads in there if given enough time. so now we have mr. green's wallet and glasses and we have M's walkie-talkie (a very important tool to a man in training).

rockstar dropped us off at the airport in just enough time to grab a bite (pizza was the only thing left) and a couple of water's with barley and hops. at this point they were simply sleep aids for our flight back home.

what did i tell you? an adventure huh? i am so glad i was able to be a part of this. mr. green and i will always have this memory to share and laugh at when we often think about our friends in the desert and when we see rockstar and poet again, we will have to laugh together first... because they have to move out in 8 months!

36 steps!


p.s. a funny thing as we were driving down caldwell on our way out. rockstar got a good whiff of dairy and said " i sure won't miss that". well as he was driving us to the airport in the desert, what did we drive by.... yep, love that dairy air!