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With printed directions from Mapquest in hand, we struck out . . . a pair of  intrepid nomads on their path with Destiny. Driving through the town of Franklin, we took it all in.  From the CVS to the Starbucks, it was all there.  It looked just like Lakewood.  It felt just like Lakewood.  The only real difference between here and there, besides the obvious 1800 miles, was the humidity.  The humid air smells heavy, and sinks deep into my pores.  It coats my throat like a delicate velouté.

On the way to the house, we drove down many four-laned streets.  At one point, I had a feeling that we were being looked at.  Glancing over, I saw a rich white guy wearing a new visor looking at us from his rich white guy car.  He had a really mean look in his eyes, and it appeared he was shaking his head slowly from side to side.  I'm not sure what that was all about.  Maybe his day was going badly, and that was his way of reaching out.  Awwwww . . . buddy?

We turned this way, and that; and with every change in direction, the butterflies grew a little more active in my belly.  We drove up to the house and it seemed alright.  It was small, but it had a big yard; and it looked clean.  There was a problem, we didn't have the keys; and it was Labor Day weekend.  Not a good time to get a hold of a mortgage banker.  I walked around the house to see if I could find the keys stashed somewhere.  I couldn't find the keys, but I noticed most of the screens were bent and badly torn (if they were even in the windows at all.)  Hmm, that's weird.  It was hot too . . .  really hot.  We finally got in touch with our landlord, and he had stashed the keys for us.  Thanks a lot man.  We found the keys and went around to the front door.  That worked out.

I should mention at this point that by this time Whitney had contracted the vicious summer cold I had picked up in Denver, and we were both a mess.  We were snotty, congested, feverish, coughing and we couldn't smell a thing.

We walked in, and at first glance, the house seemed to be o.k.  The rooms were small, and the house was old; but there was plenty of room and the kitchen was big.  Besides, it was means to an end.  How bad could it be right?

We made short work of unloading our stinky overstuffed Subaru, and all of a sudden we realized we didn't have anything else to do.  We had checked out of the crappy Red Roof Inn, and said sianara to the 40 count sheets earlier that morning.  We were anticipating staying in our new place that night.  Thing is, we didn't take into consideration where our furniture was, or when it was going to arrive.  The last time we saw that stuff, we were in Denver 2 days before.  Another thing we didn't consider is that we had decided to move on Labor Day weekend.

It would seem to be a perfect time to move, unless you have employed long-haul movers of course . . . rookie mistake.  We had to check into a new hotel and hunker down in the strange land.  It was Sunday.  It wouldn't be until Tuesday that we could even get anyone on the phone to ask about our belongings or their whereabouts.  It would take another two days for our stuff to actually arrive.  We were adrift in a strange sea, and my mom was on her way to help unpack.  Um, o.k.

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Our cats traveled remarkably well.  Aside from a few guttural moans from Blue in the very beginning, they rode the whole way without a peep.  Murray enjoyed it quite a bit actually.  He would sit on the middle console, or look out the window, or investigate the backseat, or whatever.  He did get pretty antsy at one point toward the end, and we had to stop to walk him at a rest area.  It was mind-blowing to all the rednecks there, our cat on a leash.  After his little outing,  Murray slept soundly for the last three hours.

We had originally planned to push all the way to St. Louis the first day;  but due to our late start, we had to stop in Topeka.  Boy, what an armpit that place was.  When we drove into town, the first thing we saw was a drunken brawl underway at a gas station.  Soon after, we heard sirens.  By that time, we had procured a room at the local inn.  The hotel was crawling with late-night youngsters, but I specified a "quieter area" of the hotel.  The clerk happily obliged.

The room was nice, the breakfast was o.k., and the cats LOVED it.  Overall, it was a nice stay.  I'm pretty sure Blue thought it was our new home.  What was the cats favorite part about their new home you ask?  The drapes, of course.  I woke up in the middle of the night to a cat fight in the drapes.  They were actually hanging from the drapes, fighting.  It was a lot like a circus act, I guess.  A very weird, dreamy circus act.  As we were checking out, the morning sun was probably coming through the drawn curtains like an overused Light Brite pattern.

We made it to Franklin on Saturday night, and checked into the Red Roof Inn.  Jeez, what a dump.  I've slept on better mattresses at summer camp, and the towels (if you could call them that) were nothing but  a few synthetic fibers holding hands.  The amenities sucked real bad too.  They didn't even have a list for local take-out, or a phone book for that matter.

Whitney had to call the desk for a Pizza delivery number.  She placed the order while I was in the shower.  An hour later we realized the pizza wasn't coming.  When she called them back, turns out the pizza was delivered to the wrong hotel.  When she gave Papa John's the address to our hotel, they told her we weren't even in their delivery area.  They gave us the right number, and we ordered again.

We only had to wait another hour for our pizza to arrive; and when it got there, it was stone cold.  I'm sure the front desk clerk had just given us the first number he came across, and paid no attention to the actual location.  What a lazy, inconsiderate jerk.    The next morning we awoke very excited, but a little bit nervous too.  We eagerly packed up the cats, and struck out to see our new home.  That's just about the time the worm really started turning for us.  To be continued again . . .

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It may have come together for us just in the nick of time, but it soon fell apart like a cheap suitcase in a slow drizzle. We should have known that we were in for some troubles, based upon the circumstances under which we left Denver.

Friday was very hectic. We still had some last minute packing to do before the movers arrived, and I was in the office frantically packing up my computer when the knock came at the door. I opened the door to a Sasquatch of a man. It was Jake. He was the long haul driver in charge of getting our furniture across the country. I'm a pretty large man, but this guy made me look like a pygmy. He came in the house, and filled the room. He saw that I was still packing and said, "Doin' some last minute packing I see." I could hear the annoyance dripping from his voice like pan gravy. I quickly assured him that the computer was going with us, and the desk was garbage. He then said curtly, "I was about to say."

There were a lot of abandoned cars around our apartment complex; and as it turns out, one was parked right in the semi's way. If he couldn't get in, the extra walk was gonna cost me dearly. I had the office run the plates on the SUV, and sure enough they had no record of the car. They were all too happy to tow the vehicle for us, only thing was they couldn't for 24 hours. I asked them to tow it anyway for good measure. As luck would have it though, Jake was one of the greatest truck drivers ever. He somehow was able to negotiate the crowded parking lot in his 73 foot truck with ease, and backed right up to the door practically.

Thus began the great migration. Two short Hispanic guys showed up in a mini van to help. Those squatty little bastards could lift some seriously heavy shit. I was amazed at their fundamental application of physics. I wasn't as impressed with their conversational skills however; and something was telling me they were probably out on work release.

Regardless, they moved us out . . . and in a hurry too. After they left, we packed as much as we could in the car, and piled up the rest at the dumpster to leave. Did I mention we have two cats as well? Anyway, after our compulsory cleaning; we loaded up the babies with their shitbox, and hit the road. It was 3:30 on Friday, and we were just going to beat the traffic. We were almost to the highway when I realized we hadn't paid the last rent payment. Following several colorful expletives, we doubled back and paid our rent. We managed to get back on the road by 4:30 . . . lovely.

We gallantly fought our way through the Denver rush hour to the open road on the other side. What was to come, only God knew for sure. So, we drove headlong into the future; and despite the unknowns, our spirits remained high. After all, what could possibly go wrong . . . right?  To be continued . . .

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About three months ago, we decided it was time to leave Denver; so we set about settling on a place to migrate.  We knew we were heading back to the south.  We just couldn't decide where.  There was a lot to consider.  The way we saw it, it was between three places; Birmingham, Nashville or New Orleans.  I know what my Chucktown folk are saying right now, and I say; "I've already lived there, and I really shouldn't go back there to live again . . . and all o' y'all know that."

Nashville was my gut instinct; but when I brought it up, it was quickly shot on to the back burner.  You know how that goes, right fellas?  Birmingham was the next logical choice for us, but after some investigating we found that; not only was the air quality bad, but it was much more dangerous than we had anticipated.  Birmingham was out.

The next spot we were into lie just outside of New Orleans, in St. Tammany Parrish.  It's called Mandeville, and it truly is a beautiful little place right on the northern shores of Lake Pontchartrain.  At first, It seemed like an ideal situation as well.  There was a Whole Foods Market just twenty or so miles away in Metairie that I had found work with.  It seemed like a nice drive, across a scenic causeway (the longest in the world), and right down to Veterans Boulevard, easy right?

Just then we started noticing the "strings" that were attached to our little slice of heaven.  Sure the causeway was a nice drive, but it was a toll road.  It cost at least two dollars each way (sometimes three.)  On top of that, the Army Corps of Engineers was just about to launch a two year levee upgrade project right there on the Metairie side of the lake.  The construction is to cause an otherwise four lane highway, into a two lane bottle neck, adding thiry to forty-five minutes to  the morning commute.  Plus, housing was expensive.  Unfortunately, Mandeville was out too.

Since I had already found work in Metairie, we thought we'd go ahead and looked for places to live there.  We were having difficulty finding a place that fit us though.  It's mostly a concrete jungle down there you see, and we're more tree, river, and hill people.  The last straw came when one apartment rental lady included the close proximity of the Mardi Gras celebrations as a selling point.  Um, no thank you.

After New Orleans was scratched off our dance card, that brought us around full circle . . . back to Nashville.  With a hip pocket full of validation, I listened intently as my beloved Whitney came to realize (out loud) that Nashville was going to be the spot after all; and for a blink of an eye, it  seemed as if it was actually her idea . . . priceless.

It was settled then.  We were going to move to Nashville, or the immediate vicinity thereof.  Now all we had to do was, find a place to live, find work, find movers, and find a way out of our existing lease, in six weeks, whilst working full time.  No problem.

We had told the office (at our apartment), that we were leaving three months early; and they told us that if someone didn't rent our place by the time we left, it was going to cost us 1600 dollars to fulfill the terms of the lease.  When we went in to pay August's rent ( with fingers crossed); we were told that our place had been rented, and all we would be responsible for is a prorated portion of September's rent . . . awesome.

I had a lot of stuff that I needed to sell in order to afford the move.  I used Craig's list (for the first time) to sell a whole bunch of it.  It works well, just set up a trash email account to take on the imminent spam prison rape you're in store for.  Also, be careful where you meet people.  Don't invite them to your home, period.  Meet in public, simple as that.  If your item isn't getting calls, take it down and repost (on Friday.)  I sold everything this way.  Getting all that stuff sold was a huge burden off my shoulders, and some pretty serious coin for my pocket.  I was very lucky.

I had begun shopping for movers at the beginning of August.  I got three in-home estimates from some Denver-based companies.  Then I looked at a moving company over on the eastern side of the country.  I found one that had a back haul coming through Denver, from California at the first of September.  I forwarded them all of my in-home estimates, and because of the back haul, they beat the lowest price by a thousand dollars.  Booyah.  We'll see how sweet that deal actually is in the end.  Only time will tell.

Now that we had found the moving company we were going with, and we were clear of our lease; we needed to find a place to live.  If you have never tried your hand at finding a place to live from across the country, then you are depriving yourself a whole gambit of indispensable "life's little lessons learned the hard way."  Let's just say that it isn't easy, and you can easily get screwed.

Luckily for us, we were armed with four solid years of impeccable renter history, and "guaranteed work."  Neither of which, we had when moving to Denver in the first place.  That was a real pain.  So, we looked, and looked, and looked, and looked; and couldn't find anything that would remotely fit our modest, yet reasonable needs.

Turns out, it was the unfair pet deposits that kept us out of most places.  We have two awesome cats, and they were going to cost us at least 500 dollars in non-refundable pet fees, PLUS thirty dollars a month in extra rent.  PREPOSTEROUS!  To make maters worse, we only needed a short term lease, while we shopped for a house to buy.  Oh well, we were sick of apartment living anyway.

Then Whitney came across this little old house in Franklin, TN.  It was perfect.  It's just big enough, right in our budget, the REFUNDABLE pet deposit was a manageable 350 dollars AND it was only a ten month lease.  I called the landlord very early the next business day, and immediately kindled a whirlwind romance.  Somehow I managed to talk this guy into renting us a house, as opposed to doing business with someone local.  It took a bunch of charm, a lot of luck, ALL of my faith, and a flaming hoop of poop or two; but we got the house.  The next thing I needed to do was to find the work I had promised the landlord I had, with two weeks left.

I had been sending e-mails for weeks to the two Whole Foods Markets that were in the area.  They didn't get replied.  I started calling.  At first, I found it very hard to get anybody on the phone that had answers for me.  It was kinda like . . . "Well, I think we've done all the hiring we're gonna do for a while, and I'm pretty sure everyone else is hired up too . . ." and so on, and so forth.  I decided to call the store leadership.  That's when things started happening for me.

Soon after, I got an e-mail from a Produce Team Leader in a small "conversion" store, and she needed help cutting fruit.  I was all about it, but then I realized it meant a huge decrease in pay, and I kinda freaked.  It was a budget transforming pay cut, and in my mind, I was doomed.  At that point, I hadn't heard back from Green Hills; so I decided it was high time to call.

I got in touch with the Store Leader at Green Hills, and I frantically brought him up to speed.  The very next day, I was called by the Prepared Foods Team Leader there at the same store.  She told me she needed help doing what I was doing here in Lakewood . . . kitchen production, perfect.  So I found the work, with eight days to spare.  Thank you very much.  I was bewildered, and dumbfounded.  Suddenly, I didn't know how to act.  So much weight had been lifted off my shoulders, it made me feel a little dizzy . . . and, a little goofy.  I think I may have danced a jig.  It's hard to say; but with the final piece of the puzzle in place, the only thing left to do now is pack.  Music City, here we come!


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