another in what i’m sure will be a series of tough milestones. yesterday we drove off from our vermont cabin for the last time.
and that makes it seem easy like we headed up, said our goodbyes and drove off down the road. not quite that easy.
before the driving off part was having a 15′ dumpster delivered that we filled to the brim, 2 full days packing up the house and then filling to the ceiling a 17′ u-haul, getting the cabin broom clean, driving back to framingham (arriving at about 11 pm), and then getting up at 6 to unload the truck into our driveway so we could get the u-haul back before the 9:36 am deadline.
side note on the u-haul. the truck was surprisingly nice and new. i don’t know if you’ve seen some of the old beaters that they have in some u-haul parking lots? fortunately this was not one of them. my only beef is with the milage allowance. they gave us 163 miles to drive between east dorset vermont and natick mass. having done this drive countless times i can guarantee you that that cannot be done unless the truck sprouts wings. adding to the madness they confirm you reservation for picking up the truck in east dorset. then the night before you call to confirm. they say that the truck will be waiting in londonderry. whut? “sorry about that, but it’s only 10 miles from your scheduled pickup”. this now cements my view that u-haul is a bit behind on the technology curve. i have this mental image of the logistics center being a room with folks at old metal desks with rotary phones and well thumbed road atlases. the only way you would say that londonderry is 10 miles from east dorset is if you drew a line between them. the problem is that nature and the vermont highway department say it’s not that easy. in between east dorset and londonderry is bromley mountain so is more like 20 miles once you’ve made your way around. final tally on the odometer when we dropped off the truck – 221 miles.
in the very good news category we now have an excellent caretaker lined up to do everything that needs to be done to keep the cabin maintained and showable until it sells. after calling a long list of local caretakers and being told by all that it was too far (one was 3.1 miles from the cabin) or that they were not taking any more clients we were getting very nervous that we would have a cabin 9000 miles away with waist high grass and frozen pipes. driving down dorset hill road on my way to the cabin i saw matt proft of someday farm outside so i stopped to ask for his advice on who we could call. turns out that he does caretaking for several houses on the road and was able to do ours also. he stopped by the cabin on monday and we sorted out what needed to be done. another item in the regrets bucket – matt was fascinating to talk with. he and his family have lived in the road for 20 years, know tons about the area and run a small farm up on a mountain that won the sustainable farm of the year award last year. they have been way ahead of the eco curve and i’m glad that others are finally starting to catch up. quite embarrassing that we only have a good chat when we’re on the way out and need a favour.
with our biggest stress pill solved we’re on to the next.