Well, Here We Are… Judy in PA

Three weeks ago, we left Kentucky (above) heading to our new place in Pennsylvania.  We bought our new condo near Philadelphia back in June.  Since then we have been moving at a snail's pace, driving back and forth so many times I have lost count.  (It's a ten hour drive, each way.)  For more than six months we have been packing things we wanted to move and divesting ourselves of things we no longer need or have room for.  (It's called "downsizing"!)

Several months ago, we spent our first night in the new condo with just a bed, a tiny dorm-room like fridge, and our suitcases.  Since then we have bought some new furniture and began moving our earthly possessions one Uhaul truck at a time.  (A ten hour drive each way.)  My husband was exhausted from loading trucks in Kentucky, driving ten hours, then unloading the trucks in Pennsylvania.  I was exhausted from packing boxes and making decisions.  As we moved more and more of our belongings out of our house, we began to forget what was in Kentucky and what was in Pennsylvania.

Anyway… three weeks ago we made the "big" move, bringing our cats with us in the car.  I didn't know how our cats would react to a ten hour drive cooped up in cat carriers, with no food, water or litter box.  To my surprise, they were silent most of the drive.  Every time I checked on them, though, they had terror in their eyes.

We had a perfect day for the ten hour drive.  It was sunny and mild and there was not too much traffic.
This is a photo I took along the way, as we drove through Ohio:

Six hours into our trip, disaster struck.  We were on a lonely stretch of highway just over the border between West Virginia and Pennsylvania.  Suddenly we drove into a giant pothole in the road (actually it was two giant potholes right next to each other).  CLUNK!  Whap!  Whap! two flat tires!
One minute sixty miles per hour, the next minute stranded on the shoulder.

Here is our car, stranded on a very narrow shoulder, with two very flat tires.  See those two posts beside the road?  They were just dumb posts, with no mile markers on them.  That made it difficult to tell AAA where we were when we called them.  We sat in the car for five or ten minutes, making phone calls.  He called AAA.  I called the Highway Patrol, who said they would call AAA too.  No one seemed in a hurry to rescue us.  It was a Sunday after all, and the weekend before Easter.

I kept looking in the rear view mirror at traffic coming behind us.  I began to panic, thinking how easy it would be for a distracted driver to swerve and hit our car by accident.  We would be killed!  The cats in the back would be killed!  I told my husband we had to get out of the car.  We stood on the side of the road for two hours.  It was chilly and breezy.  I walked about 100 yards back and found a mile marker.  I was afraid for the cats, who were still in the car.

Finally… after the longest two hours of my life, the tow truck arrived.  The driver told us we were the third car he rescued that day because of those same twin potholes!  Here is our car being hoisted up:

The driver took us and our crippled car (with cats still inside) to the nearest town, about ten miles away.  First he took us to a WalMart where we waited for about 45 minutes until they found out they didn't have the kind of tires we needed.  Then he drove us to Sears, where they did have the tires we needed.  We finally took the cats out of the car and took them to the customer waiting area.

I sat there for a couple of hours while they put on new tires and tried to fix a bent rim.  We called our friends who were waiting for us in Philly and told them we would be several hours late for dinner.  We finally arrived around ten p.m.  They gave us wine and food and we felt a little better.  When we finally got to our condo we set the cats up in the guest bedroom, along with food, water and a litter box.  I put their favorite quilt on the bed and slept in there with them that night.  They all hid under the bed and stayed there.  I did hear some scratching and chewing noises during the night, but they pretty much lived under that bed for three days!