Legally Bound!: King Of The Road

Well, thanks to Verizon losing our DSL order, this post is a bit delayed, but we did manage to make it from Lincoln, Nebraska to Albany, New York. We both grew accustomed to driving the 22-foot moving van, but it was still harrowing at times. South of Chicago along I-80 is a short toll road. As it turned out, they were working on the booths leaving only two lanes opened and backing up traffic for 5 miles at 7:30 PM on a Sunday night. It took us two hours to make it past the tollbooths and we were rewarded with more road construction. Driving an extremely wide moving van at night with a retaining wall on my right side and traffic all to close on my left made for a nerve wracking drive. We finally found an open exit and pulled off for the night. We found a motel with a hot tub that was a welcome relief after the drive.

Trying to hunt down diesel for the truck was also a pain. It’s not like the moving van was able to turn on a dime, so once we located the diesel pump (not always easy) we had to devise an intro and exit strategy. All told, it usually took about 20-30 minutes to find the gas, make our way to the correct pump, fill up, and pay for our gas. We usually tried to combine our gas stops with our food breaks (which was easy to do with a 50-gallon gas tank).

Diesel is readily available along the Interstate, of course, but we did run into a small scare while trying to score cheap diesel in Indiana. We waited until the last stop to fill up and the pumps were down. The next fuel stop in Ohio was closed and the low-fuel light did come on (meaning we had enough gas left to take us roughly 75-miles). We made it, of course, with plenty of gas left to spare.

The second day went smoother than the first and we made it all the way to Syracuse. did get stuck driving through Cleveland, however. We went around most major cities, but our route took us right through the heart of Cleveland. The Interstate has a couple of surprisingly sharp turns through the Cleveland area, but handled the truck like a champ.

We made it into Albany by 10:00 on August 1. All that was left was the unloading.