So, remember being a child and picking the petals from a flower and singing, “he loves me, he loves me not” all the while selecting each petal carefully before tossing it into the wind? OK … some of you may be thinking right now, what does this have to do with ‘Are We There Yet’ and most of you are thinking to yourself, if I stick with this long enough, Vikki will eventually get to the point. Because I am feeling a wee bit tired, sore as hell and the crunch to get back on the road, I’ll do just that.

We picked up the U-Haul 17 foot truck on Friday evening, paid through the nose to have two extremely large and in shape lumpers come over on Saturday morning to move our heaviest items and our massive log bed frame (thank God Ryan will be there to unload this mutha because the head board alone weights over 300 pounds). I insisted we were not going to get hurt prior to driving 2800 miles to Alaska. After these items are on the truck and the boys left with great big smiles for walking away with their 2 hour minimum for 30 minutes of work, Pete and I stood at the back of the truck and in unison, turned and looked at each other with “what the #*!@ and where is everything else going to go?!” expressions on our faces.

As I’m standing there, beginning to feel the beads of sweat rolling down my back, and my blood pressure rising, I decide to channel something Zen. Before I know it, I am seeing myself plucking petals from a daisy singing “he loves me, he loves me not”. I am thinking hopefully Pete will still love me when I am done acting like a mad woman with dirt stained tears running down my face pleading, “What are we going to do”?

Metaphorically, it dawns on me that it just might come down to a higher level of sorting. What do we need, what do we want and what can we get rid of. Pete stands there being the typically patient Johnson husband and lets me finish, and calmly stats this (almost verbatim). “I’m telling you, it will fit. Tom will work his magic”.

Pete’s brother, Tom was a long haul trucker for at least 15 years and has been a dispatcher for about 12 years. When he got to Bend on Sunday I thought to myself, he’s really got his work cut out, because Pete and I can move and lift boxes until midnight if that’s what it takes, but can Tom figure out where to put it? Well, I only have this to say. “Tom is a magician! The David Copperfield of fitting 10 lbs. of everything in the proverbial 5 lb. bag!” It was and still is to this very moment, amazing!

We had the expected glitches with getting out of Bend yesterday afternoon, but with trailer lights finally fixed (2 hours at U-Haul) we rolled on down the road in our temporary home for the next week and a half with our SUV up on a big trailer. We are loaded up and ready to hit the road for today’s leg of the trip, Seattle. We will be staying at Emily and Todd’s for the night and then tomorrow morning we are north bound for the Canadian Border!
Thank you all for your love and encouragement. This is an adventure that is one for the books. I will continue to post whenever I get the chance. But for now, I encourage each and everyone one of you to think of tossing those petals into the wind and singing, “he loves me, he loves me not” and know that Pete has assured me that it will take more than me acting like a mad woman for him to stop loving me!