The Final Chapter of a New Beginning

This is the truck's butt...



Robbie and I rode together for the last couple days, and that's what we've been watching that entire time.

Yesterday morning, the brake alarm on the moving truck started beeping, so we spent half the day at the Penske place in Knoxville, Tennessee, in the heart of Appalachia in eastern Tennessee. After spending 4 hours inspecting the brakes and the engine, the team of mechanics informed us that, since they hadn't been able to find anything wrong with the truck, they had disabled the alarm so it wouldn't "annoy" us. Not exactly reassuring. We then said our goodbyes to Brian just in case the brakes really did go out. He was pretty convinced he was going to die. The whole incident was kinda funny in a slightly morbid way.

Robbie and I had an interesting adventure driving through Knoxville and going to Wendy's for lunch. I think his exact words to me were, "Wow, I had no idea that white trash was a culture!" Yes, yes it is.

We crossed the border from Tennessee to Virginia yesterday afternoon.

We debated whether just to drive all the way to Arlington last night, but decided to only go as far as Lexington, about 3 hours south. I'm so glad we did, because we ended up staying in a beautiful, 170-year-old southern mansion that had been converted into a hotel! It was amazing!!






It was a wonderful experience. We all got a good night's sleep, had a great breakfast, and then drove about an hour to drop off the trailer before heading into the city. We then caravaned the rest of the way, I drove the Highlander, Rob drove the Jetta, and Brian drove the truck the rest of the way to DC.

With a few initial complications, we got everything settled to move into our new apartment. Robbie signed his first lease...


...and then we began the monumental task of actually moving all of our stuff into the apartment. 4 hours later, we cleared enough of a path to get to the bathrooms, the kitchen and our beds, and then, exhausted and relieved, went to bed in our new home.