The sky is so bright I gotta wear shades

Where do I start? First off, I haven't blogged in about four months so I don't expect anyone to check this. I'll have to let you know it still exists. I'm going to try and post frequently now that I live 2,400 miles from most of you. I'm sure you know by now that I moved to Phoenix. If you don't, we probably weren't good friends.

I think that I'll break up the initial post into installments because there's so much to say. This post will focus on the drive from DC to Phoenix. We'll see how far I get.

The Plan

Drive from DC to Phoenix in 3 days. My friend Louie and I decided that it was possible. The distance is 2,400 miles and we figured that we would go 1,000 on the first day, 1,000 on the second and 400 on the third. The plan was to make the last day a short day so we could arrive in Phoenix mid-afternoon and unload the truck before the NCAA Basketball Championship game came on. Yes, this all happened a month ago. Here's the CliffsNotes version:

Who? Me and Louie
What? 2,400 mile drive in a 16 foot Penske rental truck
Where? First day: 1,000 miles to Springfield, MO...Second day: 1,000 miles to Albuquerque, NM...Third day: 400 miles to Tempe, AZ
When? Saturday, March 31st to Monday, April 2nd
Why? Because I wanted to move to Phoenix and I got a job here

Thank you's!

That pretty much covers the plan. I have to give a few thank you's now. The first and biggest thank you goes to Louie for helping me with the move. I really couldn't have done it without him. I owe him bigtime! Another big thank you to my parents for coming to town my final week and helping me pack and tie up loose ends. A big thank you to Louie's co-worker who loaned us his Sirius satellite radio for the trip. That allowed up to listen to the Final Four on Saturday and have great music the whole way out. I can't imagine what radio would have been like driving all day through remote areas of the midwest. My final thank you goes to Nick for recommending we stay in Springfield, MO. Not only did it set us up to reach our goal of a 1,000 mile first day but it's a nice town from what I could tell.

Rental truck

We went with a Penske because Louie found a 10% off google link for them. If you search for rental trucks on google you'll get some discount links for rental trucks. File that one away. Penske also gives a 12% discount for AAA members. I got a pretty sizeable discount when all was said and done. The total rental charge was $1,247.80. It would have been well over $1,500.00 without the discounts. Ya, it's expensive to rent a truck and drive it 2,400 miles. It's way more expensive to pay someone to move your stuff though. Oh, I spent between $700-$800 on gas too. Isn't that crazy? Anyway, the truck couldn't have been better. It hung in there and never gave us a problem. Big props to Penske. We saw at least five broken down U-Haul's along the way. If you take one thing from this post it should be to never ever rent from U-Haul. I could write a huge post on the horror stories friends of mine have had with U-Haul.

OK, in the next post we'll start the trip.