GBFR- The Week That Got Away

I awoke to a strange noise...
More a vibration than a noise, really.
A kind of mild thrumming that I felt deep in my chest cavity.
Coming from my back yard- I cautiously went out my back door to investigate.
Odd.
It was coming from above. I looked up, and suddenly I was surrounded by an intensely bright light and felt myself being sucked up in this shaft of light.

No... that's crap of course.

What a week this has been!
My son met me at work Wednesday morning and we drove an hour to rent the 16 foot moving van. We drove it home and I hit the sack, having to work Wednesday night/Thursday morning.
Bright and early Thursday I left work, drove home, and helped load the things Sara Jean and Big Bubba hadn't been able to load during the evening. We were on the road by about 10 A.M., me driving the Van, Sara Jean and BB following along in his car. We drove South to I-40, then West through Little Rock, Oklahoma City, and finally stopping in Clinton, Oklahoma after 14 hours of driving. We had a fitful night sleeping, then back on I-40 Westbound.
The Texas panhandle disappeared fairly rapidly, but in New Mexico the wind picked up and began to blow my moving box around pretty badly. Snow started drifting across the road in the heavy wind, and we saw Semi-trucks on their sides in the median. I ain't dumb... I slowed dramatically.

By Albuquerque the snow was gone and the wind was light. We pressed on as the sun disappeared, putting another 14 hours beneath our wheels before stopping for the night in Flagstaff, Arizona... a full moon, ground covered in snow. It was beautiful, even for three nearly dead-tired movers.

Saturday dawned clear and sunny. We started South on I-17 and had our breath taken away-
At about 6200' elevation when we started, beautiful mountains in the distance as the signs alongside the road advised truckers of "runaway truck lanes", and announced our descent into the valley and Phoenix... 5000', 4000', and so on.

We arrived at Big Bubba's apartment complex at 2 P.M. and got the key to his apartment. After a quick look-see, we began the process of unloading the van. In my mind there's no way to make this job enjoyable... you just do it and keep on truckin' until the job is done.

We spent Saturday, Sunday, and Monday unloading boxes and constructing bookcases, file cabinets, dining room table and chairs... much of the furniture Big Bubba had bought required "minimal tools" to assemble for use. Ol' Greybeard got mighty tired of twisting a small Allen wrench before the job was done!

But BB is comfortably situated in Mesa, Arizona, and we are home safely as I write this at 10 P.M. on Tuesday night. There was no weigh-in on Saturday... I couldn't find a scale, and since we were on the road eating whatever we could get our hands on, quite frankly I didn't want to know what the scale would say!

Thank you all for your kind thoughts and words of support.
I wanted to throw this post up quickly to answer the big question...
I also want to tell you more about the trip in a soon-to-come post, after I've had more time to recover.

Two things right now, though...
It was 85 degrees when we left Phoenix, 33 degrees when we arrived home.

And when I showed Sara Jean the above "empty nest" photo, she commented:
"Where are the two fat parents in that nest?"
I'm glad after all we've been through for the past week that she still has a sense of humor!

More later y'all.
Thanks again.