What a day! We woke up in Chicago, gathered our things, and
bade goodbye to our friends the Smedleys. Then we discovered that the entire stretch
of I-90 from O’Hare to Rockford was under construction, with a speed limit of
only 45. It was painfully slow and frustrating. Still, we made it into Wisconsin
and picked up speed again. And that was when Hannah Mathews texted us.
Hannah was a seminary spouse, and she and my classmate
Weston are packing to move out of the apartment building next to ours. Hannah’s
message said, “Um, did you guys know your trailer is still in the Braddock Lee
parking lot? The apartment manager is ticked. They haven’t yet figured out how
to tow something that big, but they’re working on it!”
We immediately called U-Pack to sort out the mess, and we
also called the apartment complex and begged them not to tow away all our worldly
possessions. The trailer was supposed to be picked up first thing in the
morning on the 25th to begin its own cross-country trek. But for
some reason, that hadn’t happened. Now, over two days later, the distance
between us and our trailer was getting bigger all the time. And U-Pack had
promised us a July 2 delivery! How could that happen now?
It took us most of the rest of today’s drive to sort through
all this. Luckily I’d kept a good paper trail in Outlook, and I was able to
explain to them that yes, I had confirmed the pickup time, and yes, I had been
promised a July 2 delivery date – before 10 a.m., at that. At first they wanted
to reschedule us for a guaranteed delivery on July 9, but we explained that
this wasn’t at all acceptable considering our original contract.
Actually, by the end of the day, I was very impressed with
U-Pack. They had made a huge mistake that was a royal pain for us and for them,
but they wrestled their computer into submission and gave us a discounted price
and are still saying we will have the delivery on July 3 at the latest—but, possibly,
still July 2. We’ll call on July 1 to find out for sure. And, above all, Hannah
Mathews is our hero!
Up the road about an hour and a half beyond Madison, we met our
old friends the Johansons. Ted Johanson was the Lutheran pastor in St. Ignace,
Michigan, while my dad was the Episcopal priest there. I have many fond
memories of Ted, Joan, and their four kids. Here we all are at Culver’s for lunch
(with our usually patient young traveler getting a little grumpy and
camera-shy).
Finally, we crossed the Mississippi and arrived in
Bloomington, Minnesota, home of the Mall of America, which we won’t see at all.
We relaxed in
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