jasonackerman.com

at the end of the last entry, we were on our way from boise after a 24 hour delay… but first, let me clarify something. simply picking up a trailer is not a big deal. roll into u-haul, hook it up and go. however, our situation required that the heaviest items from the truck be transferred to the trailer (or, ‘transloaded’, in trucker lingo). now being the good movers we are, all the heaviest stuff (with one exception) was not on the back of the truck, OH NO, it was in the front half of the truck, which meant as dusk approached there we were, with everything we own stacked in the u-haul parking lot, trying to redistribute the load. in about 2 1/2 hours, we finally had things reloaded in the best way we could.

now we’re off. as we approach burley idaho, the rain gets harder, and it finally gets dark. so between the rain, low visibility, tiredness from transloading, and the not-so-well-maintained idaho highways, we chose to stop at a hotel in burley, and get a fresh start on a new day the following day, fully realizing that this makes our flight home tuesday nearly impossible to catch.

we woke up monday morning, with renewed energy and motivation, just glad to be back on the road. the rest of idaho passed with nary an incident, and we moved into utah. the valley heading into salt lake city is simply beautiful. the mountains, the farmland… it was going to be a good day. we passed through utah (and major road construction in ogden), and broke into wyoming about lunchtime. it was here that we began to feel the wind pick up. knowing that windy times were ahead, but feeling good, we pressed onward. there were clouds, even a few spots of rain, but by and large it was very nice most of the day. when we finally made our last fuel stop in rawlins, wyoming, we had been on the road 11 hours and figured a stop in laramie (100 miles further) was a good idea, and once we got there, we’d consider pushing on to cheyenne, if we felt good. the sun was shining bright as it set behind us… our first clue of troubles ahead should have been the patches of snow on the mountain tops… the very mountains we would be crossing in just a few minutes.

and this is where we break. join me in the next post, where you’ll find us fearing for our lives, for hours at a time.

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just a quick update, i don’t have time to write up detailed reports, since i’m on nick’s computer which is on battery power which will only last a few more minutes. and i am also frickin tired and i have to get up early tomorrow to begin the next chapter of the ‘move the monsters to denver’ saga.

Saturday went about as expected, at least for most of the day. We chugged along through the Gorge on a (mostly) windless day, which is miraculous in itself. As we got into Idaho, we began to feel the truck doing some really strange things… mostly just bucking pretty hard, it felt much like a slipping transmission, or maybe a flat tire. So we pulled off the road, and took a good hard look at the tires, and the inside dual tire on the passenger side looked stressed, but not quite flat. so we figured that was our issue, and called in the u-haul people, who promptly sent a tire guy out who promptly pointed out that all the tires were inflated to recommended pressure, and went on their merry way. so we decided to give it another go, and got a mile up the road before the thing just felt undriveable. we turned around, parked in a hotel parking lot, and called u-haul again. they promised a mechanic to inspect the truck… sunday morning, 9:30am.

so we rented a room at the hotel, walked across the street to albertsons for some beer (blue moon spring ale…holy crap was it yummy), and crashed in the room with the beer and tv before falling asleep (having been up since 5am…).

the next morning, the mechanic took the truck for a drive, decided that something was indeed wrong, but it couldn’t be the transmission. we took it to his shop, and after a thorough once-over, decided the truck was simply overloaded. this was bad news. the solution, eventually, was to get a trailer, load some of the heavy stuff from the truck into the trailer, and proceed like that. first we had to run the truck through a scale… nothing like taking our little u-haul through a big truck stop to get to the big scale… but we were indeed approximately 1800 pounds overweight, which explained our problem. so we got the trailer and began to move on, about 24 hours after we stopped in boise.

stay tuned in the next few days for the next part of the story. it gets better, i promise.

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i leave tomorrow, very early, in a truck larger and heavier than anything i’ve ever driven. this makes me nervous.

approximately 36 hours later (including stop times), i will arrive in denver with all of our stuff. this makes me excited.

then on tuesday, i fly back and proceed with 3 weeks of visiting/hanging out/finishing up work/etc before we drive to denver as a family. i’m not sure what this makes me… looney, i guess.

i’ll check back in on monday. until then, pray for me and my large frickin’ truck. pray for my family, being so unsettled is such a challenge.

peace out,
–j.

so the rest of the compass staff decided that as a way to ‘honor’ me on my last sunday leading worship, they would all sport the ‘jason ackerman look’… starting with the corduroy pants, button-down shirt untucked, glasses, chin-only goatee, and of course… the bald heads. i think they’ve never looked so good… but as a group we were just some white jumpsuits away from looking like a freaky cult just waiting for the mothership to arrive…

Left to Right: Micah (lead pastor), Me, Brian (children’s pastor), Brian (connections pastor)