The last couple of weeks have been a blur of packing, planning and tying up loose ends in Kalamazoo. First off on Friday my friend and mentor Ben Andrews
Ben Andrews

gave me a huge hand in loading the great majority of our furniture into the trailer that Natalie and I recently purchased. I really could not have done it without him. By the way, Natalie and I purchased a Haulmark cargo trailer to put our stuff in as we move around the country. (Admittedly, it took me several weeks to figure out that Haulmark, H-A-U-L-M-A-R-K, was a play on words referring to moving items from one place to another. Before this realization I was thinking of, H-A-L-L-M-A-R-K, and wondering what trailers and greeting cards could possibly have in common.

Trailer. Side view

Needless to say, with a fully loaded trailer Natalie and I set off around 8:00 pm on the night of the 15th heading for my parents cottage in Roscommon, Mi. (Roughly a 3.5 hour drive). Most of the drive was uneventful, although the trailer swayed more than I was expecting on the expressway which did lend itself to some white knuckle moments. :) All of that to say, Natalie and I were about 4 miles from the cottage cruising along Interstate 27 when the passenger side tire on the trailer blew. When I say blew I do not mean that the tire when flat. I mean the tire exploded and, incidentally, took the fender with it. After getting the trailer safely to the side of the expressway, at 11:30 pm, Natalie and I began to evaluate our options. We had, at the time no jack, and no spare tire. After a small run in with the police (they had gotten reports of a young women heading south on foot) my father and I, spent the night on the expressway while Natalie and my mom when back to sleep at the cottage.

After quite a bit of running around on Saturday, Natalie and I are now the proud owners of a jack, two new tires, a new fender, a spare tire, and several other items that should make traveling across the country with a trailer a bit less hazardous.