Omigosh! Tomorrow! Omigosh!

Tomorrow is the DAY! We have been preparing for this time for several weeks now, and have had some real successes and some real disappointments. The bad parts include making reservations for three flat bed trucks to help haul in the house parts past the place where the delivery trucks can’t go. When Karla went to the truck rental place to see the trucks, and found that they weren’t there, and wouldn’t be there when we needed them, things started to fall apart.

Funnily enough, we have friends whose son works at the truck rental place. He said that earlier in the week the company shipped all its flat bed trucks to San Diego. Turns out there was a big parade planned, and the trucks would be decorated as floats. I guess sending your trucks out for a long-term rental pays more than our simple one-day event. Makes us not ever trust that rental company again though.

We have rounded up a whole contingent of good friends to make up for the bad rental company. Neighbors have volunteered to lend us their trucks, trailers, tractors, and horses (kidding) to help get the house parts up our road. Our lead contractor, Randy, has gone way beyond the call of duty in finding alternative routes to get things closer to the final destination, including scouting a route through Mariposa County (nix on that one) and a tortuous route through eastern Madera County (another nix). We’ll settle on the simple one, six miles from the house site.

So with the mix of tractor-trailer trucks, flatbed trucks, trailers, tractors, and other stuff along with four-wheel-drive pickups volunteered by friends, we may actually be able to get the house panels delivered to the site. We owe so much to friends and mainly neighbors for their efforts in bringing this whole shenanigan off.

It’s nice to see that the old Amish tradition of barn-raising neighbor volunteers still exists even in the over-urbanized culture of California. I guess it’s just human nature after all.