Well, DD#2 saddled up on Thursday and shipped out on Friday. We are officially empty nesters for at least the next year, and probably forever.
Their initial plan was to load up DD#2's stuff on Thursday, roommate's on Friday, drive straight through on Saturday (10 hours travel, maybe 12 hours with gas and snack stops), and unload Sunday and Monday. They rented a 15 foot U-haul (AMA) truck and tow dolly. I had strongly recommended Penske or Ryder, but they were at least $300-400 more expensive.
U-haul strikes again.
First up, for whatever reason, U-haul had made the reservation for the truck and dolly for 2 separate locations, even though the closest dealer said he had both in inventory. RM called and switched the dolly reservation to that dealer.
So we went to the dealer at 12:00p on Thursday as scheduled, and he had the truck as promised, but the previous customer hadn't returned the dolly yet and was on radio silence. More calls to U-haul located the nearest confirmed dolly, so we took the truck and headed to a dealer about 10-12 miles in the wrong direction to pick up the dolly while the roommate argued with U-haul customer service about additional mileage allowance. Got the dolly and noted that the tires have a pretty bad wear pattern on them. Dealer basically said "It's what I've got" and so we took it.
Despite the delay in acquiring the equipment, loading went well (extra family showed up to help) and we managed to get both DD#2 and RM loaded up by about 7:30p Thursday evening. In the meantime, RM's Unknown Boyfriend, who is a commercial pilot, had managed to hop a jump seat ride to Philly, so RM ran up there and picked him up. Plan shifted to leaving Friday morning first thing.
RM and UB showed up with her car (2010 Escape) full of stuff at 8:00p Thursday evening and said "It just started making this really bad noise. Is it going to be OK?" Nephew and nephew-in-law are both pretty good mechanics and so we hauled it into my driveway. Horrible bearing shriek from somewhere in the accessory drive. Tensioner pulley was wobbling a little so we found an Advanced Auto about 20 minutes away that was still open and by luck had the part. Sent them off to buy it while we tore down, and found that while the pulley was wobbling a bit, it wasn't bad enough to be the issue. Once the belt was loose it became clear that the AC compressor was the problem. Advanced doesn't have it at that location. We put the car back together with the new tensioner and broke the news to the young women.
RM was in tears because she'd just spent some money on the car a few months ago, she's on a tight budget, and in imminent danger of being furloughed. DD#2 was grumpy because she was worried about getting the truck returned in time and didn't want to lose the extra day they just picked up. We agreed to call a couple shops first thing in the morning and everybody went home.
On Friday morning, RM and UB showed back up at our house first thing, still limping the Escape around. My local indie shop couldn't fit them in and wasn't sure if they could even get the parts. I found a compressor at a local Advanced for $340 but my shop won't hang customer-supplied parts. Pep Boys said they can almost certainly get the parts but wouldn't commit until they saw the car. UB headed there with the crunchy Escape and called us at about 9:00a - Pep Boys could get it done by that afternoon, but they wanted over $1000 with all the collateral work. RM burst into tears again.
About that time, my nephew called me and said his buddy's shop had an open lift that morning and if we could get the car up there, he would hang the compressor so they could drive it. So we dispatched UB from Pep Boys to the Advanced to get the compressor, then on to the local Ford dealer for compressor oil, then up to the shop.
In the meantime, we hooked the dolly up to the loaded truck, loaded DD#2's Impala onto it, strapped it down, and sent DD#2 and RM west towards Indiana at about 10:00a. They were maybe 2 hours behind schedule at this point.
I went up to nephew's buddy's shop to meet nephew and UB. Buddy's shop is a GRM dreamscape, but that's another story entirely. Nephew hung the AC compressor and UB - who turned out to be a really nice guy - paid the buddy to do front pads and rotors, fix a bad tire pressure sensor, recharge the AC, and a couple other little things to bring the car up to snuff for RM. UB headed west on a slightly different route at about 2:00p, or 4 hours behind the young women.
