U-Haul: an adventure in !&#$% moving….

So I needed a trailer to move from Wake Forest to Chapel Hill a while back. Only about 35 miles away, under no time pressures, things pretty much still packed from the last move. It’s really a pretty simple affair.

Except there’s a U-Haul involved.

I called the local U-Haul place in the center of town, across from the Hardees, and reserved a 5x8 trailer. My family doesn’t have a pickup truck or such for when we need to move something big, we just have sedans that are rated to tow our utility trailer, our boat… and when we need to move mattresses or something we want to keep covered, a U-Haul.

We’ve got the hitch professionally mounted on my folks’ Toyota Camry. Used to have a hitch on the old Volvo 850 until some… ran a red light and totaled it (thankfully my Mom wasn’t injured…). Before that it was a Ford Taurus. I think before that it was a VW….

Anyway, we’ve got the 2-inch ball as well as the 1 and 7/8, I’ve been hauling trailers as long as I’ve been driving and can even back one (*gasp*).

Believe it or not, we’ve got our crap together.

But our car isn’t wired for trailer lights. This doesn’t conflict with any law as far as anyone’s ever told me (and I didn’t see any problems in the statutes that I just glanced at online -- http://www.ncga.state.nc.us/enactedlegislation/statutes/html/bysection/chapter_20/gs_20-123.html), because we only use tow boats, pine straw, sand… in the daylight.

So whenever we rent a U-Haul trailer, which comes equipped with a lighting system, we tell them that we’re only towing in daylight and either that’s always been enough before or they don’t care one way or another.

Making the reservation yesterday I told the guy we were only gonna be driving it in the daylight. I went in today, had some pleasantries with the fellow… and then I tell him I’m towing with a Camry.

Can’t do that, he concludes.

Really, how about you check? Yep, just like the owner’s manual and I say, the 2005 Camry is rated for towing 2000 pounds, and my mattresses certainly aren’t that heavy.

Some folks seem under the weak idea that anything less than a Hummer is puny, child-sized toy that’s too small to carry more than a little old lady and too impotent to tow her walker.

I was working as a courier someplace once and we had to go pick someone up. They decided to take an SUV instead of my Camry because my car was alleged to be too small.

Listen, it’s a full-sized sedan for full-sized people. If you’re too darn fat, it’s not the car’s fault. And the continent of Europe does just fine towing their boats, trailers, campers… without Hummers.

So the U-Haul guy (I’ll call him “Flanders”) and I went out to hook up the trailer. I start hitching it up and I can take it from there. He heads in, but says he’ll have to check the lights before I leave.

Oh, please.

I’ve got it hitched up and he comes out to check the lights and we don’t have any and I explain that it’s never been a problem before, that as I said on the phone yesterday we’d only be driving during daylight… and he said it was his “legal”, “moral” and “ethical” duty to not rent the trailer to me.

Wow, I didn’t know I was defying God by driving a trailer with no lights during the day, as kosher by state law. That must be in one of the chapters of Leviticus I haven’t gotten to yet.

But, U-Haul is a private business that can set up its regulations the way it wants.

So my Dad and I drive down the road to the next U-Haul guy, really wishing there was some competition in the trailer-renting marketplace.

Somehow, this new U-Haul guy, who knew exactly what our car was rated for, could rent the trailer to us with a third the paperwork, in half the time and for $5 less.

And his guy says the lights aren’t required anyway.

The blog....

By the way, after almost a year away from The Star, they've stopped linking to my blog on their homepage and instead are using the space for folks who actually work there. That makes sense and it was very generous of them to keep me on there so long as they did.

And now, with a little new independence, you get to hear more of what I really think....

"U.S. show of force in Persian Gulf"

"The U.S. Navy on Tuesday began its largest demonstration of force in the Gulf since the 2003 invasion of Iraq..."

http://www.cnn.com/2007/
WORLD/meast/03/27/us.gulf
.ap/index.html

And then a lone ballistic missile submarine surfaced, a lone submariner stuck his head out of the hatch, brandished a key, and then disappeared....

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/
europe/4627862.stm

We don't want that to happen and they damn sure don't.

I'm pretty hard to shock, but....

http://www.wral.com/news/strange/story/1243451/

" Men sentenced for running castration 'dungeon'"

http://www.cnn.com/2007/
LAW/03/16/castration.
dungeon.ap/index.html

Wow.

Diversity at UNC Law

I had some friends asking me about diversity at UNC Law, so I did some checking. According to the 2005 census, North Carolina is 25% minority.

Carolina Law is 28% minority.

Folks can get into exactly which minorities are represented in what degrees, but on the whole I figure we're doing pretty well.

How 'bout them Winthrop Eagles!

http://www.winthropeagles.com/default.asp?section=2

I confess....

I am not the father of Anna Nicole Smith's baby.

Apparently I'm the only one. Can we please move on to something new? Can we have a community pool on which celebrity's gonna wind up on the news next? What are the Vegas odds on Tomkatparisnicoleireallydosototallynotcare....

I don't mean to sound apathetic, but I just don't care.

UNC v. E. Kentucky

"Carolina hasn't seen this defense, and it's a little bit of an adjustment...."

Oh, c'mon. Five minutes into the game and we're up 19-3.

I think we're doing okay.

Duke game....

Let me just put on record, that with just seconds left in this do-or-die game, I've put aside The Rivalry and am pulling for the ACC.

I'm trying to be the better man....

"Gingrich's Affair During Clinton Probe"

http://www.time.com/time/nation/
article/0,8599,1597666,00.
html?cnn=yes

C'mon, folks.

"Anchor Ad-Libs News With 97 Percent Accuracy"

http://www.theonion.com/content/
news_briefs/anchor_ad_libs_news
_with_97

From The Onion, an online satire publication.....

" Coulter under fire for anti-gay slur" against Edwards....

http://www.cnn.com/2007/POLITICS/
03/04/coulter.edwards/index.html

1) Ma'am, didn't anyone ever teach you to play nice? I mean, really. You're slinging mud that's not even politically-related or relevant to anything. Do folks think Edwards is feminine or something? I've never heard such opinions. You're sure not acting very lady-like.

2) In case you haven't picked up on the social cues, most folks have kinda started avoiding the use of that f-word in polite (and televised) conversation the same way the n-word has largely (thankfully) gone the way of Jim Crow.

3) Tactically, such uber-whack statements just make you look bad and help the other guy raise money.... https://johnedwards.com/
action/contribute/coulter

Even if John Edwards were gay, and if you were against homosexuality, I hardly suspect this is the manner of action Republican strategists would advise you to take to further your goals....

One Click Feeds the Hungry for FREE

a repost, but a worthy one....

Oh, but rarely in life does a win-win-win situation arise that can actually save lives.

Heres one. Its free for you, takes only a click of your mouse, makes some advertisers happy, and it feeds the hungry.

www.thehungersite.com

Heres how it works:
You click the button to feed the hungry around the world and right here at home. Takes half a second. Then you see links to the advertisers who sponsored your donation. Yay. They get publicity, you get that warm, fuzzy feeling inside and hungry folks get to eat. No bad, eh?

For example, I just donated 1.1 cups of some staple food to somebody. That's enough for a meal.
Thats enough to help keep somebody alive and you can do it EVERY DAY FOR FREE. Just bookmark the site and add it to your daily routine.

While youre at the site, you can also check out links to similar webpages helping out literacy, child health, animals, the fight against breast cancer, rainforests (I just preserved 11.4 square feet of land) .

Please, forward this around. Its easy, its free, its good.

"Woman Finds WWII Grenade in Potatoes"

http://www.wral.com/news/
strange/story/1218199/

Yep, mines, bombs and other ordinance is still strewn all over. One of my Dad's old bases in Germany still has signs up warning you about old minefields left over from the war....