I’m sore. I’m always cold. I look around and see what looks like a post-apocalyptic wasteland, contained in the boundaries of a yard and a house, a house that if it could talk would wail for the sweet release of destruction, begging for the cruel purposeful kiss of a bulldozer’s blade or the warm, freeing licks of fire. But the house can’t talk, and even if it could it wouldn’t help us solve what we still need to do, which is haul out a metric crapton of garbage and unwanted, ruined furniture and so so much scrap metal, all of which is, again, sharp, wet, cold, and cruel. We did manage to get a U-Haul truck to ferry David and his crap to sunny Los Angeles, and let’s focus on that this morning, because David’s reaction to it is amazing.
Oh, I should mention the Autopian Readers’/David Leaves Detroit Party was a massive success, with fire and people and only a little bit of vomit and fun and cars and everything you’d want. David will write more about that soon, but until then here’s a little teaser:
Oh jeez that’s unflattering. I’m all bald spot and pixellated ass crack. Form an orderly line, ladies!
Anyway, back to this U-Haul. When David got in it to drive he was no-joke, genuinely and earnestly blown away by the aching beauty and luxury of the interior. This interior:
He was looking out over the vast spread of six-year-old gray plastic and vinyl and rubber and felt like a motherscratching king. It’s so quiet and smooth, he cooed at me, and then described the soothing warmth of the heater breathing caringly over his body, and marveled at the ease and comfort he was feeling, compared to his other cars like his Jeep J10 pickup. This is a man who is un-ironically reveling in the luxury of a fucking U-Haul like it’s a Maybach or something.
Is this sad? Is it beautiful? I can’t even tell anymore. Nothing makes sense. The rest of today is going to be a gray slog of heavy wet cold objects being flung to their destruction, without sentiment or ceremony, a forced march of disposal that nobody wants to do, and yet must be done. It must happen so one man can be free of this dirty anchor that has weighed him down for nearly a decade, a rusty anchor whose chains we are currently chewing through with grim resolve, hoping to free him and let buoyancy and light carry him off into the sun, where the real healing can begin.
At least, until he starts filling up his LA place with rusty shit. But for now, we’ll just hope that doesn’t happen.
After experiencing firsthand the enigma that is Mr Tracy, this is somewhat unsurprising.
Well worth the drive from Minneapolis, as I mentioned over on Oppo.
Your truck’s headlights made the outdoor group pictures possible. 🙂
I had to take off early and appreciate you backing up to let me out. Also that was a good Viper story.
Yeah that photo worked out well, I’m glad I had the floods. No worries on moving around, I knew when I parked there to begin with I’d have to move eventually. As people would drift by saying farewells to David and Jason I’d ask if they were in the back corner so I could move out of their way, lol.
D’oh! Apologies for the mistaken identity – it was nice to meet you, Derp, even if I was a little hazy on your name. 🙂
Wait is opposite lock still a thing? I thought it was Kinja’d out of existence years ago.
https://opposite-lock.com/
Moved to a OnlyFans site.
You guys should rent a dumpster, they’re pretty cheap and they drop off and pick them up – MGM dumpsters is local and they are awesome. Get a 20 yarder, it would be plenty for what you have there. If you call today they would have it there tomorrow or sooner if you asked and they pick it up whenever you call them to.
That’s one of those parties where you’re really sad you missed it, yet incredibly fortunate that you did.
I am still salty my wife had to work. I would have particularly enjoyed some Malort with Mercedes.
The party was great. David was a great host. The garage and it’s contents gave me anxiety, however.
The more I read about David the more he sounds like a sober Hunter S Thompson character. I love it.
When my daughter was learning to drive, I gave her very much / too much advice on how to behave on the roads.
This one is appropriate here:
“Never get in the way of someone driving a U-Haul.”
— “Why?”
“Because U-Hauls, especially on the open highway, are desperate vehicles driven by desperate people, who are only driving a U-Haul because that’s the only way they can afford to move their stuff. And they probably can’t even afford the U-Haul. Give them a wide berth.”
I just figured it was because that’s probably the only time that person has driven something wider than its cab, but I guess that works too.
Uhaul: You don’t know which lane marker it’ll be straddling, but it will be one of them.
I got to drive a 2012 Savana U-Haul 10′ box truck to help a relative move, albeit over a very short distance (like 15 minutes, short). But I felt similarly…I was expecting some vague “oh god what unholy things have happened in here” feeling but it was actually pretty clean and also, having previously driven a ’97 conversion E-150 with the 4.6l for 7 years as my daily, the 6.6l LS made me feel like a god. “This is too BIG to be able to accelerate this quickly.”
Not so hot take: Once you enter your 30s you are no longer required to do your own move. Hire a company and save yourself the aggravation and wasted vacation days.
Last two personal moves have been hired. Worth every penny. Don’t have to round up friends who may or may not show.
But like the idiot I am I offered to help my wifes hoarder aunt and uncle move over the summer. 4 26′ uhauls from Kitchener to Ottawa on a +30 degree day, and it was really humid. So loaded down it really didn’t want to do more than 105 on the highway. Only way I’ll help them again is if there is a giant dumpster and preferably one of those debris slides so I can drop stuff down from the upstairs windows easily.
2300 miles in a U-haul appears that it will be more comfortable and luxurious when compared to 2300 miles in the Mustang with poor alignment and no radio. So I think I would agree. I would make sure I have the ability to get my phone into that headphone jack on the radio, but maybe David wants to sit in silence with his own thoughts again.
At least he won’t have to buy new tires mid-trip.
Doesn’t U haul have versions with a truck lift? Getting everything in by lifting it 2 foot in the air seems cumbersome.
U-Haul used to really prioritize having a lower deck height than their competitors, then after some internal politics the corrupt assholes took over and it wouldn’t surprise me if they stopped caring about stuff like that because they were making so much money from a business made successful by those before them and by those they forced out.
When I moved a little over a year ago, the only place that had trucks with lift gates was Enterprise.
Thanks for showing up at the junkyard, Torch.
(Yeah, I could have gone to the party to meet you there, but I’m an old man.)
Just wait until I trick some poor schmucks into being Puffalump-Smuggling Mules when I finally give up and move to the Nürburgring. You think I’m putting those guys on a container ship? Hell no. We’re taking the world’s squishiest carry-ons over. No room for pants, just ‘lumps.
Besides, I want to personally be able to see the cargo plane that hits us on the runway if anything happens to them. If the ‘lumps go, I go with them.
I get what David is feeling. For ~15 years straight I drove my truck as a daily driver, put over a quarter million miles on it. When it had AC it was still chugging through R12. The only options on it were AC and an automatic.
Most basic vehicle you can get.
Then I got my Miata, a 2018 ND1. The plush, leather wrapped steering wheel. The working AC, the heated seats, the remote locks! It was almost too much.
I get it, David. I get it.
To be fair, that is my favorite flavor of U-Haul. Big enough to move a small apartment with proper Tetris-ing, but a box no wider than the cab so you feel less like you’re driving a fat suit. But there is something fatiguing about the placement of the gas pedal, or maybe it’s just my particular proportions.
“Oh, I should mention the Autopian Readers’/David Leaves Detroit Party was a massive success, with fire and people and only a little bit of vomit”
Unfortunately, I would’ve increased the vomit amount by at least 100%. Who’s got two thumbs and day 4 of a 24 hour flu? Yup. And I figure I’d like to keep it that way.
“This is a man who is un-ironically reveling in the luxury of a fucking U-Haul like it’s a Maybach or something.”
Jason. I have a terrible fantastic idea. David is moving to LA, land of the movie stars and limousines.
Don’t tell me that you can’t find an absolutely beat to death Maybach that jumped off the depreciation curve with boulders tied it’s ankles. Do it. DOOOOOOO EEEEET.
Ugh, you too? Massive sinus infection caused by whatever my friend’s kids gave me.
F’in kids.
Yeah, and I almost never get the flu. Because my social life in winter consists of:
1.
End of list. Add that onto the chronic stuff and even the idea of making a 3.5 hour drive is unsafe. (And this is coming from someone who drove the last two car purchases home from multiple states away.)
To be clear I mean keeping the flu to myself. I don’t want to keep the flu. Is there somewhere I can donate the flu?
These glimpses into David’s home/life are how I imagine Michigan looks all over, all the time.
Michigan resident and attendee of David’s party. This is absolutely NOT how Michigan looks all over, all the time.
Except for the rust. That is inescapable.
It’s not even a Transit, it’s the most basic interior you can get today. Beats crossing the country without a radio, I suppose.
Hey, it has a heater (and A/C, for defrost), a driver’s armrest, and even a line-in jack so David won’t be stuck listening to livestock reports or fire-and-brimstone horseshit, much less completely tuneless as he was in the Mustang.
Kid of Torch; (says nothing, just glad the school/Bar Mitzvah lessons/clipping the dog’s toenails excuse to nope out of the trip worked this time).
The most telling moment of the party that put David’s sickness on display was when he looked out the back window in horror as a cheap bookshelf plucked out of his driveway went up in flames on the bonfire.
“That was a good bookshelf!!”
A bookshelf he is now free of.
I need more war stories.
Have some respect! Driveway bookshelves are highly sought after. At least in David’s world that is. Haha.
Seriously though I hope this party/intervention works and he stops being a hoarder… Ah who am I kidding. He’ll probably pick up 2 driveway bookshelves to make up for the 1 he lost in the fire.
Shortly followed by more shelves / book cases being burned.
On another note, anyone have a video of the tow out of the snow in the first five minutes of the party?
I don’t, but I posted a collage of my pics which included an action still-shot.
That’s better than nothing. In retrospect, setting up a camera to catch more of the shenanigans would have been a good idea.
You have to be careful with cameras in these situations. The police like to refer to that as “evidence”.
I think I lost a few day or weeks off my life from that fire. Between the bookshelves and maybe a tire? Good times though.
The tire definitely took a months off of our lives. At least it didn’t burn until after dark otherwise we would have met the Troy fire department that day.
This is the post I was looking forward to. Nothing brings out the wordsmith in Torch, like despair over David’s … everything.
Agree. And this article may be the single best thing that Torch has written yet. More schadenfreudlich laughs per sentence than anything I’ve read in a long time. Bravo!
David will be jonesing hard for some rust after a while in Cali. We should all send him boxes of rust that he can sprinkle around, like pixie dust. Just so he can feel more at home.
COTD
While the rest of us that live in the rust belt states look for cars that came from the south, David will be the single biggest importer of rust buckets from the north to SoCal.
Everytime I watch anyone work on rust free cars I just keep thinking they’re doing it on easy mode. If you didn’t have to bring out the angle grinder and/or the torch, were you really wrenching?
Right before I left, Jason pulled a Ziploc bag of rust out of a lopsided bookcase in David’s garage. Last I heard, it will be going to LA with him.
DT:”Hey, that’s my grail Jeep WXYZ, I’m gonna fix it up!”:DT
Hell or high water the move to Cali will drag David into a new halcyon future. One where his residence is filled merely with shit, instead of Midwest issue rusty shit.
Seriously I was blown away by the homeless population when I visited LA. The news doesn’t prepare you for how bad it is. It’s like World War Z vibes.
If you were homeless, where would you do it? In Detroit? Chicago? or LA?
Any pictures of the garage for before and after comparison? I’m thinking of the big freeze as the before.
You’re a brave man to do the worm across that carpet . . .
“…the Autopian Readers’/David Leaves Detroit Party was a massive success, with fire and people and only a little bit of vomit…”
What Jason didn’t mention is that the vomit was his, after repeatedly having his face down on that carpet.
Wife of Torch: So how was the party?
*Torch doing the worm GIF*
Wife: You promised never again!