Just as the rebuilding of New Orleans is a puzzle, so are the logistics of our return trip, albeit on a much humbler scale.
It seems I “rescued” a few too many items from our home in New Orleans. I should have left them there. Instead, I brought them to Bloomington, and now we have to figure how to get it all back. It’s just too much to fit in our compact Saturn.
We could rent another vehicle, but that seems way too expensive.
We could rent a trailer, but we’d have to install a hitching post, and again it seems like overkill.
We could get a cartop carrier, but we don’t have a luggage rack, and I’m nervous about these “clip” fasteners. Plus, I’m not even sure where you buy this sort of thing.
We could ship the stuff separately, but I’m not sure about the current state of shipping services in New Orleans.
We could have someone here in Bloomington hold it for shipping later. That seems like the best option, but it would mean imposing upon someone here — most likely Xy’s mom.
We’ll figure it out eventually, of course, but in the meantime — what a headache!
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Hello Bart, this is Dale. As in, Dale Collins now in Conway, South Carolina. How are you? My friend Elyse Emerling told me that you and Cristi are back in Bloomingham. Good news! I like the photos. What can I do to help folks in New Orleans? I’m looking for ways to help.
Get the hitching post and rent a trailer – next year you can rent a camping trailer or something, a boat trailer. Horses. The back half of a truck.
There’s a way (although a 2-minute look at their site couldn’t find it) to ship UPS to a UPS office and hold it for pickup. Maybe you could ship everything to some outlying location that’s doing fine, and then pick it up later.
The UPS site does have a list of zip codes that are not getting service, but I didn’t know which one was you. Also, maybe you could do something like ship it to your work if they have service and your house doesn’t or something like that.
Depending on how much stuff you have, you might also get a good quote from a moving company that’s willing to throw it on the back of a truck that’s already headed down that way.
B,
I got a cartop carrier and roof rack for my Jetta, believe it or not, after we had our son and had to haul stuff halfway across the country for family visits, etc. I think we paid about $150-$200 about four years ago, if memory serves. You can find the carrier at a place like Sears and they’ll probably have the fasteners there too. The fasteners are custom-built for the type of car you have. They installed it for free the first time, then I had to figure out how to remove it/store it, etc. Not so bad, though. It completely changes the way the car feels when you drive it (especially in the wind), but you can definitely haul a bunch of stuff.