Pictures of the camper!
The very next weekend I was due to pick the camper from that guy in Conyers, Georgia. Since I did not own a truck, I had to rent one. So, off to Enterprise I went to rent a big truck. That truck was so big my hip was lower than the bottom of the door! It was quite a chore to climb into it. The truck cost me $150, and another $100 in gas. Also, keep in mind I had never used a 4-wheel drive in my life. I was always a passenger during 4-wheel driving in my youth. In January it gets really cold in Tennessee. So we had to bring the camper up when it was cold. It’s even colder at night. I couldn’t do this myself so I had asked a relative to help me. So I asked my niece and her boyfriend, neither of whom had driver’s licenses.
After renting the truck I drove to Stone Mountain and picked them up, then went to Conyers and we got the camper. We had to drive a bit on a tight dirt road in the woods to get to the house. We finally got there and hooked the camper up to the truck, and it was a task driving it back out down the twisted, narrow wooded path. When we got to the road, the trip began. I don’t smoke or drink, however my niece and her boyfriend both smoke and he drinks. We had to stop every 15 to 20 minutes so they could pee (smoke), which caused the trip to take many more hours than it should of. I’d have driven it straight through if it was just me. We didn’t get there with the camper until 10:00 at night, and it was a frigid 16 degrees outside. The grass was covered in ice. I tried to back the camper into the driveway in the pitch dark, which didn’t work at all, so I decide screw it. I drove forward into the driveway and pull in as far as I can go under some trees, and then I pull the truck to the side. It was time to put my niece’s boyfriend to work getting the hitch off. After a good HOUR of work *roll eyes*, he finally got it free.
And now, after all of that... It’s Midnight! Time to take the truck back to Atlanta. As you recall, it’s 16 degrees out on the mountain, the yard is a big field of icy grass. So, I start to drive but low and behold the truck slides all over the yard. I’m sitting there thinking we might have to call Triple-A, but then I spy that 4-wheel drive button and press it. After that, I was able to easily get out of the icy grass… YAY ME! We were hungry so we stopped on the way back to get some food. It was almost 3:00 AM before I got them back home.
I headed back to Enterprise in Kennesaw to return the truck. Since, I was expecting to be there earlier originally, I had packed a lot of my computer stuff and some boxes to take with me. Those all had to be moved back into my car. So I got that done, locked the car, took the truck to fill up the gas tank and brought it back. I got in my car (taking the receipt for the truck out with me, after all this is Kennesaw!). As I started to leave, I noticed that one of the truck’s taillights was busted. I had purchased the insurance, but I wanted to tell Enterprise. However, it was about 4:00 AM on Sunday morning and they were closed on Sundays. It was freezing outside. I drove to the key drop off, jumped out to deposit the key, got back in my car to leave, and was instantly surrounded by 5 cop cars! Okay, quick back story time: Back in 2010, I went to Atlanta for some black Friday shopping with a friend. We took the back roads home, and had stopped in Kennesaw to look at something in a window when we found ourselves surrounded by 5 police cruisers! Kennesaw is notorious for that kind of thing; it’s just how it is there. So anyway, I was leaving Enterprise and found myself surrounded by cops. I looked at them and smiled, actually laughed. I told them I was returning a rental truck and showed them the receipt. One of the cops came over and looked at the receipt. I asked him 3 times if he needed to see my license, he said no. I told the cop about what happened to me back in 2010 and we both laughed. I said “Well, it is Kennesaw”. He said “Yep, this is Kennesaw”, gave me back the receipt and let me be on my way.
All the way back from dropping off the camper, the light kept coming on telling me it needed an oil change. So the next day, I called Enterprise and told them that I had busted one of the tail lights. The representative on the phone at Enterprise told me not to worry. Since I had paid for the insurance, I could have brought the remains of the truck back in the palm of my hand and would have been covered. I also told her about the oil change light and that I thought it used too much gas. She said, “Oh no!” and gave me 50% off on the truck rental. Then I told her how the cops stopped me when I was leaving. She was like “Oh my god, that was you!!! We were trying to figure out which customer that was!” She apologized and said that she had already bitched out the security company for calling the cops on a customer returning a vehicle, and she was going to remove the entire cost of the rental from my credit card. Yay!
I still needed to tend to a few things with the camper, so I drove back up there by myself in the dark of night. It was very cold that night, but it was so peaceful I had no problems staying there and fixing a few things in the dark. I had stopped at the camper supply place in White, Georgia on the way up and got some locks for the camper. At the time, the camper was not hooked up to anything and had no electricity or water. With a flashlight in the dark under the trees, I was able to get the lock secured on the front door. I was not the least bit scared to be there by myself, so I knew this was my new home. I got done about midnight and drove all the way back to Georgia. The trip wasn’t really that bad from my old place, only 2 ½ hours. It was so much quicker when I didn’t have to stop every 20 minutes to let somebody smoke. I still had a lease on my old apartment until the end of March, so every other weekend I would drive back to Georgia to check on it and spend some time with my daughter, but that’s a story for another time.
