The Schmidt Sphere: moving days and a 30th birthday!

we woke up early on friday, may 30th in anticipation of a momentous day- mark would leave the army and we'd pack up the u-haul and head to maryland! for some reason, u-haul didn't have the same thing in mind...

we called and called and u-haul just didn't have any trucks available for us, even though we'd reserved one well in advance. mark was finally put in contact with a district manager and he pulled some strings and got us a "for-sale" u-haul (aka. a junker) that was 26 feet long, had a diesel engine and was a stick-shift. the thing is, i grew up on a stick-shift and that's what i learned to drive on, but mark, although he does have experience, doesn't have as MUCH. therefore, it was decided that i would drive this monstrosity. the size wasn't so bad, but the gears were so hard to shift and the shifting was so fast due to the engine, it was nerve-wracking. after getting the truck back to the apartment, i started loading it with boxes while mark went and took care of signing out of the army. after a while, mark returned and working together went a heck of a lot faster. however, we didn't pull out of newport news until 9pm- way too late to move into an apartment that night back in maryland. we decided we'd stay at mark's parents house that night and move into our apartment the next day, the 31st, and mark's 30th birthday! this kind of ruined all the surprise plans i had made for his bday, but i knew all of that could be done another time except for one thing...

anyway, since the truck was so cumbersome, we decided to take route 17 to route 301 to maryland instead of I-95 in case there was road work or traffic or the woodrow wilson bridge lift, etc. after filling up with gas around 11:30, we were just a few miles from MD- yay! that's when things took a turn... i was following mark, who was in our car, we were on a 2 lane road, 4 miles from the potomac and it was pitch black. that's when i saw the buck in the left lane (we were in the right) and knew it was going to be baaaad. mark saw him too, swerved right to avoid him, but the buck jumped at mark's car, was hit and starting spinning in the air. i swerved hard left to avoid mark's car and the deer, thought i was going to tip the truck, so i over-corrected and swerved right, avoiding everything. we both pulled over to the side of the road and mark called, said he was OK but the car was messed up, but drivable. we eventually pulled in to a hotel parking lot, took a look at things, called mom and dad schmidt to tell them about it and have them call insurance and then we proceeded to the weigh station in maryland across the bridge. once at the station, we contacted local authorities who were a tremendous help. we found out the deer was still in the road back where we hit it, it had a broken leg and was put down. we felt horrible about it all, but knew there was nothing else that could have been done and we were both SO lucky to be OK. we didn't pull into the schmidt's until 2:30 am and immediately went to bed. the next day we assessed the damage in day light...

not as bad as it could have been, and again, we were so thankful to be safe!

after a tiresome day of packing up, we were so incredibly fortunate to have the help of mom and dad schmidt, dad chewning and sister allie chewning, to help us move into our place in college park! they helped the process move SO MUCH faster than it would have if it were just mark and i! the goal was to have everything in the apartment by 4 pm- and we had everything unpacked by 3:30! the reason i had a goal was because i had planned a little surprise for the bday boy at his favorite restaurant- the marrakesh in dc! yummy moroccan food with a few of his family and friends :)

after dragging mark on the metro and promising him we wouldn't be out late and that it was just going to be the 2 of us, we arrived and were seated with some of our favorite people!