What a day. After a night with a giant knot in my stomach, I woke up and took Shreya to the airport. We were kind of in a daze. We had a plan that minimized our losses regarding the packed away passports and were ready to move. For some reason we didn't think about splitting up until late last night. After dropping off Shreya at the airport I was laser focused on getting back to the apartment and finishing up the last bit of unplanned packing. Since we had access to the PODS storage unit, I could drop off some of the miscellaneous items we forgot after I tried to fish out the passports. We were lucky to have a second opportunity to finish up our storage packing . Driving back from the airport proved to be a challenge. DC gave me one last lesson about beltway traffic as there was an accident and Google Maps gave me an estimated time to get home at about 10 a.m. That made the trip from the airport about 2(!) hours. Luckily I was able to take some side streets home, pack up the last of our items that needed to be stored and get to the storage facility by 10:15 a.m.
As I approached the PODS facility I was still going through my head what I needed to do to get our passports. I wasn't sure if I would need to unload most of our stuff to get to the desk, or if I could climb over everything, weasel my way to the desk, and find enough room to slide the passports out of desk drawer. I went to the front door of PODS building and it was locked. Hmm...I knocked on the door and the manager came to the door very cautiously and asked if it was safe to open the door. I gave him a confused look, and he laughed pointing at the pair of scissors in my hands. I didn't realize I was clutching them with blade exposed (oops). I told him it was safe, it's not like I was running with them...
After he cautiously let me in he told me his perspective about the 9:45 p.m. call he received the night before on his work phone (he wasn't exactly jumping for joy). I thanked him to no end that he actually answered the call and helped setup the storage pod for my visit. He was actually very nice and fun to talk to. So far all of the people that I have interacted with at PODS have been really really great.
After the storage pod was brought out, I figured out a plan to get past the loose items in the back and get to the nicely packed heavy items in the front. I had assumed that the table that contained the passports was somewhere in the middle, just past the box spring for our bed, futon frame, and cushion. I climbed over a couple of boxes and squeezed between the top of the box spring and the wood crossbeam at the top of the pod. Check out the final picture of the pod after I broke the passports out of their jail:
You can see the gap between the box spring and wood beam towards the top of the picture. It looks smaller in the picture. I think I breathed a GIANT sigh of relief when I took this shot. Needless to say I didn't let the passports out of my sight after getting them out. There was still a good chance I could leave them in the warehouse, apartment, car, airplane, trash can, and any other place I could possibly set them down. I've made it back to AZ and I still have the passports. I think all of my blog updates from now on should mention the status of the passports.
The rest of the day was a blur of packing, cleaning, and mounting up the new (to us) bike racks. I took a lot of our left over nonperishable foods (along with pots/pans and some wine and beer) over to my sister's place and they housed me for the night. They are going to be watching over the Scooby and Mini while we are away. The Scooby had already made its journey over to their place. I loaded up the Mini with our road trip gear and bikes, wished our former apartment complex a hearty good bye and left Silver Spring for the last time as a resident...Yep, we'll miss this place for sure even after its last attempt to keep us within its city limits.
Nilit
As I approached the PODS facility I was still going through my head what I needed to do to get our passports. I wasn't sure if I would need to unload most of our stuff to get to the desk, or if I could climb over everything, weasel my way to the desk, and find enough room to slide the passports out of desk drawer. I went to the front door of PODS building and it was locked. Hmm...I knocked on the door and the manager came to the door very cautiously and asked if it was safe to open the door. I gave him a confused look, and he laughed pointing at the pair of scissors in my hands. I didn't realize I was clutching them with blade exposed (oops). I told him it was safe, it's not like I was running with them...
After he cautiously let me in he told me his perspective about the 9:45 p.m. call he received the night before on his work phone (he wasn't exactly jumping for joy). I thanked him to no end that he actually answered the call and helped setup the storage pod for my visit. He was actually very nice and fun to talk to. So far all of the people that I have interacted with at PODS have been really really great.
After the storage pod was brought out, I figured out a plan to get past the loose items in the back and get to the nicely packed heavy items in the front. I had assumed that the table that contained the passports was somewhere in the middle, just past the box spring for our bed, futon frame, and cushion. I climbed over a couple of boxes and squeezed between the top of the box spring and the wood crossbeam at the top of the pod. Check out the final picture of the pod after I broke the passports out of their jail:
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| Jail-broken Passports |
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| Saying Goodbye. |
Nilit
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