Our trip started off unexpectedly.

With our lease up at the end of August we had planned to tie up our loose ends in Boston, put some items in storage and throw a lot out, and then head down to Baltimore to visit our families, and finish up gearing up and prepping for the trip there.

I love to do trip research, but had forced myself to delay that for more pressing, and less fun matters such as securing a mailbox in Boston, packing up etc.

We were running out of time to get everything packed up and over to storage, donated, or thrown out. And at the same time we were running out of time to purchase a car. Our car was totaled in an accident back in April, but since we were living in Boston it really wasn’t a necessity to have a car, and a combination of factors led us to come down to the wire in buying a car once we did need one to move and then start the trip.

We ended up being able to pickup the car we choose, a Subaru Forester, on Friday evening. We had to be out of the apartment that Monday. Needless to say things were rushed.

On Sunday night we were unloading items from the new car at the self-storage facility, when the automatic garage door suddenly came down on the car. O—M—-G. Not OK. We searched high and low for a way to contact the storage people, including calling local police, to no avail. Then I tried to wrap up the damaged gate and secure the broken glass so we could get the car home, and by the time that process was complete it was a little after 10 at night.

Andrew and I were both exhausted and stressed to the max. And then the gate to leave the storage parking area wouldn’t unlock. Because the gate hours were 6am-10pm the gate wouldn’t operate. I didn’t realize it was after 10pm, but I also assumed you couldn’t enter beyond those hours, not that you would trapped in if you were inside. Turned out the latter was indeed the case. So now we’re trapped at a storage facility with 24 hours until we need to be out of our apartment.

Not cool. We were able to walk out of the lock out area, but no way to get the car out. There was a sign for a Marriott Courtyard in a nearby office park, but when we called Marriott they said no such hotel existed in that town. Hmmm. So our options were to try to get a cab at 10pm in a random suburb, and then cab back out again to get our car back, or try to find a hotel that may or may not actually exist.

I have been extremely anxious about driving since my car accident, and considerably moreso when I was a passenger. So the idea of taking a random cab on a highway, after I was just totally freaked out by this new accident, was extremely unappealing. So we wandered the office park trying to find the hotel. After about 3/4 of a mile and the 4th corporate headquarters building, with no sign of a hotel anytime soon, I decided we had to go back to the gas station and look for another options.

As luck would have it a Boston cab had just pulled up, probably on his way home. After picking up his lottery ticket the driver agreed to take us back into town, for which we were quite grateful. After staying up all that night, it still took us until midnight the following night to get everything out of the apartment.

We then proceeded to make 2 nights at a Boston hotel our first stop on the trip