Where the Grass is Green

In the final installment of “Condon Changes Apartments To Get Good Blog Fodder,” we’ve got to close up and put some finishing remarks on the Great Truck Rental of ’06.

(Sometimes, capitalizing makes things seem more important than they are.)

On Saturday, the actual move went strikingly well. The whole relocation took about 3 hours, and other than the spirits of my old apartment complex, nothing was broken. Condon’s Eleven moved with the precision of a finely-tuned machine. (By the way, I thought about casting my moving team as Ocean’s Eleven, but decided against it for word count purposes. For those who came, feel free to claim your character on a first-come, first-serve basis in the comments.)

In the middle of the move, we were working in shifts, loading and unloading the elevator, unpacking as quickly as we were placing boxes in the empty new space. It should be noted that I was totally planning on entertaining my move team with clever and comical box labels, but when the time came to be funny, I totally choked. Chris can’t be funny when he stays up all night packing. I labeled one box “Breakables.” I wanted to add some variant of an Ivan Drago joke next to the label, but I just couldn’t find the punchline. Sorry, guys.

But the beginning and the end of the move was not nearly as hectic. It was just Chris Condon, a man who drives a Honda Accord for a living, living large at the wheel of a big, big truck. I’m a trucker. Where’s my hat?

When I got in the 17’ U-Haul for the first time, I did what I could to savor the moment. I checked my rearview mirror, pretended to not be surprised when there was no rearview mirror to adjust, bounced in the seat a few times, and rolled out of the parking lot like I had to get a double shipment of barley to Omaha by sundown. And then I cranked the tunes.

Song on the Radio: Unwritten, by Natasha Bedingfield.

What? How the hell was Hot 99.5 the last station listened to in my rig? That’s not trucker music. That’s a cruel joke. God, I better kill the volume before my trucker friends think I don’t belong in such a fine, fine, industrial-sized vehicle. Yeah, I had my windows up, but for those who have been on the road for years, they don’t need to hear the girl-pop on the radio to know you’ve got girl-pop on the radio. They can smell fear.

Taking a deep breath, I flipped the channels to find real trucker music. Without a doubt, the number one trucker music genre is country. Plenty of Southern-fried guitar tunes in the vein of Skynyrd to get you on the road. Some Garth Brooks could go a long way right now. Hell, I’d even deal with some Tim McGraw.

Greater DC has three country stations that I can get on the radio. The artists on those three stations at the time of ignition? Martina McBride, Carrie Underwood, Trisha Yearwood. A chill went up my spine. I’m getting rammed off the road any second, aren’t I?

In a last-ditch effort, I prayed that DC101, the area’s only rock station, could salvage this trip (otherwise, I’m sure I was going to be forced by mandate to put up curtains and flower vases in the cab of my rig). I hit “SEEK” and crossed my fingers. After a pause, the sweetest, manliest, guitar intro hit my ears like a ton of bricks. Manly, manly bricks.

"Paradise City", by Guns ‘n Roses.

YAB now decrees Paradise City to be the Official Truck Driving Song of the Summer of 2006. Godspeed, Axl.

(And don’t think for a second that when I turned the truck back in I didn’t put the radio tuner back to Hot 99.5. I don’t want to be the only one with a complex.)