Day 8: Roselle Park - Brooklyn - East Village. 26 mi.

They say that the first cut is the deepest, and no one is saying that the path from Seattle to Coeur d'Alene was easy, but today, today was a b****.

Getting out of NJ went well, until New York's finest informed us that we were, in fact, a commercial vehicle. Which meant that we couldn't go through the Holland Tunnel. We had to go through the Lincoln Tunnel. We didn't have directions to get to Brooklyn from the Lincoln Tunnel. The Fabulous Father - of course behind the wheel for all the hardest parts - pulled it off, including toll payments and inspection of the truck by more of New York's finest on our way into the tunnel.

On arrival on the isle of Manhattan, we headed south, hoping to re-connect with our original directions, while I frantically phoned everyone I thought might be near a computer. Midwest Medved came through and sent us back uptown and across 34th Street. At noon. Twenty-four days before Christmas. Past Madison Square Gardens. Needless to say, it took an hour, while The Painter cooled his heels, waiting to help us unload.

When we got to the storage unit, we waited to pull the truck in, and then went to get the keys. They said, You have the keys. Overcame the temptation to deliver the immediate NY response - if I had the f***in' keys, why the f*** would I be asking you for them? - and made a couple of phone calls. Ten minutes later, I had the keys, an apology, and the pleasure of watching four grown men being chewed out by the Fabulous "They don't read anything!" Marlene.

Two and a half hours later, we were done. A 6x10 storage unit is now loaded to the gills, I'm trying not to think about what will happen if anything falls over, and we were off to return the truck. Dad got into a shouting match with a Shell station attendant who was up to something fishy with my credit card - this was when I realized how tired we were - but we made it and the lovely people took back the truck and called a car service to take me to the East Village and Dad to the PATH back to Roselle Park. We unloaded the things I'll carry for the next few weeks onto The Lead Singer's stoop, and Dad sped off into the night. And I was home. For the moment. And it was good.