PennSilverTaco's "Perfect 5-Lug Regular Cab" Build, Aspergers, and General BS MegaThread!

My mom flew with me from California back to Pennsylvania in June or July of 1998 and left me with my grandparents in Bethlehem; My Uncle Jeff (who did my wheel skins) flew from Pennsylvania to California; He and my dad loaded our dog Molly and some basic necessities into my dad's 1996 Nissan Pathfinder and drove across country to our new house in Virginia Beach pretty much nonstop! I'm pretty sure they took turns driving while the other one slept and never stopped at a hotel!

Being active duty military allowed my dad to live in California while still retaining New Jersey residency (and a New Jersey driver's license) and keeping both family vehicles registered in Pennsylvania. Declaring residency in New Jersey allowed my dad to be exempt from state income taxes, and keeping both the Pathfinder and the Camry registered in Pennsylvania meant he didn't have to drill into the front bumpers for a license plate or get them smogged!



My dad sold the Camry to a local family in NorCal because he didn't feel like paying to ship it a second time, but obviously kept the Pathfinder since it was only two years old and not paid off yet, and he planned on driving it across the country; While I stayed with my grandparents, my parents were able to have the house completely unpacked and ready before they brought me down! One thing I remember vividly is that my mom "surprised me" by bringing me out to my grandparents' driveway when they came to get me and showing me that the Pathfinder was now sporting Virginia license plates!

I was not present for the packing up of the California base house or moving into the Virginia Beach house, so I do not remember what moving company the Navy hired...

 

I cannot believe that this was over 20 years ago; As stated above, we sold the place in Virginia before I even finished the 5th grade, and I spent the last couple days of school living in a hotel. I do not remember what company the Navy hired to move us from Virginia Beach to Oak Harbor, but I also remember them being very nice guys...

My parents decided it was more cost effective to rent instead of buy since we'd be there less than two years, and they rented a nice place from another guy my dad knew from the Navy who himself had been transferred to Maine; We ended up living in the Navy Lodge for close to a month because my dad's fellow serviceman was still living in the house with his family. On moving day, I remember the movers being close to an hour late, but when they did show up the driver ended up letting me play in truck!

I was supposed to get a ride in the semi, but either the guys were on a tight schedule or my parents talked him out of it, because it never happened...

 

The Navy Lodge at the old seaplane base in Whidbey Island is, without a doubt, my favorite Navy Lodge ever; Unfortunately, it's been gone for over a decade...

Instead of a traditional building with hotel rooms, this "lodge" consisted of two or three dozen single-wide trailer homes, all of which were no more than a couple years old at the time! Each trailer featured two bedrooms, two bathrooms, a living room with a TV and VCR, and a full kitchen with a full-size fridge and dishwasher; Each one even had its own washer and dryer! their Each trailer also featured something that the house we ended up renting for two years lacked; CENTRAL AIR!

Almost all of the houses in Oak Harbor, from what I can tell, had gas heat (typically forced air; sometimes baseboard) and no central air; Summers on Whidbey Island are very mild compared to every other place I've lived (including Northern California). It was never cool enough to use the heat in our Navy Lodge trailer, and my parents and I like it cool when we sleep so I guarantee you we ran the A/C almost nonstop, but if I had to guess I'd say that the trailers had heat pumps with electric backup heat. It's possible they were natural gas or propane, but I'm guessing they were heat pumps...

They were your generic builder-grade split-system units, Carrier if I remember correctly; These trailers were probably no more than a thousand square feet, and Whidbey Island rarely gets out of the 70s in the summer, so I'm guessing they were 1.5-ton (18,000 BTU; The smallest whole-house central A/C you can get).

 

FUN FACT: I did not know what a heat pump was until after I graduated from high school...

All three houses in California (both the one in Milpitas that my parents actually owned from 1988 to 1990, and the two government-issued shitboxes we lived in during the late 1990s) had electric heat and no central air. Every other house we lived in from 1990 to 2005 (four, not including the ones in California) had gas forced air heat; The house in North Wales, Pennsylvania and both houses in Virginia Beach had central A/C while the one in Oak Harbor did not. From about June until November of 1990, my parents rented a 2-bedroom apartment in Montgomery County, Pennsylvania while house-hunting and subsequently waiting for the house they bought to be ready; The apartment had central air and more than likely electric heat (Parents don't remember if it was a heat pump or just straight electric heat; May have been gas, but again, parents don't remember).

The rental house in Doylestown where we lived in from 2005 to 2007 had central air and oil heat; Just two years of renting a house with oil heat convinced my dad to NEVER actually buy a house with oil heat, for various reasons...

The townhouse in Furlong where we lived from 2007 to 2016 had two central A/C units matched with gas furnaces (One for upstairs and one for downstairs; First house my parents ever owned, or even lived in, that had "dual-zone"); Current house that we've lived in since 2016 has basically the same setup, but with the 2nd floor furnace located in the attic instead of the basement.

 

Wha I'm trying to say is that until over a year after I was old enough to drive, I did not know what a heat pump was, and I'd say it was not until mid-2009 that I finally learned the basic concept of how they functioned; I knew that typical residences had either gas, oil, or electric heat...

When my Grandma moved back to the neighborhood in Bethlehem, albeit to a different house, I thought the large condos in the neighborhood had gas heat because they all had remote-controlled gas logs in the fireplaces; The oldest of the houses were built in 1992 or 1993, and of course all of them had central air. I remember going for a walk on a relatively chilly day in late 2006 (months after my Grandma moved in) and hearing the neighbor's air-conditioner running; I found it odd that they would have the A/C on when it was in the 40s, casually mentioned it to my dad, and thought nothing else of it.

In the summer of 2007, my interest in HVAC was really starting to take off, and I was going through my "What kind of heat does your house have?" phase; I asked my aunt if their massive brick colonial in Northern Virginia had gas or oil heat, and she told me it had a heat pump. This was my first time hearing the term "heat pump", ever, at 18 years old; It didn't take me long to figure out that Grandma's neighbor's A/C had actually been a heat pump running in heat mode, though until 2009 I thought that a heat pump switched between COOL mode and HEAT mode by reversing the direction of the condenser fan...



No, seriously; That's what I actually thought!

 

Back to the original story about the various moving companies we've dealt with over the last quarter of a century...

 

I don't remember much about packing up the Oak Harbor house, but it was Allied Van Lines that moved our stuff from Washington back to Virginia; The moving men from Allied were incredibly nice, and the driver even gave me a scale model tractor-trailer done up in Allied livery! I still have it somewhere!

 

Can you Uber with that? I thought they have, or at least had, an age limit for the vehicle used.

 

We moved from Virginia back to Pennsylvania in the summer of 2005; I do not remember much about packing up the house in Northern Virginia, but I can tell you that the movers who dropped off our stuff in Pennsylvania were assholes...

We were on a very tight schedule, because my parents had to drive back to Virginia to close on the old house, and the movers were incredibly late; The driver had the gall to attempt to negotiate with us, asking us if he could unload half the truck that day and come back the following day. Even if weren't supposed to be back in Virginia the next day, this was totally unacceptable...

My dad gave the driver/manager a piece of his mind, and needless to say, they unloaded the entire truck that afternoon!



The second conflict arose after my 27" Sansui TV came off the truck; As soon as the movers brought it up, I plugged it in and hooked up the PS2 so I could play Grand Theft Auto. GTA (In this case, San Andreas) had a lot of bad language and loud music, so I kept the door shut to keep from subjecting the rest of the house to the profanities and head-banging rock music from the game...

It was also incredibly hot that day and keeping the door to my bedroom shut restricted all the cold air from the lone A/C vent in my room to that space; The movers did not like this, and on at least three occasions over the course of less than an hour, I got bitched at by the same guy for shutting the door.

I flat out asked my dad (out of earshot of the movers) why the guys were being such assholes (exact words); He told me that it was because they were getting paid a flat rate instead of an hourly rate and wanted to get the job done ASAP. I stayed out of their way until the last item came off the truck, and my dad was not very nice when the Navy asked for a review of that moving company; Once again...

 

I think 2012 is still in play; Oldest Uber car I ever rode in was a 2003 Ford Crown Vic in either 2017 or 2018; I was absolutely hammered, and even though I had a sober ride home, that sober ride ended up being a Crown Vic!

 

Last I checked, the oldest model year you could for Uber ridesharing was 2004 or 2007; The oldest for Uber Eats as of 2019 was 1998...

The guy with 2003 Crown Vic was in 2017 or 2018 and I distinctly remember him telling me that Uber was forcing him to get a newer car...

Oldest Uber vehicles I’ve ever ridden in...

2003 Ford Crown Victoria (late 2017-early 2018)
2004 Toyota Prius (July 2016)
2004-2006 Nissan Quest (2016-2017)
2006-2008 Dodge Magnum (2017)
2007 Pontiac Grand Am (2016-2017)
2007-2008 BMW 3-Series (2018)
2008 Acura TL (2016)

There was a guy in a 2nd Gen Nissan Xterra who picked me up at least twice in 2017-2018, but I forget what year it was; There are probably more older vehicles that I’m forgetting, but keep in mind that most of the time when I was taking an Uber it was because I was too drunk to drive myself)!

 

My dad retired from the Navy in October 2007, after 25 years of service; The Navy paid for one final move, and luckily it ended up being local; We moved out of the rental in Doylestown in June or July 2007, but our furniture and other belongings had to be stored for a good two months because our new house wasn't finished until September 2007. The company the Navy hired was Graebel Movers, and they were among the best movers we ever had except for one SNAFU...

By August of 2007, our new house looked like a house; The light fixtures and air-conditioners were installed, but you could tell by looking at it that it wasn't quite move-in ready...

It was sometime in August of 2007, and we were three hours away at my aunt and uncle's house in Northern Virginia; My mom discovered several voicemails on her cell phone that turned out to be from the movers. They said they were outside our vacant and unfinished house, wondering where we were; I forget whether my parents called the moving company and set things straight, or if the movers realized someone had dropped the ball and left. It turns out that a woman in charge of schedule the moves had fudged on the date, and the movers loaded the truck and drove to our house; I guarantee you that they were not happy when they had to unload the truck and put everything back in storage, and the moving company was not happy about the paying them extra!

I do not think the woman was fired, but I heard she got a stern reprimand; On the real moving day, the movers were very professional and everything went off without a hitch! My dad wanted to nuke the company in his review, but I think I talked him out of it (Funny; Usually, I'm the one who wants to go online and publicly slander businesses that have wronged me, and my dad talks me out of it)

 

After my parents bought that townhouse, I thought we were done moving and that the next time I moved would be when I got my own place, but it didn't work out that way; My parents basically got sick of living in a townhouse...

 

Our townhouse had three large bedrooms and was at least 2,500 square feet if you included the finished basement; Basically, it was hard to tell you were in a townhouse when you were inside the place...

It also had a kitchen with granite countertops and a built-in wall oven, and dual-zone A/C; These were things that no single-family home my parents owned or rented had at that point in time! It was also the first truly brand new house my parents had owned in almost 20 years!

 

However, even though it was a very nice house, there were certain things that wouldn't let you forget you were in a townhouse; The fact that we shared a wall with the neighbor's house was the most glaring issue, and we could hear our neighbor's son practicing the piano (he was very good, but there's a time and a place for everything). Another issue was that homeowner's insurance was more expensive than it would have been for a single-family home of the same age and size; Why? Because we shared a building with six other residences. If someone else's house caught fire or was damaged in someone way that damaged our house, and they didn't have adequate coverage, then our insurance company could get stuck with part of or even all of the bill for fixing or rebuilding our house; If something happened to our house that caused damage to someone else's house, then there was a good chance that our insurance company would be picking up the tab in that case as well. Luckily, nothing ever happened in the roughly eight and a half years we lived in that house, but the insurance company stilled covered its ass and charged my parents out the ass for it...

 

Another obvious issue was that the yard was virtually nonexistent and was more of a shared common area where kids had free roam; The backyard was okay, but I'm pretty sure that fences were not allowed.

There were a lot of things that weren't allowed under the strict rules of the homeowner's association; Decks and porches were one of the exceptions. You couldn't add whole-house generators or make external structural changes to the houses. My parents decided in 2015 that they wanted a single-family home again, and after months of looking officially signed a contract on the place we're in now in about August or September 2015; I can remember throwing a fit when I found out one of the houses they were considered buying did not have dual-zone A/C (I considered any house with only one central A/C unit a downgrade from the Furlong townhouse). Luckily, the builder we went with had two A/C units standard on all but the smallest floorplans. Our floorplan was far from the smallest available, but it wasn't the biggest or most expensive either.

 

By March of 2016, my dad had been a civilian for almost a decade and the Navy would no longer be funding our moves; Instead of paying movers, my dad rented the biggest UHAUL truck available and enlisted the help of family and friends to load it. We were completely moved into our house within a week!

 

There was a brief overlap where my parents effectively had two mortgages; An older retired couple ended up buying our house and paying cash, but they had to wait until they sold their old house in order to pay for ours. In one bizarre encounter, while we were still living in the townhouse, I had to make a doctor's appointment and the receptionist ended up being the female half of the couple buying our house. She asked me for my current address so she could confirm my current address, and I gave her the address of the Furlong townhouse. What followed was silence, and I had to snap her out of her trance. I believe she asked me to repeat the address, so I did; She admitted she was a little freaked out that a patient had recited the address of her new house, and seemed a wee bit annoyed. I was thinking "Okay, it's your house yet; It's still my house, and as a result I have the legal right to claim residence here." I of course did not say this, but I didn't know quite what to say; This woman seriously seemed a bit of annoyed that I'd given her future address as my address, and out of sheer nervousness I mentioned that the pullstring for the light on my bedroom ceiling fan didn't work, but that it was a great house otherwise.

My parents were not happy when I told them about this exchange, but the couple bought our house for the full asking price so it ended up not being a big deal...

 

Yeah a nice thing about a house is you can make noise and not bother anyone

 

@PennSilverTaco Moving is such a pain in the ass, don't know how you managed to get through so many.