Hiking with a hand truck

So I had an interesting morning... It all started off pretty normal, I woke up, at some cereal, made some phone calls about rides for the day and I figured I had a some time before any rides were going to happen so I decided it would be a good chance to mow the lawn.

I have been trying to get the house back together since Lodi so I figured I should take advantage of what little time I had.

Anyway, I start mowing the backyard and after about three passes, the mower sputters to a stop. Nothing too hard to figure out, I was just out of gas. Also not a surprise is that the gas can is empty. no big deal, I had my car keys in my pocket, I decided to drive the 1/2 mile to the nearest station and fill 'er up. While I am there I figure why not fill my car too. This is where it gets wierd.

As I am filling the car I see two people walking down 5th street pushing hand-trucks, you know, dollies. The dollies are very well packed with duffle bags or backpacks and systematically secured with lots of bungee cords. There was an older man, maybe 40's or 50's and an overweight woman who were wheeling these neatly packed dollies down the street. This was too strange to ignore. I had to see what it was all about. (I at least needed another look!)

So I hook a left (away from my house) to drive by them one time and get a good look. It was just like I first thought. Two people (somewhat ragged looking) pushing dollies on the sidewalk.
At the same time I saw some youth group washing cars to raise money to go somewhere and I figured I wasn't going to wash my car anytime soon and I would love to have it washed so I pulled into the gas station where they were washing cars to get my car washed. That was going well (they actually did a pretty good job) when I realized that the dolly-toting pair also stopped at this same gas station. I decided that it was a strange enough thing that I had to go over to them and ask them what they were up to. I didn't know how to start, but this is kind of how it went.

me: hey how's it goin'
dollyman:hey
me: So, are you guys headed somewhere
dm: Yeah, we are trying to get to Waynesboro (about 30 miles West)
me: Where are you coming from?
dm: ??? County, Georgia
me: Holy Cow! Are you walking the whole way?
dm: (he signals with his thumb) Nah, Hitchin'
me: Huh!
dm: Yeah, we are going to try to get to a church in Waynesboro to see if they'll put us up for the night,(he motions to the woman) she's pregnant.
(I look at the overweight lady and she barely acknoledges my presence as she takes another puff on her cigerette)
dm: We are trying to get to New Hampshire so we'll go to Waynesboro and head up 81.
me: Well, too bad I'm not headed that way, good luck though.
dm: Sure, no problem, thanks.

So, just to give you an idea of what they were carrying, I managed to snap a picture. You will have to forgive the image quality, I was driving at the same time. Here's what I managed to crop out of it.



Here's another part of the same picture. I noticed that I barely got the guy in the frame too.


In the end, I don't know what they were up to. The woman didn't look pregnant, and I would hope that she wouldn't be smoking if she was, but what do I know. I could have looked like an easy mark and maybe playing the pregnancy card is what got them to Central VA. Maybe they hit a hard patch and have family or a job in NH that can help them out. Maybe they spent all they could scrounge on two (heavy-duty) hand trucks and a sack of bungee cords and decided to try and hitch thier way over 1000 miles to the promise land we call New England.

I just don't know.