The move to Williamsburg, Virginia, started us running and we have not slowed down since our arrival. We have been busy, busy, busy and have hardly had a moment to ourselves, much less time to update my website. But here, at last, some of the highlights of our new adventure...

I'd convinced our boss to hire a mover to truck our stuff to Virginia, and I'd arranged for the truck to pick-up our stuff the day before our departure and deliver it to Williamsburg for us. About a week or so before our pick-up date, I began packing a few things here and there: my extensive Muppet collection, some books... not much. Sarah kept saying "we'll get it done" and I agreed. What fools we were! We'd allotted ourselves one whole day before the movers were due to get our packing completed! We started in the morning boxing things up... and boxing things up... and boxing things up. There never seemed to be any less stuff. Where did it all come from?

As the hours ticked by and the daylight faded, we began to get frantic. What started as an organized process with boxes neatly labeled and their contents documented began to deteriorate. We began to just pile things into boxes. Where did it all come from? It was just stuff. Some things I didn't even know I had.

And then the boxes began to run out! We were getting delirious! I couldn't even think straight anymore. We finally reached the point that we were just throwing things away. "We'll replace it when we get to Virginia!" we said.

The movers were due to arrive around 7:00am... and as the packing continued until 5:00am, we finally called it quits. We couldn't do anymore. We were crazed. We were manic. And we knew we still had a long drive to Virginia ahead of us. It was time to get a little bit of sleep. We'd squeeze whatever remained into my car and Sarah's car. And whatever didn't fit... well, we'd just have to live without it. We couldn't do anymore.

After a mere couple of hours of blessed sleep, we awoke and made a few final attempts to pack things up as the moving truck arrived. And what a truck it was! It was huge... a massive 18 wheeler! It filled our apartment parking lot! After our belongings were loaded on the truck, the driver was going to pick up two automobiles and load them inside as well!

The movers loaded our stuff onto the truck, and Sarah and I finally relaxed. For better or worse, the packing was finished and there was nothing more we could do until our stuff arrived in Williamsburg... in a week and a half! More on that later...

Our journey began in St.Cloud, Florida, home quarters for Joel Slaven's Professional Animals. All of the animals for our show spent the winter at Joel's farm. On February 8th, we loaded all of the animals and supplies into a rental truck, and around 11:00pm, our caravan began the long trip to Virginia. We planned a late departure in order to avoid the daytime heat and the daytime traffic. Our caravan consisted of Shannon and Jason (who worked at Busch Gardens last year and were driving up to help with the transition of Sarah and me taking over their roles) driving the rental truck with the animals and towing Sarah's car, our manager Trisha in her own vehicle followed by Sarah and me in my car.

The distance from Florida to Williamsburg, Virginia, is about 780 miles... approximately a 13 hour trip. It took us 20 hours to make the journey! Several times on the drive, we had to stop to walk our 10 dogs and to let our 28 cats use the litterbox. Every couple of hours we had to stop to get diesel fuel for the truck. And snacks for the travelers. And use the restroom. It felt like the trip was never going to end!

We drove all night long. Sarah slept for a great portion of the trip, while I focused on the dark road ahead. At about 6 o'clock in the morning, we pulled into a rest area in South Carolina and slept for an hour. What a difference an hour's rest made! I felt much more alert as we continued on our epic drive to Virginia.

Our three cats - Monkey, Maccabee and Moxie - all made the long journey in the car with Sarah and me. We weren't really sure how they would handle such a long trip in the car, and boy, were we in for a surprise.

Just shortly before we moved from Orlando, we adopted a new cat, Moxie, a black cat who had been abandoned in an apartment when the tenants moved out. She is sweet and friendly... but we practically never saw her on the drive to Virginia. She spent the entire 20-hour trip sleeping underneath the driver's seat. I had to reach under my seat occasionally to make sure she was still there.

Our other two cats, Monkey and Maccabee, rarely get along. Mackie often wants to play with Monkey, but Monkey wants nothing to do with him and growls and hisses at him.

However, the trauma of the long journey found the two cats taking comfort in each other's company. Sarah and I were shocked and amazed to see Monkey and Mackie snuggled up together in their crate. Monkey even let Mackie groom her! We were sorry that the trip was taking a toll on our kitties, but it warmed our hearts to see the two of them actually getting along and being close together!

We first stopped at our new apartments to drop off vehicles and our personal pets. We had made arrangements for our new apartments before arriving in town, and the management was nice enough to leave our doors unlocked so we could move in afterhours and have a place to sleep for the night. Our new apartments are at Monticello at Powhatan, and they are very nice. We have an upstairs, one-bedroom apartment with a wonderful, wide open living room and kitchen. There is plenty of room for the cats to roam around. Although we're not sure there will be room enough for all of the stuff we were moving from our former two-bedroom apartment. We plan on renting a storage unit for stuff we don't have room for and the things we just don't want to unpack (we may have to move again in November when the season is over).

Sarah and I got to rest that evening while Trisha, Shannon and Jason took all of the animals over to Busch Gardens and got them settled into their homes at the theme park. It was to be the last real rest we got for a long time, because the next day, it was time to get to work... and there was a lot of work to be done!

Every day, the animals must be fed and cleaned up after. Also, there were animals that needed to be trained. And Sarah and I had to learn the show. There was a lot to accomplish each day, and we spent (and continue to spend) many long days at Busch Gardens - sometimes 10, 11 or even 12 hours - getting everything done.

At about 8:40am, there was a knock on our door. I opened it to find the truck driver with a frown on his face, and the first words out of his mouth were: "You've got a problem."

It seems his truck was too big to manuever into our apartment complex! We were going to have to pay to rent a smaller truck (if we could locate an available one) and shuttle our things from the truck outside the apartment complex to our apartment, meanwhile paying the truck driver an additional $75 an hour! I thought my head was going to explode!

The truck driver was actually a good guy, and he decided to attempt getting into our apartment complex one more time. This time, he tried backing into the complex and it took some pretty tight maneuvering and finagling (and some torn up grass), but he managed to get the truck into the complex! I was so relieved! Our stuff had arrived!

Sarah and I helped unload our belongings and carry it up the stairs to our apartment. We were very late for work, and we had lots to do.