My brother and I bounced along in the back of the truck. Praise music was turned on fairly loudly in the front, and every once in a while one of us would look back to check on our load and make sure everything was staying in place. Already, we had stopped five or six times to try to tighten up straps enough to keep the tires on top of the things packed underneath them on the loaded trailer. It was a chore to make sure that they didn’t jiggle too far out—at one point, we had ended up with a tire dragging on the road, which isn’t very optimal in a high-speed zone!
However, by now, two and a half hours into our journey, things seemed to be settling down a bit. We were all heaving a tentative sigh of relief, especially since the last stop for a check had revealed that the most recent tighten-down and re-threading seemed to have worked. Finally able to relax some, and ready to enjoy the scenery, I checked the two chickens in a cage right behind our heads one more time. They seemed to be doing fine, with their cage securely fastened by a few bits of twine string to the bars across the back window of the truck. Their feathers were being blown around some, but not as much as they had been before we wrapped a coat around the more exposed sides of the cage.
Tugging my Kindle out of my bag, I was excited to finally be able to start the book I’d been waiting for several months to read, What Dreams May Come. And as the native bush, creeks, the occasional waterfall, and rivers slid by outside (and the chickens and tires stayed in place behind us), I lost myself in the story.
