#060 In which our hero moves.

THE MOVE

The move sucked, but in hindsight, not as much as it could have. The suckage level was quite high during the move, of course.

You'll remember from the previous post that we finally got the keys on Friday, a short amount of time before I needed to leave to drive The Scientist and baby to the airport. Considering the trouble that we had in securing said keys, I figured I had better call and check on the moving truck, since that was a critical element in the next day's moving plans.

Naturally, there was a problem. Understand that I reserved this truck (a whopping 26' of portable space) a week in advance, with my credit card, and I was assured that it would be ready and waiting for me when I needed it, early Saturday morning. The guy I spoke to at the rental place told me that he had my name and information recorded, but they didn't have a truck available. Of course, I remained calm and reasonable throughout the conversation. I think my exact words where, "Fuck me! This is the absolute best fucking capper to a fucking shitty week!" He told me he'd have to call me back, and I gave him my cell number since we where out the door to the airport. He never called.

Interlude: airport.

We got to the gate without any problems, and the ticket guy even issued me some sort of fake boarding pass so I could help the wife carry all the assorted crap to the gate. We got the little girl her own seat, thinking she'd be more comfortable that way, than squirming on mama's lap for five hours. However, this meant that we had to bring the car seat along. Now, car seats, as I learned, are meant to go into cars and stay there. Lugging that SOB through a crowded airport was no kind of fun.

But anyway, security was easy and we took turns chasing the little girl around for an hour before boarding began. It was really rather sad to watch my wife and daughter board without me, even if I was to join them in four days. I'm just a softie.

End of interlude.

Getting back from the airport there was a message on my answering machine from the truck rental place (y'know, I gave you my cell number for a reason, dumbass) saying that they transferred me to another location, and put in a reservation for a truck; this one a 28' diesel. The only problem was that they didn't open until 9am, and I told everyone to come over at 8am.

So the next day people came over and we ate donuts and drank juice until it was time to fetch the truck. And, oh what a truck it was.

I've been in big moving trucks before, but this was by far the biggest truck I've ever personally driven. It was diesel AND manual, which is okay since I'm driving a 5-speed right now anyway. The wheel was probably three foot across, and I'm not exaggerating. It was insane.

After a few tentative starts, I get the behemoth moving, and manage to drive all the way to the old house without running over any thing or any one. Thankfully my friend Dave have experience with big moving trucks (having moved, I think, 10 times in five years) and was able to back it into the drive; a feat that was well beyond my abilities.

Truck in place, helpers in tow, we packed the hell out of that truck. My hopes that we could get the entire house in one trip proved to be laughable, even with the superior roadie-like packing skills of my friend Bob. We unpacked at the new place and went in for round two.

The second load was dominated with things that are hard to arrange efficiently (like a lawnmower and computer desk). This meant that we would have to come back for a third load. Ugh.

The third and final load was that pesky, picking-up-the-odds-and-ends load that I hate so much. It also involved me throwing everything from the fridge (which I sorta forgot about) into a couple boxes.

Word of advice: when packing food, label it clearly FOOD or PERISHABLE or DON'T FORGET ABOUT ME, JACKASS because somehow one of these boxes got mixed in with the regular boxes (i.e., those not filled with frozen meat) and sat out until we returned from California. I'm sure there are worse things to come home to than the smell of rotting meat, but I don't know what they might be.

After the house was packed and locked up, the storage area remained. We had dumped a bunch of our stuff into a rented locker in order to make the house look bigger when we showed it. And when I say locker, I mean a 10x10' bunker filled to the roof with boxes.

It was dark by this time and everyone was wearing out. Matter of fact, out of the original eight, there were only four of us left. This was the point when my attitude changed from "Whee! We sure have a bunch of stuff." to "Mutherfucker! Why do we have so much shit?!" I was done and pulled the plug on the operation before we cleared out the storage area. I would end up doing the rest myself the following day.

Finally, much pizza and beer ensured. We where really lucky, because even though it was cold, it was clear and dry all day. Around 10pm, when the final load from being off-loaded from the storage area, it started to snow and didn't let up until a couple feet of snow where deposited all over Cleveland.

A final thanks to all those that helped and a thanks for nuthin' for those that said they'd show but didn't.

Ah, home sweet home.