Moving ($*@^&%!!)

Warning: This is a long and potentially very boring story. Proceed at your own risk.

Yes, I've finally completed the moving process. It was a complete clusterflop, a Murphian nightmare. But I'm in the new place now, and all the stuff is accounted for, so I guess it all turned out okay.

The trouble began last week when I tried to reserve a U-haul for the adventure. The web site was telling me that there were no trucks available in the state of Utah, so I called the rental center closest to downtown. They told me they had not trucks at all available for the weekend. Apparently July 31st and/or the last Saturday in July is the second busiest moving day of the year in Salt Lake. Who'da thunkit? So I called another location, and they did have a truck available, but smaller than the one I wanted. I took it, not feeling confident about finding anything better.

Next came the packing. I'd done a little of it before last week, but only a very little. So I spent most of Wednesday separating the stuff in the spare room, much of which was her stuff left over from when she left. I went to class Wednesday night, leaving a note for her to take what she wanted and box up the rest. She took next to nothing, not even looking at a lot of it, from what I could tell. This left me with a room full of stuff that I would have to take to Deseret Industries (a Utah thrift store chain, for those unfamiliar). And I don't have a car for any of this, by the way. But no problem, I thought. I'll just load all that stuff in the rental truck and take it from there.

Okay, more packing. I spent most of the next couple of days finishing up. I got everything packed, though I didn't get a lot of sleep on Friday night. So now it's time to pick up the truck. I went outside to catch the bus that would take me to the train that would take me to the U-haul dealer. The bus never showed up. I waited long enough for two of those buses to come, and saw no trace of either one. So I walked to another street and fortuitously caught a bus that got me where I needed to go before they canceled my reservation — which, given what I had been told about the availability and demand for trucks that weekend, was a real concern, I thought. But I got there.

After waiting for almost 15 minutes in a line of other eager renters, I made my way to the counter to pick up the truck. It was then that I learned that the reservation I was told would be good for 24 hours was only going to be good from 10:00 until 4:00. This might not have been a problem if I'd had any other way to get the donation stuff to DI before they closed. I explained to them that I had been promised a 24 hour reservation and that I could not get done what I needed to do by 4:00. The clerk made a semi-valiant attempt at being apologetic but said there was no way I could have the truck for 24 hours. Finally he told me I could have it until 7:00, which was better, but still not as long as I felt I was going to need it.

So 10:00 am rolls around on Saturday morning, and I'm ready for the help to arrive. Normally in Utah, if you tell your ward that you're moving, church members show up in droves to help. Unfortunately, due to inflation or some other circumstance, a "drove" apparently now consists of three people. That made a total of four of us: me, my home teacher who has a bad back, a neighbor, and his 12-year-old son. Actually, the neighbor had to leave an hour into the project to pick up the son in question from a baseball game; I felt fortunate that the were able to come back. So my home teacher and I made due without him/them for a while. Then, just as the four or us were finishing packing the truck (minus the donation items, which would not fit on the smaller truck I was forced to settle for), the home teacher, who is also the building manager at a local condo complex, had to leave to take care of a maintenance problem. So now we were back down to three.

Did I mention that all of this was taking place with temperatures in the mid-90's?

So we got the truck to the new place and got it unloaded. We finished about 3:00, at which point they had to go. I still had some stuff back at the old place that wouldn't fit on the first load, so I made my way back to get it. At this point my arthritic ankle was really starting to hurt. So I decided to lie down for a few minutes to rest it. Much to my surprise, I fell asleep right there on the hard carpet of what used to be my/our dining room. Twenty minutes later, I had an even bigger surprise: apparently I twitched my ankle in my sleep, and it hurt so bad that it woke me up.

So I started moving stuff down to the truck, and the stiffness in my ankle made it slow and painful. I realized at about 5:00 that I wasn't going to make it. There just wasn't time to get the stuff to DI and get my own stuff to my new place and refuel and return the truck by 7:00. So I got the last of my own stuff on the truck and set out, hoping I'd figure out some brilliant way to get the rest of the stuff taken care of. Naturally, she was nowhere to be found in any of this.

I did still have to go to DI, however, to pick up a bed frame. I had made it there the day before with the help of the aforementioned home teacher and picked out one that looked like it would work well with the futon mattress I have. I made the necessary arrangements to reserve it for pickup the next day. So now I show up Saturday afternoon and show the guy at the dock my reservation ticket, and he goes in to get it. He comes back out a couple of minutes later saying they no longer have it. So I limp in after him to go look for it. We finally found it — fortunately they had put it in the back, off the sales floor — and got it onto the truck. I made my way to the new apartment, stopping only long enough to put the requisite amount of fuel in the truck to avoid the $20 refueling charge I'd been threatened with. I managed to get everything off the truck and into the new place by 6:30, which gave me plenty of time to get the truck back to the dealer.

I had noticed some road construction on the way to the new place, so I decided to take a shortcut back to the dealer to avoid it. Some of you may have heard that a ‘shortcut' is defined as ‘the longest distance between two points', and it this case, it was true. But I got only slightly lost, and was able to find my way back to U-haul with almost 7 minutes to spare.

Before he and his son had departed, my neighbor told me he'd take me home from the U-haul dealer if necessary. He gave me his cell phone number and told me to call him if I needed a ride. It was only when I had finished checking in the truck that I realized I had left his number on the kitchen counter at the old apartment.

So I limped next door to KFC to get dinner — my first real meal of the day, which may have been part of the problem. Then I limped back to the train station, a journey of about 3 blocks that took me more than 15 minutes to make. I got back downtown and caught a bus to the vicinity of the new apartment. Another 20-minute limp brought me to my new home, where I cleared a couple of boxes off the futon, and without setting up the bed frame or even putting sheet on it, I collapsed.

Fortunately, the story has a happy ending. With a little help from the aforementioned neighbor's family and my High Priests group leader, I managed to get everything out and get the apartment cleaned by the required deadline of noon on Monday. So now I'm in the new place, and all I have to do now is unpack. That, and write a couple of papers and study for a physics final on Thursday morning. No rest for the weary indeed.

Next time it comes time to move, sign me up for a root canal instead.