House Rebirth

The day of the uHaul

Posted by Cuthbert Returned , Sunday, May 9, 2010 2:04 PM

We woke up at about 9 O'clock and realized we had about 12 hours of packing to do in about 4 hours time. Luckily we have moved most of the stuff in this apartment 3 and 4 times so we have it down to a relatively mechanized fashion. Amanda set about packing the flatware in her gargantuan plastic bins that become so heavy by the time she's done I am the only one that can carry it. I went after the IKEA furniture and the electronics. We got the bed disassembled and even found our old bed bags so we could keep some of the road dirt off of where we like to sleep.


After about two hours the apartment looked like a disaster and we realized we had about 4 loads of laundry to do. Amanda set in to that as I disassembled the home theatre and the various fiber board cabinets and what not around the apartment. 12:30 came rolled around and we still hadn't heard anything from Josh. We decided to make a McDonalds run for chicken nuggets and Iced Coffee...(yes fully aware we are yuppies)...drove by the sweetest looking Chevelle I have ever seen.

By 1:45 we had the place to a point we were ready to start loading. We didn't quite realize that the uHaul facility was clear in Gaithersburg. So after about 20 minutes of wandering around we finally found the place and picked up our 14' truck.

The truck itself was pretty standard uHaul fair. Dirty clothe seats sparkly clean cargo area and third gear had apparently been eaten at some point so either gun it to stay in second or .... just gun it to stay in second. We signed all the various paperwork....no I will not wreck the truck...no i will not transfer weapons in the truck...no I will not chase down mimes with the truck...and we were on our way. Amanda led with the GPS taking us back to the apartment, bad idea because this is the day the GPS decided it was lost. We saw every tiny goat bridge that you would have never thought that truck would go over. I hadn't driven a bag of yogurt like that since the Kingsley school van, only this thing was 12' high and 14' long. Finally we got back to the apartment at 3:00 all I heard was John Wayne in my head telling me how much daylight I had burned. Still no Josh.

I backed the wandering elephant up to the loading dock with out any major issue and got out of the truck feeling pretty proud of myself. I am after all an Iowan and to be able to fit an over sized truck in a tiny spot is a source of pride. Amanda and I loaded the box-springs and mattress before we got a call by Josh..."hey dude I'm just taking off from Chantilly," he said. 45 minutes away on a good day. I set into loading some of the broken down IKEA stuff and Amanda continued the flatware packing. It was at this point we realized we were completely out of boxes. I don't know how or when it happened but we have managed to accumulate enough crap that our usual stack of bankers boxes was not enough. We took a trip over to Staples and grabbed a set. We had a good portion of them filled when we got a call from Josh. He was about ten minutes away. Time to start moving heavy stuff I thought...

Josh showed up in his Toyota SUV and said he wasn't probably going to be much help because he hurt his back the other day, and then grabbed his weight lifting belt and fingerless gloves to help. We were able to minimize the heavy lifting by taking out drawers and weights, however we moved agonizingly slow...frustratingly slow and by the time we had the truck filled it was 6:00...... John Wayne was literally screaming in my head at this point.

We decided as a group to take a break for supper before heading down to the house and stopped at my favorite pizza place in the area Z's pizza. I don't know why but I cannot find a pizza to match their Chipotle Southwest. After that was all said and done it was almost 7:30. We realized that we hadn't loaded the TV and Josh volunteered his truck to haul it with. We were able to squeeze in a couple things we had relinquished to the next trip and off we went.



The interstate proved to be the most interesting as people regardless of how fast you are driving in a uHaul feel it is their job to pass you. I was driving the speed limit the entire way and even got the truck up out of the missing third gear into 4th for awhile. We pulled off onto high-way seven headed west towards the house and Josh called saying he needed to stop by his house to let his dogs out.

We got to the house and realized we didn't have any external lights and unloading in the dark would be miserable. Amanda dug up a CFL that would fit in our front lantern and the issue was resolved.  It was at this point I was amazed once again by the woman I married who was man-handling things. The two of us were able to unload everything except the King mattress and the two dressers made by Grant before Josh got to the house. Not because of weight mind you its just what was left when he showed up.

Josh was amazed that we were able to unload that much. We unloaded his truck into the living room and then set into the adventure of moving the King mattress up the stairs. We worked out that it would be best to go in through the garage and then turn the corner and go up the stairs...which actually ends up being three corners but we really weren't thinking too clearly at 9:00. Well we got the beast to the foot of the stairs with Josh at the top and me pushing from the bottom. This is where we got horribley stuck and it seemed we would never get the stupid thing free. Amanda grabbed one of the handles on top and I envisioned the Hulk and squeezed the two halves of the mattress together and shoved it all the way up the stairs. We decided we would wait for another day to take the dressers upstairs as all of us were now obnoxiously tired. We unloaded them into the living room.

Afterwards we took Josh out for a beer at the local towncenter. Josh found the place and said he thought they had good beer... Well on this particular night they had torn out their entire bar so all they had was bottles. Funny how even light beer out of an aluminum can can taste good after a day of moving.

As late as it was we still needed to return the uHaul we ordered an order of onion rings and by 11:00 we were ready to hit the road again. Josh went home to his dogs and we dropped the uHaul off. We debated driving clear back down to the house but decided the air mattress in the apartment would be fine.