Finding the Right House - Part XIV: Moving Day

The day began way too early for me! We were already at U-Haul by 6:45am. I was happy when they opened 10 minutes early. The U-Haul guy asked me to do a favor for him. “There is only a 1/4 tank of gas in the truck. The truck costs $39.95 + mileage to rent. If you put in $39.95 in gas and give me the receipt I will waive the $39.95 charge and all you'll have to pay is the mileage”. His goal was to get more gas in it. I certainly didn't mind since that meant that the gas I'd use was at U-Haul's expense. I accepted his offer and headed to the truck.

If any of you have ever driven the 26' U-Haul (the LARGEST they offer) you'll know exactly what I was feeling at the time... "Can I really drive this fucker?"

The U-Haul guy showed me how to start the engine (it's a diesel truck and you have to wait for a light to turn on before you engage the starter) It soon roared to life! So there I was... A bit overwhelmed… Sitting in a HUGE empty truck.

I pushed hard on the clutch, put it in second gear as instructed and drove forward about 100 feet to the end of the parking lot. My goal was to go all the way across the street to the Mobil station. That might seem easy... but to those of you who have done this from the Palatine U-Haul you know that there are like 5 lanes of traffic to cross. Thank god it was just before 7am so traffic wasn't that heavy yet. After about a minute of waiting I was able to shoot across the street.

After filling it up.... wait... that's not the case... the $40 I put in gas didn't even give it 3/4 a tank! It must cost over $100 to fill that bitch up! After getting gas it was on to the In-laws house to get items that we staged there. What really sucked was that WE had to load the truck. I could have paid the movers another $150 to load from that location but it was only 45 minutes of work and with a 2 hour minimum with the movers we both agreed to load shit from there by ourselves.

Yes, we could have just done this bit by bit in the next several days with the Blazer... but my goal was... 1. To get everything moved in one day. and 2. Have the movers do the unloading for me. Because while we had to load... we wouldn't have to unload.

My schedule was pretty on the money because 45 minutes later we were driving home to begin the "REAL" move. At 8:00am sharp the movers were already waiting for us. When I opened the truck they saw that most of the truck floor was occupied by shit from the in-laws. They told us that they would have to compact that stuff before loading could begin. We obviously knew that would be the case and helped them move the stuff. The movers began by staging a lot of stuff in the driveway. Valerie and I were helping by loading up the Blazer with little stuff and stuff we didn't want in the truck.

I was pretty amazed at what these guys could do. A couple of times I warned them… “That one is heavy” to see a few moments later one of them picking it up like it was as light as a feather. I was also impressed by how easily they brought up my 31” TV from downstairs. I remember bringing it down the stairs… believe me.. it was NOT easy.

Three minutes shy of two hours later the truck was completely loaded. All that was left was a few small things and the BBQ. I told the movers that they could go and get lunch or something because I was going to take my sweet time driving the behemoth truck.

I climbed (literally) into the driver’s seat, turned the engine on and headed to our new home. Driving that massive beast was an odd sensation. It was very slow to pick up speed when compared to everything else on the road and vibrated on every bump & the handling was quite a bit sloppier than I’m used to. I soon learned that right hand turns REALLY suck with this thing. The first right turn resulted in the first curb clipping. There were only five right handed turns on the drive there and so far I was 0 for 1. That score remained for turn 2. I was getting passed by little old ladies on the road. A few of them gave me the finger too! (kidding) By turn three, I pulled out further into the intersection to avoid the curb. Yeah! I’m 1 for 3. I also managed turns 4 & 5 pretty well. So I ended up clipping 40% of the right hand turns on the way in.

Once we arrived at the new house, I backed 'er in with Valerie's help. (a quite scary experience in itself!) and to my surprise, the movers had followed us there and were ready to unload. We slowly opened the back of the truck in case anything shifted during the ride. Luckily everything looked okay.

Valerie immediately headed inside to put Bailey in his crate so he wouldn't be in the way. Then the fun of unloading began. Once again I was super happy that I hired movers to do this. I had them for a full 2 hours and wondered if they would go over the time. After all... they were going to unload MORE than they loaded because of the stuff Valerie and I loaded earlier.

I was busy unloading the blazer but again it was cool to watch them work as they lifted heavy items with ease and brought them inside.

They put everything where I wanted it. They even put my 31" TV into the entertainment center for me! They also laid out and connected our bed frame since I didn’t know how to set that one up.

It was only after 90 minutes of unloading that they informed us that they were done. On their way out we tipped them and they asked me to go back to the emove.com website to rate them and provide feedback. I told them I would.

After they left we locked up everything and Valerie followed me as I drove back to Palatine to return the U-Haul. I took a different, easier way to limit my right turns to only four. Again I clipped the first one (hard too) and was able to safely navigate the final three. The ride out was MUCH louder than the ride in. Every bump I drove over sounded like the whole truck would shake itself apart. I pulled into U-Haul, dropped off the truck, paid the bill and hopped back into the Blazer where Valerie and I went to pick up the kids. After getting the kids we headed home for our first night in the new house.

Once there, the large task of unpacking began. Standing there, looking at my desk in pieces, the new boxes containing the kids' dressers, 2 nightstands, my audio stand, TV stand, and all of the other work ahead, it looked like we’d never finish.


Back to Part XIII --- On to Part XV