A Moving Experience

Friday night-Saturday morning was the appointed time for us to move to our new place. Weatherwise, we picked a bad day, as it was snowing. Ten-foot U-haul trucks don't maneuver well on snow and ice, and that led to a frustrating, yet humorous, experience.

I was trying to back the truck up into the driveway of our then-current residence, but I kept hitting the same slick spot and sliding off to the side of the alley. You can see the driveway in this picture. The circled object is a sprinkler post that I kept sliding in front of. It is what prevented me from backing up further.

Eventually, I gave up, but by that time I was prevented from going forward by the telephone pole and the rocks to the right of it. So I couldn't go forward or backwards. However, I came up with a plan. I decided to move those rocks, drive into the grassy area behind it, turn around, and come back out the same way (there was little snow there at the time). So we moved the rocks, and I drove on in. I was able to get turned around, but the grassy area slopes downward as you are looking at it in the above picture. So once I got turned around, I was unable to drive back up where I started. I could only move backwards. I was stuck again.

At this point, I determined that my only option was to back out the other side of the grassy area. To do this, we had to move two giant logs out of the way (this area is well-protected). In the picture below, the logs that required moving were the two in the middle on the back side.

We would only have needed to move the right log if the truck had been a foot to the right, but it was over far enough that we needed to move both of them. And of course, the left log was much longer and much heavier. As we were struggling with the logs, a neighbor wandered out. He was wearing a Russian hat and a poncho and drinking a Busch Light. We learned that he had just moved to town from Texas 3 months earlier, so that may explain the getup. He helped us move the logs, free the truck, and replace the logs. Thanks for your help, cold, beer-drinking Texan.

After all this, the grassy area was somewhat torn up, and the logs were not quite back in their original locations. The snow that had proved so troublesome actually helped us out here by covering up the evidence of our ordeal with a layer of white powder. Well, mostly covered it up, as you can see below.

After all this, we managed to get everything moved without too much trouble (other than getting locked out of the new apartment). Now we just have to unpack everything.