Moving Nightmares

When I moved into my first real apartment, it was about equivalent to moving in or out of a dorm room, because all I had to move was the crap I had left over from college. I had a hatchback at the time, and although it required a few trips I was able to move everything in that little car.

It was less than a year before I decided to move into a new place. But by this time I had gotten rid of the hatchback that I used to move all the stuff in. The car I replaced it with was a two-door convertible,, but still only one of my meager possessions was too large to be transported in it. That possession was the desk that I had since junior high. It was a pretty small desk, but still too large to fit in the convertible. I actually considered putting the top down and letting the desk hang over the trunk, but it was winter time and I didn't want to damage the clear plastic rear window.

In the end I decided that I'd just fork over the money to rent a van or small pickup. As was then my habit (and still is, for that matter), I failed to make any advanced preparations. When I could no longer procrastinate on reserving a truck, my friend Hermie recommended that I go with Ryder and not U-Haul. I didn't have much of an opinion, so I took his advice at face value.

I gave Ryder a call, and told them that I needed the smallest truck they had. The guy said that at this late date they didn't have any small trucks left. He said, however, that he would rent me a slightly larger truck at the same rate as the small ones. It sounded like a deal to me, so I agreed.

Hermie and I went down that Saturday morning to pick it up. I filled out all the paperwork and the guy went to pull the truck around. He pulled some monstrous vehicle off to the side. I assumed that this was the one he had to move out of the way to get my truck. But then he walked back in the office and handed me the keys.

"This is my truck?" I asked incredulously.

"Yeah," he said.

"But... but... I wanted the smallest truck you had. This is WAY more than I need."

"Look," he said, "you got the small truck rate. This is all we have. Take it or leave it."

I absolutely had to be out of my apartment this weekend, so I had no choice but to take it. Hermie and I went out to look it over. It was humongous. It had a Mac Truck cab at the front and a huge hydraulic lift on the back. It looked like something that you needed a special license to drive, but we figured that if they rented it to me that I must be okay.

I had a little experience driving big trucks from when I worked at the Coca Cola bottler loading trucks, but we only backed them into tight parking spaces. I never drove one on the road. Never the less, Hermie and I climbed in and away we went. It was a trick going around corners, and the brakes seemed to be either all the way off or all the way on, but we made our way with only a few dirty looks and beeps.

When we got back to my apartment, I backed it into the parking lot. At least my experience with the Coke trucks taught me how to use the mirrors, so this was no big deal. Hermie and I started moving out the half-dozen boxes and scattered pieces of furniture. I was determined to use the hydraulic lift, even there was nothing that either of us couldn't easily hold over our heads. We had everything inside, and not only did we not need to stack a single item, there was still a lot of empty space on the floor.

Next came the task of driving to my new place. Since the grand sum total weight of all my stuff wasn't more than a body or two, the truck did not drive any differently than when it was completely empty. I was still having trouble applying the brakes without it feeling like I was totally stomping on them, but since everything in the back was lying on the floor this didn't much matter.

The easiest way to get to my destination was to take John Glenn Blvd. It's one of those parkways that are frequently closed to commercial traffic. We looked for signs, and not seeing any forged ahead. Things went well until we got to this one low pedestrian bridge. I slowed the truck way down and Hermie leaned out the window to make sure we'd clear it. Fortunately we did.

[story unfinished...]