It's just about time to move again. This is our eleventh move in ten years of marriage, so by now moving has a bit of a nostalgic, good-timey flavor to it. It's challenging and unpleasant emotionally and physically, but it also yields a lot of interesting memories and stories if you do it enough.
Years ago, we moved out of a basement apartment in Provo, Utah up to Shannon's parents house in Idaho for the summer. This was the basement apartment that filled with poop over Christmas break, a story I'll definitely have to relate at some point. It's a doozy. And a poopy.
We knew that at the end of the summer we'd be heading to Syria, so we stored most of our belongings in a cheap storage shed in Provo. With only a small pickup truck, the move took most of the day. I remember I finally got the last, heaping load in the truck and drove the several miles to the shed. When I arrived, the sunlight was almost gone and, worse, the facility had closed for the night. The gates were locked and the fences were high. I couldn't just take the stuff back to the apartment -- our lease was up, and we still had a truckload waiting back in the driveway to haul up to Idaho that night. I had to get that stuff in the storage shed. Like Apollo 13's ground crew, failure was not an option.
Luckily, our storage unit was only a few doors down from a high chain-link fence marking the boundary of the facility. I backed the truck up to the fence. And I just started chucking boxes over the fence. Then I climbed the fence, unlocked the shed, and loaded the stuff inside. I don't know if I've ever told Shannon about this. She generally frowns on having her stuff thrown over the fence.
A few boxes were marked "Fragile." I reasoned that lobbing these boxes over the fence, breaking the contents, and then later pleading ignorance to the contents' fragility was implausible even for a known cretin like me. So I lugged one "Fragile" box at a time with my right arm and climbed the fence with my left arm and legs. At the top, I carefully balanced the box on the fence's pinnacle with one hand as I scrambled over, then climbed with the box one-handed down the other side. It was hard. But I didn't drop any of the boxes. This might partially explain my back problems. And it definitely reflects my mental problems.
During another move a couple years later, this one also involving the small pickup truck and storage shed, I was in a major rush to get the last of our stuff to the shed and get my mom to the airport in time for a flight. I had a big black office chair sitting upright in the truck's bed, but it caught too much wind when I hit 60 mph on Highway 89 between Provo and Springville. It rolled over the rest of the packed stuff, leapt from the truck bed, and I watched it smash and cartwheel across the road in my rearview. Good thing no one was behind me, or I might be typing this from Alcatraz.
Years ago, we moved out of a basement apartment in Provo, Utah up to Shannon's parents house in Idaho for the summer. This was the basement apartment that filled with poop over Christmas break, a story I'll definitely have to relate at some point. It's a doozy. And a poopy.
We knew that at the end of the summer we'd be heading to Syria, so we stored most of our belongings in a cheap storage shed in Provo. With only a small pickup truck, the move took most of the day. I remember I finally got the last, heaping load in the truck and drove the several miles to the shed. When I arrived, the sunlight was almost gone and, worse, the facility had closed for the night. The gates were locked and the fences were high. I couldn't just take the stuff back to the apartment -- our lease was up, and we still had a truckload waiting back in the driveway to haul up to Idaho that night. I had to get that stuff in the storage shed. Like Apollo 13's ground crew, failure was not an option.
Luckily, our storage unit was only a few doors down from a high chain-link fence marking the boundary of the facility. I backed the truck up to the fence. And I just started chucking boxes over the fence. Then I climbed the fence, unlocked the shed, and loaded the stuff inside. I don't know if I've ever told Shannon about this. She generally frowns on having her stuff thrown over the fence.
A few boxes were marked "Fragile." I reasoned that lobbing these boxes over the fence, breaking the contents, and then later pleading ignorance to the contents' fragility was implausible even for a known cretin like me. So I lugged one "Fragile" box at a time with my right arm and climbed the fence with my left arm and legs. At the top, I carefully balanced the box on the fence's pinnacle with one hand as I scrambled over, then climbed with the box one-handed down the other side. It was hard. But I didn't drop any of the boxes. This might partially explain my back problems. And it definitely reflects my mental problems.
During another move a couple years later, this one also involving the small pickup truck and storage shed, I was in a major rush to get the last of our stuff to the shed and get my mom to the airport in time for a flight. I had a big black office chair sitting upright in the truck's bed, but it caught too much wind when I hit 60 mph on Highway 89 between Provo and Springville. It rolled over the rest of the packed stuff, leapt from the truck bed, and I watched it smash and cartwheel across the road in my rearview. Good thing no one was behind me, or I might be typing this from Alcatraz.