packing sucks
The picture is jess goofing around on the loading ramp of our rented truck, just as we arrived in Ithaca, after our last cross country move 4 years ago, its quite wild to have all your possesions in a 24 foot mobile box with wheels, then to move that box 2,000 miles.
So I am in the throes of a full power packing freak-out today. It also does not help, that because of this influx of packing and some vet school goodbye gatherings, I have missed TWO scheduled workouts this week, therefore my body is all out of wack! And my mind is wandering down the illogical path of “you are missing workouts! Your competition is not, therefore you are a HUGE LOSER!” illogical, I know, but so goes my mind.
So, although I might feel bad, I still have 12 days till C.M.’s truck shows up. Plenty of time (NOT!)
So I send this missive out to my friends in the blogosphere Do you have any humorous, funny, or even pitiful packing stories worth sharing here? Help me laugh! The next 12 days are gonna suck!!! (and if I am a little sparse in my posting, that is why, this blog is now attracting 40-60 readers a day, and that is so wild! I started it for family & friends to keep up with my life, and whoa, I have readers from all over the world!!).
So fire away with stories if you have them!!!
Filed under: from home
I solved the packing issue close to 20 years ago when I moved out to San Francisco to work in a bike shop becuase you could make $6.00 an hour as a bike mechanic there as opposed to $3.00 in Central New York where I worked. I was rehabbing an ankle anyway and had hospital bills to pay ( insurance - what’s that? All my money goes into skiing! )
So I gave everything I owned away except for a pair of rollerblades, my sleeping bag and some clothes. Skis, kayak, bikes, rollerskis, everything. To all my friends. Knocked on my brother’s door in San Fran and threw my sleeping bag down. When I came back 2 years later solvent, but skiless, kayakless and bikeless, my same friends either gave my stuff back or gave me other stuff to replace it so I could start XC-ski racing again. Seems much simpler to me!
JD
Good luck with the move.
As I recall (and I’m sure Evan does, too), the funniest packing story is when you moved across town in Fort Collins.
I’ll never forget the hopeless look on Evan’s face when you left for the bakery… and the decision we made not to organize your stuff, but to just start throwing it in random boxes.
If you’re twice as organized as you were then, then we may see you in SLC sometime near the end of the summer.
kirk,
that is a memory!!! wow, I forgot that you look at this blog, yes you and Evan totally saved my butt during a horribly hard & awful time in my life… I thanked you profusely then, and I do again now… I remember that the dirty dishes that were in my sink were just tossed in a cardboard box, and when we actually physically moved them, I simply left that box outside in the backyard… it stayed there for a few months… (guys will be guys!!)
jessica has domesticated me, I will leave ithaca on the 6th, and we arrive in salt lake by the 8th or 9th…
that memory actually made me feel better.. cause WOW, that was a horrible move!!! I also remember being so tired, that as I was sitting in that open pickup evan borrowed, piled with furnature and boxes, I watched part of my desk peel off and fly into the road, and I wasn’t really all that upset… just numb…
Andrew! Moving is hard enough without worrying about missing workouts! Moving is harder than workouts anyway, and it can even be skate-specific…running up and down stairs with weights alternating with low-rep high-weight squats… I’ve missed workouts for moving, too. (Read, I have not missed workouts for ankle, hand, and hip injuries, road rash, the worst stomach ache of my life, etc., and I have missed workouts for the wingless bird overtraining crisis, when the ankle injury turned into ankle and both knees, AND MOVING.) You will be fine.
Moving stories? Is my comment allowed to be longer than your blog post? Speaking of throwing stuff in random boxes, my most difficult move was leaving Colgate at the end of senior year. I’d been sharing an apartment with three roommates (that’s one good friend and two rommates) who were all a year younger, so I was staying for graduation after they’d all already moved out. First, I walked up and down the stairs what seemed like hundreds of times (realized I needed to eat more than I had expected) and was miserable about leaving. My friend (who is right now moving into her new house in Boston) came back for graduation and helped with the last of the packing. We had junk all over the place that was not mine and would never fit into the minivan my parents had rented for this or my parents’ apartment in New York. We dumped all of that into boxes for another friend who was staying to work over the summer…”here, Tina could use this…yeah…” Getting my stuff into the minivan, my dad kept saying “Oh, this is never gonna fit…I don’t know what we’ll DOOOO” (It did fit, of course.) And then my parents didn’t really understand what I was so sad about - I had to explain it a few years later and they were relieved it was so normal to feel sad about leaving college. (My parents are really wonderful and caring - they just had not had the same experience with leaving college.)
Easiest move ever…moving from #40 to #42 in the same apartment complex. Both were furnished. I had my own rolling desk chair, so I piled things onto the chair, pushed it down the hall, and plopped it into its new home. The apartments even had identical dressers, so I took out my full drawers and switched them with the empty ones. SLC is a bit far away for that strategy.
Also in Ann Arbor, from that apartment to the house with wonderful roommates, I had waaaaaay tooooo much stuff. We had this ridiculous subletter who was younger and had not lived alone before. She said “I’ve never seen someone with so much stuff. It’s amazing, you have all these empty cups and…” Gee, thanks.
And coming to Milwaukee, I had scheduled myself to leave Ann Arbor the day after that huge power failure. I had two friends, Jim and Bill, driving stuff to Milwaukee in exchange for free skating and dinner. (And Lisa sent a whole bunch of boxes by fedex for me, you know, in case she’s reading and feels left out…it was a huge help.) So, we had the power failure on thursday afternoon (oh, and a bunch of us skipped a dryland workout that afternoon! Missed workout for a power failure insane traffic!) and nobody had enough gas to leave Michigan, I still needed another business day, and I was really in no rush to leave my friends. My driving friends didn’t want to leave parents without AC, etc. So I postponed this whole thing until monday and tuesday. In the meantime, I realized that if Milwaukee’s power was out, too, the Pettit would probably lose ice and close down for a few days, so I called to ask. Now, in New York (and southeast Michigan) we say “the paahwer is aowt” while in Wisconsin they say “the pOH-wer is Oht”, so I called the Pettit and asked:
“Is your paahwer aowt, too, or did the paahwer failure not reach Milwaukee?”
The woman on the phone said, “The what??”
“Is your paahwer awot, too, or…”
“The what??”
“Um, do you have the paahwer failure in Milwaukee, too? I’m in Michigan and I’m moving to Milwaukee, and our paahwer is aowt and…[etc]”
“What??”
“Do you have…electricity??”
“Yes, we have electricity.”
I thought she was really out of it. Now I understand.
My most recent move was my easiest (not including the rolling desk chair), and the place and great roommates are helpful for good training, and I wish you the same! Good luck with the rest of your packing!!
Carla
Ahem. Can I get some credit for packing the dirty dishes? Not that it’s something I’m dying to get credit for.
Don’t leave any vehicles or water heaters behind this time, Andrew, OK?
The absolute worst move I ever participated in, though, was when Lilah (remember this, Andrew?) and her roomates were evicted from their house on 1-day’s notice. The landlord was a complete psycho who threw a toddler-like tantrum as we were moving her things onto the lawn. Psycho was stupid enough to try and get Evan riled up. Psycho screamed in his face and Evan just sat there, finally saying, with dead calm, “If you’d just move aside, this would all go a lot faster.” Psycho went ballistic and pushed Evan, at which point Evan’s wife completely lost it and went off on the guy. Evan just kept packing. It was a true “apple juice bath” moment Andrew, if you know what I mean. The cops were soon called and we finished the move with a police escort.
p.s. e-mail me about your schedule again…if you really need to be in Salt Lake City by the 8th or 9th, you might miss Evan! He’s planning on returning from Moab the evening of the 7th, I think. We got the box. Love it!