The first "cross-country" move, of course, was when I went off to college in South Carolina from New Jersey. I didn't have a whole lot of stuff - just what would fit in my my parents car and my 1983 LTD police car model (oh, Bessie, how I miss you) to fit in a half dorm room.
But while I was in college, I moved back home for the summer, then into a different dorm, back home again, and then to a third dorm where I had my own room.
This is where things started getting more complicated. Now, I could fit a small sofa that I got at the Salvation Army. (Whoever's truck I borrowed, thank you (Neely?)).
The following summer, instead of moving home, I moved in to an off- campus apartment (where we bought more furniture.) Another off-campus apartment (with still more furniture now included things like a dining room table and chairs, a coffee table, a super heavy TV cabinet of some sort and I think some dressers and beds? (Again, I have no recollection of how we hauled this stuff around.) I don't remember a Sherpa, but it was a long time ago.
After graduation, my first apartment in Hillsville, Va. was nice, but sparse, and everything I owned fit in a small U-Haul. Friends drove my car while I drove the smallish U-Haul - and boy, that truck did NOT like going UP that big mountain. Thanks to the experience in my giant car, I felt pretty comfortable driving the big truck, though.
Which was good. It came in handy for when I helped a friend of mine move to Petersburg, Va., and she asked me to drive her 24-foot U-Haul truck DOWN the mountain. The truck had plenty of space. Which was good - since she and her fiance had a lot of stuff.
What it did not seeming have was any brake pads. There was not a gear low enough to slow this truck down to a speed that would prevent me from having to use the brakes nearly all the way down the mountain. I suddenly had a very new appreciation for the "runaway truck ramps" and wondered just how much of her grandmother's silver would end up over the side of Low Gap, Va., if we ended up pulling an Evil Knievel. Luckily, it never came to that.
Each new experience after that - up to Maryland and back down to North Carolina, then led me to the wise realization that Jay and I finally came to when we moved into our new home in Kernersville: Hire movers, stupid. Yeah. It was worth it. Of course, that was just an across town move. Sort of affordable.
Cut to our latest adventure, and pricing moves 500 miles away? I don't consider myself cheap. Frugal, perhaps. But $5,000!?? No. I would be back up in that truck. (We could hire movers to load and unload it for a couple hundred and the truck rental for under $1000.)
We got the truck in the driveway - And it DID take up nearly the entire length of our driveway.
And the then people started asking me things like:
- "Wow. YOU'RE gonna drive THAT truck?"
- "So, are you scared to drive it?"
- And my favorite: "Oh, I didn't know you had your CDL" (commercial driver's license.) (I don't, I said.) "And they still let you drive it?"
You seem to have a lot of experiences in moving out of town. Where did you get that truck, anyway? It's easy to move when you have that big truck with you. Why don't you find the best home for you, where you can finally settle in?
ReplyDeleteTyrone Obey