Let's preface this story with a picture:
Yes, that's a box-spring making its way up a fire-escape.
Now, back to the relocation story... It all started along time ago in a place far, far away in Allston, MA on August 31st.
Up bright and early with only a few items left to pack, Ted and Sean (the man of the other couple we moved alongside), set out to retrieve our BUDGET rental truck, a 16 footer. Approximately 5 hours later, they called with the definite news that Budget had lost BOTH of their reservations and would not be able to give them ANY size truck. Don't worry Budget, it's not like we aren't contractually obligated to get ALL of our stuff out of our houses by MIDNIGHT. (If you know me, you can only image the worry and panic that I endured waiting for them to return. If you don't know me, thanks for reading my blog and making me feel important.)
FINALLY, they arrived with a PESKE truck at 5PM and we were on the road (only forgetting one item after all of that) by 7PM paying about $100 more than was expected. Oh, and this truck only had TWO seats so I was LUCKY enough to sit on a pile of seat cushions for the whole trek. BUT, we were grateful for our truck and thought nothing could possibly go wrong after that DRAMA.
Boy were we WRONG.
About 15 miles (MAYBE) into the drive, approaching the FIRST rest-stop of many on our 3-4 hour drive from Boston to NY, our rear tire POPPED. Yep, that's right, we were forced to take a bathroom break before even opening our water bottles. That's when we stopped at McDonald's for 3 hours and witnessed the paper shredding lady and killed time playing dollar lotto tickets. The lotto tickets taught us that Ted is lucky and Sean and I are not. Apparently it's one of our faults all of this was happening. (The broken mirror I found in one of my boxes three days later landed the blame solely on me.) When our truck was fixed, we set out AGAIN.
We got to Ted's parents' house that night at 1:30AM to sleep in a place the truck could rest for free (a highlight in the process). The next morning we drove into Manhattan without much traffic and got to the Upper East side to unload Ted and I. We have about 3 times the amount of stuff as Sean and Zeny and were dreading the unpacking and walking up 5 flights of stairs for every item. Thanks for Zeny's brother Zach, who helped out, we had everything in in under three hours. Impressive and sweaty.
We then drove to Midtown (with two in the cargo and three crammed up front down narrow one-way streets) to get Zeny's FULL-SIZE fridge she bought from some weirdo living in a four story brownstone. That was going to be the next challenge of the day, for sure.
Once we arrived at Zeny's Lower East Side digs, we discovered that her 'four-story walk-up' was indeed a five story that she lived on the top floor of. Lucky us, not. The boys tackled the fridge first thinking it would be the BEAST of the day. It was up a half-hour later and after taking a break on the ROOF DECK, we carried many heavy boxes (Sean doesn't know how to pack a card-board box very efficiently- :P ) Then, the mattress got up their square-ish spiral staircase. Next was the box spring. We thought it would be easy-as-pie considering Zach and I carried mine up, but we were oh so wrong! After an hour up the first flight of stairs only to find out the second set was a new shape, they had two options: 1. Saw it in half and reassemble at the top. 2. Go up the fire-escape (not so smart for people without health insurance).
Three hours passed. The photo above was taken. The result was blocking the sidewalk long enough to throw the box spring off the second floor into the trash.
It is at this point that a few hundred dollars paid to MOVERS would be completely worth it. Is there a secret website that tells you the tricks of moving normal size items into Manhattan sized homes? I should make one, make millions, and move into a normal size home.
Exhausted, Ted and I had to drive the truck back to Sleepy Hollow to unload extra items at his home. After paying an 11 dollar toll to leave the city, we discovered that Sean had the keys to the back of the truck. We drove from 125th street to 9th again. Then, went back to Sleepy Hollow only to discover that the truck was now an hour too late to return. Another night NOT slept in our apartment.
Finally, on Sept.2nd, I moved into my apartment. (This is, of course, after loosing my wallet walking from the truck return station and getting it back just as the gas station man was taking my cash out of it. AND coming back to realize our bike tires had been stolen because we didn't get to come back as planned to put them inside.)
My luck can ONLY get better and has. Welcome to NYC Gabrielle.
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