Nobody said moving would be easy but I also don't think anybody imagined it would be this hard. For all of our preparation, all of our work, the number of difficulties we ran into across the first two days of this trip near drove us to the point of madness.
In particular, months ago I spent a considerable amount of time researching moving companies and getting quotes. I had about 4 or 5 estimates for all of our crap before I finally settled on one particular company, nobody not because it was cheapest but because they had the highest ratings of anybody I could find and were well respected on the BBB. I thought if nothing else that part of the move would be the smoothest and easiest since we had a couple pieces of furniture that weren't manageable. However, if we weren't taking Kate's TV and dresser it almost wouldn't have been worth hiring movers at all since we could grab a U-Haul and probably perform the whole move for under $500 while the movers were costing us around $3000.
Suffice to say, getting out of Pittsburgh, our home for 4 years was not going to be so simple.
We were expecting our driver, Ron, at 9 AM and according to schedule, a little after 9, a knock at our door opened to reveal Ron. Unfortunately this would be the last part of the move that would be going according to plan as Ron informed us he would need 3 cars at the beginning of the street to move. This street was a notoriously difficult one to get people to work together so we were already into "what is plan B?" mode.
Our first stop was the owner of a red truck who upon a knock at her door came out looking for a fight. Ron very politely tried to inform her about the situation but all he got was some threats to call the cops and some refusals. As we regrouped across the street and watched her call the police and point at us, her husband, a buff looking fellow, came walking towards us. Expecting a fight to brew I walked up to him and informed him we would be getting a van and not requiring the moving truck to get on the street. However, I was greeted not with screaming but with a very kind soul who was happy to move his truck and assist us. After finding the couple who owned the other two cars we were able to get the truck onto the street where a new fresh hell awaited us.
Ron informed us that the huge parking spot we had saved for him was relatively useless because he could not pull up to the curb as he had a side loading truck and needed 11 foot wings to be let out on the sides which would easily overstep the sidewalk. So his solution was to park in the middle of the street. This quickly turned into more people threatening to call the police on us as they quickly piled in behind him. After enough screaming Ron finally pulled out of the street and parked about a block and a half away where he was to stay for the entire move. We talked to him and he told us his company was working on getting a shuttle but also he was expecting a few people to come and assist with the move who weren't at our house yet. They were apparently expecting Ron to pick him up and because he didn't they decided to go home instead.
So that's where we were left, sitting on Kate's kitchen floor for hours waiting for updates. We attempted to finalize a couple other moving items we were planning to move but watching time slip away as we were supposed to be in Ohio by that evening. At around noon Kate received a phone call from Ron, he was telling us that do to the movers not showing up and an inability to get a shuttle we would be moving the move to Monday.
Suffice to say this wasn't sitting well with me. I had hotels booked, appointments set up, and I was absolutely miserable in that house in Pittsburgh. I was not going to stay until Monday and certainly not when paying $3000. So I took the phone and I asked Ron "how much is this going to cost me Ron?" He told me it would be an additional fee to get a shuttle there for Monday and I told him "No no, I mean you're moving me to Monday, I'm going to lose a ton of money in rebooking fees, how much are you going to discount my move?" When he told me nothing I knew we were getting out of there that day.
"Ron, if I get all of our stuff down to you, will you put it on your truck?" He told me yes but "How are you going to get all of your stuff down here?" and I said, "Ron, I'm a very determined man and I will use my bare hands if I have to but we will be moving out of here today."
So I hung up with Ron and told Kate, "Let's move" we unloaded her Avalon that we had previously loaded with our roadtrip gear and started loading it with boxes as well as calling our families and letting them know the situation. We kept making trips down to Ron's truck and unloading all of our stuff by ourselves while Kate's mom saved us and found us a pair of guys who would be willing to drive all the way from Morgantown, West Virginia just to help us move boxes for $150. Those two were absolute saviors. They were built like trucks and we only asked them to move 3 pieces but they helped with everything and didn't even take a break in the hot Pittsburgh sun. 5 hours later everything was loaded onto the truck and we were ready to go.
While that entire process was happening I was fielding calls from Ron's manager and the company I hired the movers from. Both of them were telling me all of the things they were incapable of doing. They could not find guys (we found 2 guys in half an hour) they could not find a shuttle (we used Kate's car) any guys they found would be unwilling to walk the stuff down to the truck (except, again, the two guys we found in half an hour) if only the truck would have gotten on the street this wouldn't have been a problem (except it didn't and we still got everything out of there that day). Every single thing they told me they couldn't do I managed to do in under an hour. We completed all of their jobs without problem once we took the reins away from them. It was a catastrophic embarrassment on a company scale and huge burden on us to do their work since we were paying them a ton to move our stuff. But we got out of there and in by the 20th we will be in our brand new home.
But that wasn't the end of our troubles. We had one more major obstacle that almost put us off course. In Ohio we met up with Kate's family and it was a lot of fun but Kate's mother did us a huge favor by taking care of a final check up with our car the morning we were supposed to be leaving. Down at Sears they were getting a tire rotation but the time quickly started to fly by. At around noon we finally received a call that the brake rotors and pads would need replacing and it'd be at least an hour to get the parts in. And so the time ticked even further and for the second day in the row we weren't able to get on the road until 5 PM. Unfortunately our drive to Memphis was significantly longer and we didn't get in until almost 1 in the morning but since then it's all been according to schedule.
And so sitting in Albequerque watching the sun rise and Dickens sleep on his complimentary dog bed I know we're on track and we're in the final stretch of our journey that started a year ago at Kate's performance of Icara. We're about to start an entire new story in a matter of days and I can't be more excited. Hopefully we'll see you all in San Diego at some point because we have room for all of our friends and family in our new place.
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