Twenty years ago or so, U-Haul had a slogan “Adventures in Moving”. This was a rather stupid slogan since anyone who has ever moved knows, the last thing you want is an adventure. We had what should have been a large but relatively simple move that turned into an adventure.

Part of the problems go back to three weeks before moving day when our youngest and seemingly healthiest cat died. According to the vet, there was no sign of poison or choking or anything else, probably an undetected heart problem. It hit us all pretty hard, but our oldest daughter (whose cat it was) worst of all. Since we were moving from a rented row house with a tiny garden to an old farmhouse in the country we had bought, we didn’t want to leave her behind. Fortunately, the vet agreed to store the body until we moved.

Add to this, the fact that our oldest daughter waited until the very last minute to move into her own apartment where she is at university. That meant we had to help her move at the same time we were trying to get everything packed and ready for the movers. Time was really crunching.

Moving day, the truck was supposed to be at our house at 7:00 AM with a full crew. The first two guys showed up about 7:20, but they couldn’t do any more than take a quick overview since the truck wasn’t there yet. The truck didn’t show until 10:30; the driver had gone all night straight through from the last assignment and couldn’t do anything but crawl into the cabin and take a nap.

We had had two professional estimates that we would need approximately 70 cubic meters. We went with a third company that gave us a good price and said we could actually go as high as 90 for that rate. They would also take care of dismantling all the furniture and the kitchen and put it all back together again at the other end. They never came out to take a look themselves. Big mistake! We actually came in somewhere around 100 cubic meters.

Meanwhile, the two guys who were actually capable of working shifted stuff into the truck, but took almost as much break time as work time. Once the driver woke up, he also helped, but one of the first two guys then stayed in the truck to pack everything as tightly as possible. More people were supposed to show up – especially the guy who specializes in taking apart kitchens. Still, we thought we would be hitting the road by 4:00 in the afternoon. This is where the cat comes in again. The vet is closed from 11:00 to 4:00, so we had to pick up the frozen cat by 11:00 and keep her in the basement. We could have waited.

Evening rolls around and the truck is full. The kitchen is still there in its entirety and we still have several boxes and some other furniture. The guy who runs the company keeps calling up and screaming at us that its all our fault and his men have to be seven or eight hours’ drive from our new house by seven the next morning and its all our fault. Attempts to point out that the truck was three and a half hours late, that there weren’t enough people, and we were doing at least half of the lifting and carrying ourselves came to nothing.

Finally around 9:00 that night the guys tell us that another truck is coming in half an hour with some of the people who were supposed to be there that morning and they would take the rest. Around 10:00, the boss calls up to scream some more and extort more money out of us. (OK, it was more than expected so a bit more money is reasonable, but the guy’s attitude is terrible and he has no business being in a position where he deals with paying customers. He actually threatened to have his men come back to our house and unload 20 cubic meters.)

The new guys arrive around 10:30 that night and they are terrific if rather unpleasant. They got more done in the first hour than the first crew (who were all rather nice, if exhausted) did in the first four hours after the truck came. Unfortunately, they accomplished a lot of this by carrying boxes by one handle (which tends to cause boxes to tear) and just slinging stuff around. Still, they hit the road around midnight. We had to clean up some of the broken jam jars and clarify to the police that yes, we really were moving out, not robbing the place. We then packed up or van with a few more things (including the cat) and left around 12:30.

We had a three hour drive ahead of us in pretty bad weather. We thought we would still get there ahead of the first truck, since the driver wanted to stop off at a truck stop and take a shower. They got there before us since he slept the whole way instead. Luckily, there was a key hidden accessibly and they could get started unloading. The only problem was that, although we had carefully labeled everything as to where it was supposed to go, there was no one there to tell them where those places were.

So, we got there about 3:30 and started helping. Unfortunately, it kept raining rather hard, so they mostly stayed under cover and did nothing. The second truck finally arrived about 4:30. When they were about 3 miles away, the gas pump on their truck broke and they had to idle the final stretch (luckily downhill most of the way). They motivated the first crew to a bit more activity, but boxes wound up just dumped in the garage and the barn, usually with the ones marked fragile under the ones full of books. Exactly one piece of furniture got put back together. Most of the rest either went into the wrong rooms in the house or in the barn (which can’t be closed from the back).

The sun came up and we had a rewarding view of our backyard being full of mayflowers (or cuckooflowers), dandelions and a few other wildflowers. And then we went back to trying to get things put in roughly the right place. They were finally done about 7:30. We paid them and sent them on their way to the next assignment, half an hour late already and several hours drive away. We dragged a couple of mattresses together and fell into bed at 8:00, 26 hours after we got up and after 25 hours of heavy work.

Three hours later we woke up feeling fairly refreshed. Then we found a nice spot and dug a hole to bury the cat. (Remember the cat? This is a song about…uh, no, wait…never mind.) My sister-in-law came by around noon with food and we ate and rested a bit. Then we had to turn around and drive back to where we came from. We still had to clean and paint our old place.

Moving day had been a Tuesday, we got back to the house Saturday night and had to start rebuilding furniture Sunday morning. We’ve been here for a week now and almost everything is rebuilt, though only about half of the boxes have been emptied. The worst problem right now, is that we can’t find the pins to hold up the shelves for most of the bookshelves. And once we finally get everything squared away, we start remodeling. That will be a job for the next several years. But the dog loves it here, the other cats are getting settled fairly well, and we all feel much better.

It’s been a long, strange trip for a boy from the LA ‘burbs to wind up in a small farming village on the outskirts of a national park in Germany, but I wouldn’t want to be anywhere else. I can look out my window and see wildflowers in our yard, the neighbor’s cows in our pasture (something oddly hypnotic and soothing about cows), maybe even a pair of endangered kites circling. Wow.