Aaron and I made the move to Worcester on Saturday with the help of family and a close friend. Trust me we didn't want to leave the great city of Boston, but plans change and accommodations had to be made. Aaron goes to graduate school in Boston, and I will be going to graduate school in Springfield, so Worcester was the middle point for us. Aaron can still get to school via the train, and I will have about an hour or so drive to and from school every day. We are not super excited about our new location or the less than ideal travel to school, but we LOVE our new apartment. It's spacious, clean, new, and we love it.
Now for our disastrous moving story. So we woke up Saturday morning, not very well rested since we decided to go out the night before, but we managed to make our way to get coffee and finish packing up the last few things. We were expecting the weather to be hot, but certainly not as muggy as it was. The U-Haul arrived around 9:30, I was inside packing and when no one came knocking on our door, I started getting confused. My mom had just called and said they were pulling up...hence my confusion. I sent Aaron and our friend outside to check it out, and when they didn't come back right away I wandered my way outside. Turns out our 26 foot U-Haul was stuck on a hill next to our apartment, blocking in another U-Haul that was at the top. The hill was too steep for the truck to make it up, and there was now one back wheel not touching the ground, and the back part of the truck was digging into the cement. Sure why not have something go wrong right off the bat? Some nice people tried to help us figure out a plan, the plan consisted of breaking a piece of a coffee table that was in the dump, and placing it under the wheel to try and get some traction for the wheel and get it moving. Well the coffee table shot out the back and the wheel continued to spin in mid-air. We decided after a half hour of plans that did not work, to call U-Haul. The man that answered the phone was clueless to what was going on. We filled him in on the details, and he VERY slowly tried to find us a towing company that would be able to help. We confirmed our location with him a few times, but even still he was looking for a street that did not exist, so he was not finding any towing companies close to us. He also told us that it was probably going to cost around $500.00 to get the truck unstuck, ummm HELLO, the whole moving thing is expensive enough. We ended up telling him we would find our own tow company because he was not being helpful. I googled nearby places on my phone and called the first number that popped up. A nice guy answered and sent a tow truck within minutes, he wasn't sure they would be able to help us, but was willing to come take a look. The first guy came and immediately called for another guy to help him. I was hoping between the two tow trucks they would be able to help. We had to block cars from turning down the road, so I acted as a traffic cop and stopped cars from turning down one way, while Aaron worked the other end of the street sending cars away. We live on a pretty busy road with a busy intersection, I really thought I was going to get hit by a car, but I can officially say I fulfilled my dream of directing traffic, I really never had the dream, but hey I can say I did. About 20 or so minutes later, the U-Haul made it's way off the hill and was gently pulled up next to our apartment with all four wheels touching the ground!
We started loading everything into the truck, and about half way through my phone rings. I decided not to answer it because we were already behind schedule and I just wanted to be done loading the truck. I took a water break and decided to listen to the voicemail, well it was our new leasing agent. She was calling to inform me that she would be leaving the office before 2 today because it was holiday weekend. I was SO mad because I confirmed that she would in fact be there until 2 so we could sign our lease and get our new keys. This was around 11, so I grabbed Aaron and made him call her back and tell her we were going as fast as we can and she had better not leave. She basically told us we better get there soon or we were out of luck. Aaron and I ended up having to take my car and go to Worcester on our own, while our amazing helpers loaded the rest of the truck. We sped there in record time and pulled into the closest parking lot we could find. When we got inside I was ready to scream, and I don't scream, but I was so livid that she just decided she wanted to leave early and leave us in the dust that I was ready to show my anger. When we walked in she was so sweet, and apologized to us saying she hopes she didn't rush us. Seriously, lady? Well my anger subsided and I put on my happy face. She gave us our keys, showed us around, and left us to our own devices, we were there for maybe a total of 25 minutes.
We decided to walk back out to the car, and call everyone to see how much longer they would be. Well, we got to where my car should have been and there was an empty space. The first thing that crossed my mind was "oh my gosh my car was stolen!" This is where my hate for Worcester started. But then we saw a small sign that said something about being a tow zone. We immediately called the number, and they had no idea, but they gave us a number of a tow company who would have been the ones to do it. So we called the company and yep, they had my car! The guy told us we could come pick it up, but that it would be $150 cash for it. Seriously. I didn't think the day could have gotten worse, guess I was wrong. We started walking towards the tow company, but it was a little far and luckily our friend who was helping us move was just about here and picked us up. We went inside the tow company to pay, where he told us that the lot we parked in has a small window up top in the building where the owner sits and immediately calls the tow company if he sees people walking away from the convenient store and leaving their car, he then told us the driver that towed our car was angry with us because apparently we parked our car by a mess of puke, which he stepped in and so he was charging us an extra $20. The guy at the desk was nice though and only charged us the $130, still way more then two poor graduate students wanted to pay. We grabbed my car and headed back to wait for my mom and the U-Haul.
The rest of the afternoon went pretty smoothly, I mean nothing else could have made the day worse. We unloaded the truck, grabbed some sandwiches from subway, said our goodbyes and thank you's, and Aaron and I passed out on the couch.
Congratulations if you made it through this whole post! I just thought sharing a story of nothing going right would be fun, I mean I pretty much only share the good on my blog, and I want to be more open with my readers, so here is a view into my not-so-perfect-life.
Enjoy a few crappy pictures from my phone of our new place! Better pictures to come soon, I promise!
Have you had a move go terribly wrong? I would sure love to hear about it!
xox
