The Big Truck

 HI! It feels like it's been a while since I've posted something. It's just that we've been a bit distracted recently. By the picture below, you may be able to guess the reason. I won't bore you with the details about why, but we needed to move! All the stuff! To a whole 'nother State! There will be other posts about packing up, but I thought I'd start off with the big truck pics.

Here it is. The U-Haul 20-foot "Family Mover" which we scouted ahead as probably-big-enough to fit our stuff. Not a family, but that much stuff. By this time, most of the apartment was in boxes, so we had a good idea of the size we'd need. And the smaller trucks would have been too small.

Hello! Hello! Hello! It echos now, but soon we will fill it up. That extra rented hand cart will wind up being the hero of the day. For a little over $1000, we get this truck for 3 days. Day One we will fill it, Day Two is the drive, and Day Three is unloading into the storage unit. Technically we can return it on the morning of day four, but we wound up unloading it quick enough to return it on day three instead. But that's skipping ahead. Right now we are worried about filling it!

The super nice guy at this local auto repair shop was very helpful. You technically rent the trucks online but they are all over parked at random places where you pick them up and drop them off. Are you sure we can drive this giant thing?!

Check it out! Old-style hand crank windows! Neat. This is not an ancient truck, right?

We sheepishly asked the maintenance guy to help us back it up, and he jumped in and did it for us! Thanks!

The disassembled waterbed squished perfectly along the side. As far as beds go, Waterbeds are actually crazy easy to move, once taken apart. Of course, taking it apart was a whole thing, that I plan to post about at some point. But that will be later.

Boxes boxes and more boxes. Fun trivia fact; my friend was filling the truck all by himself. I'm just a small pony and couldn't really help, aside from taking pictures to document the ordeal.

Taco break! We needed lunch. And a break. My friend normally gets by with the 3-taco combo, but he added a couple extra tacos today.

We stopped by the grocery store for some pre-done meals, too. One for diner after the truck was packed, and one for the drive tomorrow, so we didn't have to worry about the massive truck and a drive-thru situation. Both of these turned out to be super tasty.

That ad inside the truck was tempting. It clearly says "It's not too late." It's been box after box. All day.

Carefully stacking boxes to maximize the space.

In goes the table. Now we can stack boxes under and over it.

The table soon vanishes. The dread of un-loading starts to creep in. As carefully as we are packing this, we will need to re-do it later.

Most of the box-boxes are in, now we get to the furniture stuff.

Here's a view of the walk over each time. We're at the end of that hallway on the bottom floor. so it's a little further than this looks.

It's a miracle we got the couch in the truck. There were plans to call maintenance for "emergency help" but that backfired, and we basically ambushed a neighbor and begged for help. My friend was 95% exhausted at this point, but somehow managed to hold up his end of this heavy couch long enough to get it on the truck. Whew!

Part of the heavy couch saga involved sliding it across the concrete on the carpet sliders. It worked, but burned holes through them!

Now that the couch was in, we can continue to stack stuff around it. Exhaustion is maxed out, but there is no option to stop.

Skip ahead to the final full truck. For the night. Too tired to even think straight. We'll need to drive this thing for about seven hours tomorrow.

This other couch/futon, and that coffee table, are due to be abandoned. So they are comfy spots to rest for the night. My poor friend has basically lifted every single thing he owned. Sore all through his body, almost unable to move, after 12 solid hours of effort. The cable box was still working, and that small TV will be packed up and left in the car here.

The next morning, after doing a final walk-check, we remembered the landscaping stones we had. So, one more pile of lifting to do. Literally just rocks. Heavy rocks.

Look at that! We got 'em! Note the extra squirrel corn cob we found. One last treat for our little neighbors to enjoy.

Okay! There it is. The final-final full truck. A little amusing to notice how carefully we started with all the boxes placed perfectly, and at the end we were just throwing stuff on the pile.

The car was packed with the air mattress, the little TV, and a bunch of pillows and blankets. We'll need to return to get this later. There was an option to tow the car behind the truck, but ultimately we thought that would be too-much stress about driving a whole train.

Buh-bye! See you in about a week. Probably. Hopefully. Spoiler alert, we did go back and get it. There might be pictures later.

Who's ready to drive this beast?! Nobody raises their hand.

Stopped in the toll line. Rare. But a nice chance to get a pic. While we were paying this toll, a loud crashing noise exploded in the lane to the left of us, as a "wide load" truck barreled through! Many crashing noises! Causing all kinds of ruckus. The truck pulls off to the side afterwards, they probably got in a lot of trouble.

About to run out of gas, stopped to fill it up. Wander around to find a squeegee, the bugs are stuck on the windshield! Ah, we tried. Let's put the thing back and go check on the gas gauge....

Horror as we watch the number climb. $99... $100! It finally stopped at 36 gallons and $141 dollars! Yeouch!

There's the gas gauge, it says about 380 miles to Empty. If you do the math later, we were pretty close to giving the truck back with exactly how much we started with. At most we estimate we gave them 1 1/2 gallons extra. So we did not really over-do it by much.

The truck ride is rather nice. Not as bad as we thought. You have to rely on the side mirrors for lane changes, but otherwise, it's not too different.

Sunset on the Chesapeake Bay Bridge Tunnel. My friend took some no-look pictures to his side, and this one is not half-bad. He's watching the road, I swear!

Back in Virginia Beach! With all the stuff!

Parked in the driveway. Look at those low tree branches! Good thing we got the ride insurance. It should cover any scratches, if needed. Now my friend is double-exhausted. From packing yesterday, and driving all day today.

Here's all the tolls and gas for the big truck. Much more than a regular car. I'm too exhausted to even add all this up now. Okay... Hold on. $60.15 in tolls, plus the gas makes the total $201.46.

What an amazingly sweet gesture, there was donuts waiting for us. Is that enough pictures for now? I still have some for when we unloaded the truck, plus I had to pack up all the stuff, and later we took a bus back to get the car. So there will be more pics later. Hopefully I can settle in to a routine at some point and get to posting pictures at least once a week like I usually do. Thanks for sticking with me!