*Thursday - August 4, 2011 - We had made it to New Orleans, not in record time, but were we in a hurry? There were plenty of headaches prior to our leaving, which I'll detail in my next installment, but the drive down had gone pretty smoothly.
There was still one thing left to do though: unload the truck into our storage space. First of all, why are we doing things this way? Well, we are subletting from our friends Rachel & Paul for five months, so we need a place to put all, or most, of our stuff until the New Year. Luckily the storage facility is three blocks away.
Thursday morning arrived all too soon. First things first, we needed to actually rent the space, which went smoothly. Public Storage, my hat is off to you! So much easier and professional than dealing with U-haul in Philadelphia! That taken care of we applied ourselves to the task at hand. I was dropped off with Jim at his place, where we'd left the truck the previous evening. Dave went on ahead to see if he could round up some cheap help over on Claiborne Ave (yes, when in need, it's always available). Jim and I piled into the big yellow taxi and headed down to St. Mary Street. When we arrived back at the storage facility only to discover the truck was 6” too high to pull into the enclosed garage. No matter, we parked just outside, the only problem would be that we'd be unloading in the direct sun. It was 95 degrees on Thursday, and the heat index pushed the actual feel to about 115. This was not going to be a light endeavor. One of the saving graces: our space was on the ground floor, in very acceptable air-conditioning, the others... Dave found three guys to help us. Annoyingly one of them skipped out even before we got started. Apparently he didn't want to work 'that hard' so he left. Yeah, fuck you too, buddy.
I estimate we started to unload around noon and in hindsight I probably pushed the pace a little too hard. The way we'd packed the truck had most of the boxes we needed to store first coming off the truck LAST. We still managed, amidst the horrendous heat of the mid-afternoon, to unload everything within 2 ½ hours. At times I think the two guys helping us thought I was a crazy man, but things went very smoothly, so I'll cling to that. “keep 'em moving and get it done” was my motto that afternoon. It was probably about 120 degrees in the truck at times, but we took turns unloading and finally we cleared it out. The air-conditioned environment of the storage space probably kept me from passing out any number of times, and in the end, we fit just about everything in the two spaces we'd rented that morning. One last series of trips over to the apartment with the remaining boxes and supplies and I found myself standing in a cold shower thinking, “Jesus Christ it's hot outside!”
Dave and Jim showed up with the last of the stuff and while Jim and I trudged things from the porch to the second floor apartment Dave dropped off our two helpers. The only thing left was to return the truck and be DONE with the whole thing. <Break Time, at least for a few minutes>
Back in the truck, stopped for a refueling, then on to the drop off. Jim and I sat in the air-conditioned comfort of Rupert while Dave took care of the last few details. “My God. It's done!” I thought. Jim looked over at me, “I did it! We did it!” I smiled and gave him a high-five. “I didn't want to scare you or anything before we started out, but that was the biggest truck I've ever driven ” he wavered. “You were great though! And we're HERE, so that's all that matters. ”
Not the end of the story, there is plenty to tell about the days leading UP to pulling out of Philly on Sunday afternoon. That's for tomorrow though.
