I Need Another Weekend

Despite my late arrival in dreamland on Friday night, I still woke up early for my Saturday run. I was planning to help my friends Tom and Tina move later in the day, and wanted to get my exercise out of the way early.

That was probably a bad decision. I got plenty of exercise during the move. But more about that later.

The weather was great! In addition to a few fuzz-antlered deer, several of my swim team friends were also out there in Waterton canyon. Wildlife and humans both ran past me as if I were fossilized, watching my asynchronous strides and shaking their heads with a genuine "Oh, that poor fellow..." type of unspoken sympathy. (Katie's friend Vicki, I learned later, actually asked her "Is something wrong with him?" Sigh.) Anyway, public embarrassment aside, I was able to eventually cover a dozen miles or so, and thus achieved my cardio workout goals for the day.

After the run, I grabbed a quick shower and a bite to eat, and then went over to pick up Tanner to help with the move. When we arrived at Tom & Tina's townhome, they had the flatbed truck ready to go. It was a 1970s vintage Chevy with a hydraulic lift that moaned like something from Ghostbusters, but seemed adequately functional. Our first chore was to move a Tempurpedic mattress from the upstairs bedroom onto the truck.

As you may know, Tempurpedic is like sponge on steroids -- it's soft and comfy to sleep on, but weighs a ton and tends to become entirely amorphous when handled. Tanner, Tom, and I are all adequately muscular fellows, but trying to get a grip on a dense, queensized slab of foam designed specifically to give way and change shape under pressure...well, it was like trying to wrestle with a school of soapy eels.

With brute strength and applied geometry, though, we managed to get the thing down the stairs, around the corners, and out into the truck. With the fatigue I was feeling at that point, it did not do my spirit much good to hear Tom announce, "Well, that's the easy part -- let's go get the heavy stuff!" Lordy.

Riding over to the self-storage place reminded me of the very first time I was allowed to drive. My granddad let me drive his old rustbucket truck in the fields of his farm when I was about 11 years old. The creaks and groans of grinding gears and the shrieks of under-lubed hydraulics will always evoke recollected scents of harvested grain, overworked machinery, and cow manure. But that's a topic for another chapter. Bottom line: I enjoyed the ride over to the U-Stor-It.

The good news? With the exception of a sofa (which was handled by Tom & Tanner), everything was neatly packed in boxes, and ready to transport. The bad news? The boxes contained either rocks or books, the two heaviest substances known to mankind. You see, Tom and Tina are both highly intelligent, highly educated, and highly curious people. They read a LOT, and also happen to be interested in geology, spelunking, and for some reason, crystal or fabric-based arts & crafts. Anyway, most of the boxes in their storage unit were heavy, and not in the whimsical Marty McFly slang way, but in terms of actual mass and density.

The other good news was that the rolling carts we had and the truck's hydraulic lift made the task of loading the flatbed a relatively easy one. Unlike me, Tom has the Tetris sense, and was really good at stacking everything in an efficient and stable way. Tanner stood on the lift and passed the boxes from me to Tom, and we had the thing loaded in pretty short order. We left a few boxes behind for later -- but they were the ones with the fragile and delicate fossils that were not meant to be handled by ham-fisted brutes like Tanner and myself. They didn't belong on a rattle n' hum vehicle like the ancient Chevy, either. We'd let Tina worry about those later.

Over to the new house. My first thought upon arrival was that they are going to be very happy here -- it's a vast improvement over their other place, both in size and in style. Very nice. But my second thought was how the layout was not conducive to using wheels...it appeared that we'd have to hand-carry the boxes from the back of the truck, up the sidewalk, up the front porch steps, and into the house. Well, at least those three porch steps were the only ones we'd have to navigate.

"All the stuff from this truckload goes into the basement", Tom announced. "The farthest room in the back of the basement," he added. OK, then. That's good. I've been wanting to give my creaky knees a good integrity test, and this would be the opportunity. Either result would be positive: if they held up, then I'd know that my glucosamine tablets were working...and if they exploded and left me crippled, well, I wouldn't have to move any more @#!* boxes of rocks, would I?

It actually went very smoothly. Other than my occasional panting, moaning, and cursing, nobody talked much -- we just got the truck unloaded quickly. From his energy level and efficiency, you'd never guess that Tom is actually even older than I am. And despite the fact that I sometimes give Tanner a hard time about his insipid slackerhood within these pages, he did an excellent job thoughout, without tiring or complaining. It wasn't long at all before we were taking a PowerAde and cookie break, and then heading back over to the townhome to get the other beds and the canoe.

I won't bore you with the details of those tasks, but I do need to compliment Tom on his creative use of bungee cords in strapping the canoe across the bed and onto the top of the truck. You don't really think of a canoe as a large item until you need to lift it above a vehicle and figure out how to keep it from sliding around. Trust me, this is a bigger challenge than it sounds. But somehow, we did it.

There was more work to be done, but after the mattresses and canoe were safely unloaded at the new place, Tanner and I bailed out. He had band practice, and I had committed to attend a fundraiser dinner up in north Lakewood. We grabbed a couple more cookies and wished them luck with the rest of the move.

I never did hear how the band practice went, but I enjoyed the fundraiser. I'll tell you about it in my next entry. I'll also give you an update on how my knees handled the day's events. Until then, have a great day!