I’m back from my Austin trip and hope to wring a few posts out of it because I don’t have anything else to post about right now. Well, I do, but I haven’t put any posts together on any of the political things going on these days.

As I posted on Wednesday, we made it to Austin on Wednesday and found the apartment building.

Our plan was to rent a truck for Thursday morning, go to the Pack Rats facility, unload the box, drive back to the apartment, and unload.

Good plan, but no plan survives first contact, as the saying goes.

The apartment complex is on the side of a hill. The parking lot is lower than the building and the street is higher. Which meant a lot of lugging no matter where we parked the truck. Moving the furniture was going to be a major pain in the ass.

Daughter’s boyfriend is a very bright guy, but not strong on organization. So, the first order of business was to find a self storage place. Which he did in short order, but it required a trip to the place to sign the contract. Did I mention that he doesn’t have a car? Which doesn’t matter because he misplaced his home state driver’s license which means he can’t get  his Texas DL until he gets a replacement. Sigh…

So we drove him over to the self storage place so he could do the paperwork. By then traffic in Austin (more on this later) was bad enough that we were going to make it to the truck rental place in time. Fortunately, I have a Smart Phone with a big enough screen and good enough version of Android that I was able to reserve a truck on line. Yay internet.

Then off to dinner at Threadgills. Our first real meal in three days.

Then to Target. I mentioned the organization thing, right? Fortunately my daughter is very organized, so we went to Target with a shopping list and bought stuff. The prospect of moving all of her stuff into the new apartment while wearing long pants impelled me to buy some shorts while we were there. I’m generally not a shorts guy, but I decided that functionality had to take precedence to fashion.

The next morning we were up early, had breakfast, and then went off to pick up the rental truck. It’s funny, but a lot of businesses in Austin don’t seem to open until 9:00 AM. I don’t know why, personally, I’d open my business at about 5:00 AM and close before the day got too hot, but what do I know.

The guy running the rental place was nice, but the truck was, to put it politely, a piece of shit. It was a Ford E-350 with a 16 foot box on it and it reminded me of every spare Ford ambulance I drove in my career. First, it was filthy inside. No on had cleaned the cab in I don’t know how long. There was a bag of potato chips on the floor, minus the bag. It smelled like every abused spare ambulance I ever drove. The shift indicator didn’t work, so I had to play “guess a gear” when I drove. The front end shook like a B-17 in a flak field in those World War II movies. The steering wheel would send a request down to the steering box which eventually would change the direction of the truck. I will say that the tires were OK, not worn down. The brakes were good too, which was fortunate. Finally, the air conditioning was really cold. Which came in handy later on in the day. The other advantage was that it was cheaper than U Haul. Which itself doesn’t have a sterling reputation for quality vehicles. Budget certainly lived up to it’s name.

Off we went to north Austin to find the Pack Rats facility. It was exactly where the lady on the phone said it would be. They hide it in an industrial park and it’s easy to miss if you don’t look hard. The box was right where the lady said it would be and we had easy access. If you’re moving stuff a long distance and want to use a pack it yourself service, Pack Rats worked for us.

It was somewhere in the 90s with high humidity. Fortunately, it was cloudy, so we didn’t bake in the sun, we just sort of simmered. Unpacking and repacking took about an hour and worked out well. We had thought about how we wanted to move the stuff into the apartment back when we packed the box, so the transfer to the truck was straight forward. Hot, but straight forward.

Then came the drive back to the apartment. Chris (the boyfriend) and I talked about it and decided that the sleeper sofa would go up the 15 stairs to their apartment first. This thing weighs in at about 200 pounds, or so it seems. It’s seven feet long and heavy. We lugged it out of the truck and halfway across the lawn. And stopped to rest. Then we lugged it across the lawn the rest of the way to the bottom of the stairs. And stopped to rest again. Then up the stairs, stopping to rest at the top. After that, we had to stand it up on end and twist it into the apartment. After which, we rested again. If you watch The Big Bang Theory, it’s like the time Leonard bought the time machine.

After that everything else was easy. The rest of the furniture was light compared to the Sleeper Sofa from Hell. Which has found it’s final resting place. When they move, the couch is going to be cut into pieces and dropped into a dumpster. We moved plastic tub after plastic tub, clothes, a couple of TVs, and all of the other things that go into an apartment. It stayed cloudy until the very end, in which we were fortunate.

We finished moving, dropped the stuff going into storage off at the storage place, returned the POS Budget truck, and then went out for dinner.

So ended moving day. Friday was to be car repair day since the 2.000 mile journey wore out some stuff on my daughter’s car and repairs were going to be required. We already had an appointment thanks to one of her cousins. A little bit about that tomorrow.