Last weekend, my husband Jamie helped his brother move to Utah. It allegedly went smoothly. Well, if you can count the U-haulâs brakes catching on fire going smoothly. Jamie called it a minor inconvenience.
It is a drive we did many times while we were dating. I lived in Salt Lake City while he called Denver home. Prior to our wedding, the plan was for him to fly to Utah and help me move to Colorado.
Until he got a hernia.
He had the choice to have the surgery before or after our wedding. We were holding out for Operation Consummation on our wedding night and call me crazy but a hernia just did not seem like a viable part of the process. âOF COURSE YOU WILL HAVE THE SURGERY BEFORE!â? I yelped. I think I even used all-caps.
And for all those naysayers who do not believe abstinence is feasible in todayâs society, throw in a hernia. Trust me, it works.
This left me to execute the move by myself. I threw the biggest, baddest going-away party around – one with loads of food…and boxes (hence the badness).
I was feeling like an empowered woman of the 2002s as I set out on the highway with my Grand Cherokee towing all my treasures. My trip was going well until the weight of the load blew out my tire in the middle of nowhere.
So, there I was stranded somewhere between Green River and Grand Junction when my guardian angel pulled up beside me. Actually, he appeared in the form of a financial analyst who was going through a painful divorce and was returning from a trip to Las Vegas.
He not only helped fix my tire, but followed me to the nearest gas station where we parted ways. A few miles down the road, he flagged me over, concerned about the different levels of air in my tires. He then slowly tailed me all the way to Grand Junction until I was safely in the care of a tire center. Evidently they breed guardian angels in that town.
Too bad he didnât stick with me the rest of my drive. There was the blizzard atop Vail Pass that delayed me for two hours. Then when I was about two miles from Jamieâs condo, I looked out my window to see something that looked suspiciously like the bar-end on my bike. Turns out the storm had massacred my bike rack and I drove about 10 mph the remainder of the drive as my bike flopped like a dead fish off the side of my Jeep.
When I finally arrived at the condo, I collapsed into Jamieâs arms, blubbering about my ordeal and cursing his hernia.
I later got my revenge: I was exempt from moving and painting our new house because I was eight months pregnant.
Though I donât know if I can call a weak bladder, killer heartburn and a 40-pound weight gain retributionâ¦.
What are your “memorable” moving stories?
Author: Amber Johnson
Amber is the founder and editor of Mile High Mamas, travel writer and former columnist for The Denver Post. She is a passionate community builder and loves the outdoors. She has two awesome teens and is happily married to a man obsessed with growing The Great Pumpkin.
Kari
I love the idea of moving to a new place with new opportunities but I hate the process. One time, we were moving our whole brood, got in the moving van and drove a few minutes before we realized we had left our son at the house. Whoops. 🙂
Kagey
After finishing school, my DH and I moved from Boulder to Los Angeles. Our Grand Cherokee was loaded to the gills, AND had our old Ford escort on a tow dolly behind us, also loaded. The place we rented the tow dolly from had installed it for us, and I don’t know if they installed it wrong, or we just had bad luck but…
Half way through Arizona, it got WINDY. We saw a huge gust rock the van in front of us, then felt it rock us. Next thing we know, the Escort is fish tailing behind us. Sure, we know you can’t brake in that situation, you’re supposed to speed up a little to pull straight. But we’re headed down hill toward a narrow railroad bridge. My DH tries to glide out of it, not braking or accelerating. The fishtailing amplified and the next this we know, we do one and a half turns, ending up off the right side of the road facing traffic, lying on the driver’s side.
The Escort was totaled by whacking the beginning of the guard rail for the bridge. It slide and hit the underside of the Grand Cherokee, bending the frame in several places, which “totaled” the Grand.
Miracles exist – neither of us were hurt. And we didn’t hit anyone else, since the truckers behind us saw what was happening and blocked both lanes and slowed down.
Sure, our computers were trashed, and the framed pictures were busted. But after a night or two in Williams AZ (nicest people I’ve ever met) we rented a Uhaul, loaded our broken belongings into it and continued on to LA in time for my DH to start his new job on schedule.
Let’s just say we were REALLY starting over on that move.
Guinevere Meadow
That is certainly a memorable move!
I love your wedding picture on your other blog, by the way!! GORGEOUS! (All of you. You, Jamie, the temple…it must be a beautiful place to get married!)
I’ve moved a lot but I don’t have any good stories. This last time we moved I was 4 months pregnant, so I wasn’t completely exempt from the hard work, although I was not allowed up on the ladder to do the painting. My friend climbed up and down while I worked on the bottom half of the walls.
See? Not too exciting.
Ana
In my opinion, no move is a good move. I am always a stressed out, harried mess. Good thing we bought our dream home and will likely be here for the long haul.
Ana
By “long haul,” that has no reference to U-haul….
Dana
I moved four times in five years because my father owned two apartment buildings and I was his “live-rent-free-while-fixing-the-place-up” girl.
The last move was after Doug and I were married. We were moving from one of my dad’s apartments into our house.
My mom had came over to help me pack and I had forgotten that my bridesmaids had given me a glow-in-the-dark vibrator as a gag gift at my bachelorette party. It was still in it’s box, and my mother came across it and said, “Wow. I didn’t know they made glow in the dark candles.”
I had to run outside to laugh my ass off. I’m still not sure if she really knew what it was, but I’m not going to ask!
jen
It pours every single time we move. Drought…then “call Noah, we need an ark!” rain. This is why I am never moving again. 😉
Lauren
I almost croaked when my husband Mike, had to move to start a new job and we had to stay behind because the house hadn’t sold (and finish the school semester.) Keeping the house picked up well enough to show, was so hard with 3 little boys and then I had to pack it all by myself. Mike, of course, came home on weekends to help but, I packed most of it. At least he took care of all of the back breaking stuff! I didn’t get a hernia but I did almost suffer a mental collapse from the whole ordeal. 🙂
bek
ick. I am moving in a few weeks. I have one daughter with a brain tumor who is getting an MRI and treatment the same week and I am 9 months pregnant. I also have two other kids.
So, in theory, the move is the EASY part. I am hiring one college student to watch the kids, one to do the packing and a moving company to do the rest. I will be at the hospital with the baby and getting pedicures and trying not to go into labor early. As strange as it sounds, this might be the EASIEST move we have ever done.
IN the past when we have moved cross country, we just sell everything we can and start over. It is harder to do w/ kids, but it saves lots of energy and it turns out that we don’t usually need all that stuff anyway…. 😉
Patty Smith
Hum, a crazy moving story; let’s see. We had 4-pound twin boys, we are moving from western Oregon to eastern Idaho; I’m in a little car with my brother and the twins, while my sweet husband is in the U-Haul with our 2-year-old daughter. We’re driving in central/eastern Oregon, which is hilly with sharp curves. My husband blinks the U-Haul lights (it’s pitch dark, of course) and we blink our lights–ha, ha, really funny. Then the lights in the U-Haul go out completely. NOT FUNNY, SWEETIE. He starts to pull off to the right when the truck tires start to sink in the soft dirt on the shoulder and the trunk begins to slowly tip off the cliff. He quickly pulls back on the road where he stops, we stop and find to our horror that the electrical system has failed. We get in front of him with our lights on bright and slowly descend the mountains into Nyssa, where my parents lived and where we were planning to stay the night. Many prayers saved the day, but I ended up in the ER with a gall-bladder attack; that demerol works wonders! Happy to say, we made it the next day, driving only in the daylight. I still think that MOVE is a four-letter word!
Amber
Move is a four-letter word. GREAT line! And terrible stories! I now realize I had it good during my harrowing move!
Amber
And Bek – much luck and prayers for a good outcome for your situation!
Lizzy
Well, considering that I have moved while 8 months pregnant 3 times I have a lot of stories. My favorite one to whine about, though, is when we couldn’t seem to get any of my in-laws to come help us move (I was pregnant again). We finally got our BIL to lend us his truck (in exchange for our car and we filling up both of his HUGE gas tanks). He called when we were half finished moving and I was so excited thinking he was finally going to help. But no, he had called to see if I could stop moving and come watch his 4 boys while he and his wife went to the movies.
Thanks a lot!
imaginary binky
Ugh! Moving! Ugh! I’ve done it far too many times. Back and forth from Texas to California to Texas to Nevada to Texas, and then finally to Colorado. Bleah!
I guess I fondly look back at when we were kids and had cats in the moving truck with us. We would sneak the cats into motel rooms along the way. Once we were in Vegas, we stayed at the Palace Station Casino, which is a dump these days. But oh, what a paradise it seemed to my wee mind.
Moving was great as a kid. Not so great as an adult. By the end of our packing, we tend to throw things into garbage bags because we can’t figure out how to organize the leftover stuff.
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