The Big Move, Part 1

So I know that I said in the beginning that this blog was going to cover the big move, but it turns out that when you're actually in the process of moving you're way too busy to write. We've officially been in Minneapolis since Tuesday night, so let me take you through some of the things we've been through to get here.

5/18/2007 - I Haul for U-Haul
I made a reservation with U-Haul on 5/11 for our move on 5/19, but apparently that wasn't early enough for the booming Rochester market. The way it works is you make a reservation for the size of truck or trailer you want (I went with the 24 foot, 3-4 bedroom variety), and they call you the day before telling you where to pick up your truck in the morning. It would've worked out all right except for two things:

1) We had to pick the truck up in Austin, over 40 miles away.
2) We had to pick it up at 9:30 Saturday morning when we had told all of our friends to show up at 9:00 to help load the truck

Luckily, the people at the reservation center were very understandable when I called them and said we could pick up the truck on Friday without being charged for an extra day. The only hitch was that the Austin rental place closed at 5:00 PM, so we had to get moving. Additionally, we had to make it back to Rochester quickly because we were going to a 7:00 movie with friends.

It seemed like everybody and their brother was clogging the roads around Rochester that day. I don't know if it was just the typical early Friday rush or if there were a lot of people trying to get away for the weekend to enjoy the nice weather (I saw a lot of travel trailers out and about). Either way, without breaking too many speed laws, we managed to get to Austin at about 4:55.

Now we just had to find our rental place. There are two U-Haul rental centers in Austin, both of them conveniently named West Side something or other. We were looking for West Side Auto Repair. According to the address and map at the U-Haul site, to get there you exit the freeway and turn left. When we got to that exit, however, we noticed a large collection of U-Haul trucks to our right. Straining our eyes to read the sign we could just make out "West Side...". Thinking it was the other one, I turned left. Two u-turns later, we ended up right back there at West Side Auto Repair. It was 5:03. Stupid lying maps.

Luckily, the place was still open and we rented our truck without a hitch. The drive back to Rochester was fairly uneventful... except for the fact that I took off down the highway in the wrong direction and the speedometer in the truck didn't work. Apparently I can't read road signs when I'm driving something big and new. After a quick conference with Meaghan at the next exit, we decided that she would lead the way back to Rochester since she had a working speedometer. It was a long, slow, bumpy ride, but we made it back in time to go to our 7:00 showing of 28 Weeks Later. I'll talk about that later.