By Friday, October 16, we thought we had everything in place. We had our estimate for moving both the car and the apartment innards. We were told that the movers would arrive in Lakeland on either the following Monday or Tuesday, and that the car would be picked up on Monday. We had made all the lodging and transportation arrangements. Sue and I would fly into Orlando on Friday, take a rental car into Lakeland and check into a hotel. One of us would take Sue's folks back to Orlando on Monday to catch a flight to Long Beach, where her brother would pick them up. We would stay in Lakeland till Thursday the 22nd to allow for any unexpected delays. Then we'd fly back and cool our heels for a week or so until all the stuff magically appeared at the doorstep of the new place.
About the new place... in spite of also being subjected to the repeated phrase "Are you nuts?", Sue's folks mustered up a lot of faith and trusted us to find a senior apartment in Santa Clarita that would work for them. If it were just me making the arrangements, it would be like hiring a 5 year old to be your nutritionist, but thankfully Sue was there to apply more discriminating standards that kept us from leasing the first place we saw that allowed a big-screen TV in the kitchen. We found what we thought was a nice enough place about 20 minutes from where we live. It's a "seniors-only" apartment complex, meaning you have to be over 55 to live there. When I mentioned to the leasing agent that heck, I was old enough to move in there, he turned pale and started muttering about limited availability and certain IQ requirements until we assured him that we had no intention of ever moving again. We just liked making other people go through the experience.
So we arrived in Florida on Friday and spent the weekend making last-minute preparations for the move. Sue's parents told us that they had received a phone call from the car-transport people on Friday advising that the driver should arrive on Monday sometime, and would give us at least 4 hours advance notice before he arrived. The movers also checked in, confirming that they wouldn't arrive till Tuesday.
On Monday morning, we hadn't heard anything from the car folks, so Sue took her folks to the airport while I hung around in the apartment, disconnecting the 80 miles of wiring behind the entertainment center and waiting for a call. By about 11 am, I decided maybe I better check in with car-movers central. They assured me that the driver was on his way, was currently in Coral Springs, and would let us know when he was 4 hours out. Not being a local, and to assure myself that Coral Springs wasn't the name of an offshore oil rig, I consulted Mapquest and discovered that Coral Springs was down near Miami, about 4 hours from Lakeland. So at about 2:00 pm, I called the dispatcher again to let them know that my calculations might not be correct (being the native of another time zone and all), but if the driver was still over 4 hours away, maybe he ought to know what I look like when I'm rousted out of bed in the middle of the night. The dispatcher suggested I call the driver directly and gave me his cell phone number. The driver seemed a bit surprised to get my call (he didn't seem at all amused when, instead of saying "hello", I opened with "Breaker one-nine"), and was even more surprised when he found out I was expecting him that day. "Are you nuts?" he replied (that phrase is really catching on, at least among the people I hang out with), "I'm down in Miami. Didn't the office tell you I'd be there tomorrow?" I told him no sweat, we were fine as long as we knew we didn't have to meet him in our jammies. Sue and I finished up some work at the apartment and went back to the hotel, ready for the big day tomorrow.
The next morning, on our way to the apartment, we got a call from the car transport driver, letting me know that he had parked his truck at a convenient local abandoned truck stop. He wasn't familiar with Lakeland and asked if I could meet him there. Of course, I wasn't familiar with Lakeland either, but I dropped Sue off at the apartment and had him talk me in using the cell phone and the reliable Marco! Polo! navigation method. Once I found him, I realized that he had wanted me to meet him there with the actual car to be transported, rather than the rental car I showed up in. I wished he had made that clear instead of assuming I had more than an ounce of common sense, and I almost told him so before the ounce that I did have made me realize that you don't antagonize someone who, with a flick of a switch, can offload your vehicle while doing 70 down an interstate. So I gave Sue a call, she brought over the Corolla, it was loaded up, and we returned to the apartment to await the movers.
They showed up at about 11:00 am... all two of them. They were hired to both pack and load, but they probably figured that a one-bedroom senior apartment couldn't take too long to polish off. Both of them spoke English with a very heavy Russian accent. Unfortunately, my only experience with the Russian language was the hours I clocked with Boris and Natasha on Saturday mornings as a kid... But these guys were the real deal. They spoke fluent English, but it all seemed to come from the throat and sort of percolate out through the lips like a bubbling tar pit. Every time they spoke to me, it took me about 30 seconds to respond as my brain tried to calculate the best estimate of what they had said. I really could have used one of those UN headsets.
All material copyright 2009 Chuck Thornton