At this point, while the movers were surveying the interior of the building, I figured I'd better consult the apartment building staff... surely, in the long history of the Lakeland Presbyterian Apartments, they had encountered this kind of problem before. I couldn't be the first guy to arrange for Optimus Prime to come pick up furniture, could I?
I started with the maintenance guy, asking him if there were another alternative to setting up a base camp at the mouth of the alley, but he deferred me to a young lady whose name escapes me, but who apparently was the official manager of the building. She came out and surveyed the situation, then asked me, "And what can I help you with?" I asked her if there was an alternative to using the loading dock area. She said no. Okay, then, would it be possible to leave the truck in its current position for loading? She said no. Okay, then, I asked her, could you offer me any alternative that would get the furniture loaded into the truck? Without a pause, she said, "Get a smaller truck." I have to admit, it was an elegant solution, and one I would have suggested myself if I had had a Delorean and a flux capacitor.
We stared at each other without blinking for about 10 seconds. Finally, I said, " So let me make sure I understand so I can figure out my next move. Because this is as far as the truck can travel, the only alternative you're offering me is to tell the movers here to go home, cancel my flight back to California, go out and rent a U-Haul, load up the contents of this apartment myself, and drive it 3000 miles to California?"
We stared at each other for another 10 seconds, and it occurred to me that we were blazing frontiers in pregnant pauses. She finally induced labor by saying, "Let me talk with Gary." She marched into the building, leaving me alone with Godzilla, King of the Monster Trucks. But not for long. The movers, as if waiting for the coast to clear, emerged from the alley. I asked them if they could do the job with the truck in its current position, and they nodded, after explaining that the increased walking distance would involve extra rubles.
Gary, next in the chain of command, came out and I explained that if we could keep the truck parked in its current position, the movers could load it up through the loading dock doors and I would stay on the good side of the Russian Mafia. Having watched enough CSI to know how my body would end up, Gary said that was fine, and moving day finally started moving.
Keep in mind that the truck was parked at the east end of the building, and the apartment was at the west end of the 3rd floor hall, so basically these guys had to schlep everything the full length of the building to put it on the truck... and they still had to pack everything. It was now 12:30 pm.
Sue and I sat out in the hallway while they got to work, so we'd be accessible, but not underfoot. We stayed in that hallway till 8:30 that night, when the movers finally finished. During the course of the day, Sue offered to get them something to eat, and they requested pizza, but Sue had second thoughts about getting them anything that might hold up their progress, so she brought back a bag of chips instead, making me glad I don't understand Russian.
I spent some of my hallway time on my cell phone with the moving company, letting them know that the truck was fitting in the alley about as well as I fit into my high school jeans, and assuring them that I was aware there the price would change to take into account the extra shoe leather. Then I sent an email to that same effect to Mike, the guy that I originally booked the job with. It included the two pictures above of the truck's position vis-a-vis the alley. I wanted to keep him in the loop and let him know that, even though I hadn't anticipated that the truck they sent would be the same size as the town they sent it to, we were dealing with the problem.
When he replied, Mike pointed out that he asked if the property could accommodate a 53-foot truck, and I had given a thumbs-up. I explained that the driver was telling me it was a 75-foot truck, but I really didn't know if we were sharing the same terminology, or even the same units of measure... or the same language, for that matter. At any rate, I told him that I was just thankful that we could still accomplish the move and that the bill could be adjusted accordingly, so he might be prepared for any irate Russian phone calls.
All material copyright 2009 Chuck Thornton