Moving to South Florida, Part 1

Above is the picture of the 14' UHaul truck that my wife and I rented to start our move to South Florida. Ohh, first a little pre-text. I'm moving my butt to South Florida to take a job as a tech and my wife will return to her roots in marketing and we're going to be moving into a new townhouse that we're having built. It's definately an exciting time for us and we're going to be starting our jobs next monday.

Our saga began a few weeks ago when we both learned basically at the same time that the companies that we have been interviewing with offered us jobs practically on the same day. After we learned that we had new jobs we set out to packing which took us 3 weekends to complete of getting boxes, gathering our crap up, and putting it away. We sold a lot of our furniture as well. We still have odds and ends at home right now but they'll be tossed or donated by the end of the week.

This past labor day we had the movers start putting stuff into the truck that we rented. We decided to use a company called Purple People Movers. What took me and my wife weeks to pack, they were able to move in about an hour. I have to say I was really impressed on how fast they were able to move about 40 or so boxes, my bikes, 42" TV, exercise bike, and assorted other stuff down 3 flights of stairs and pack it all into my moving truck. There were 3 of them and my wife and I just looked on in awe at how fast they were moving stuff out of the apartment. At the end of the hour the truck was all loaded up and we were ready to make our trip.

I personally have never driven something as big as a 14' UHaul truck before. It's basically a modified Ford F-350 Super Duty truck but it handled like a beast! I had to anticipate braking way in advance because there was so much stuff crammed into it the truck took extra long to make any stops. I was also having a problem with the mirrors because I wasn't used to not being able to actually look behind me. I only had the side mirrors to use and that was interesting. They were a little loose so the wind kept pushing them in so I couldn't see what was to the sides of me. That made for some interesting driving since there are so areas in Pinellas County that require one to switch lanes constantly. All in all, I think we made pretty good time. My wife followed me in her SUV with some extra stuff that we couldn't fit and it took a little over 4 hours to make it all the way down.

After we arrived, we decided to crash at my sister in laws place for the night which was really nice considering most of the day was spent packing and driving. We got up super early in the morning to unload the truck at a storage place and that took about two hours. My wife and I had lots of her family help us out and I was glad that it didin't take too long. After unloading the truck, we actually drove BACK to Tampa in her SUV to do a last cleaning of the apartment and to begin packing up the last of our things for our final move this weekend. This next trip should be very interesting considering I'm going to be bringing my two cats with me and they will meet for the first time my sister in laws cats who we will be staying with while our place is completed.

Moving is really hard work, I'm glad I only have to move to my townhouse later on this year and then for the next few years I won't be budging unless mother nature deems Florida needs to be under water for the next few thousand years.