Cargando

Miercoles, 05 Sep 2012.  The day before: Oh, worry, worry,worry. Is everything ready for the big day? Here it is September 4th. Kitties had their “traveling” health exam this morning, which included all the papers that will allow cats to enter Mexico, with documentation in English & Spanish. Now we have to get them across the border within 10 days after the date the papers were signed. While Carmen was at the vet, Dan disassembled the rest of the futons and zip-tied the parts together. Now no place to sit off the floor except the white dining chairs we will leave in the house. Will the movers really be here as we were told, on September 5? We will call and ask them if we are still on for tomorrow. With phone in hand, we found we could not place the call to Mitchel Moving in Everett, as a recording reminded us that we had canceled our long distance service. Bummer...worry some more. Then David called and we explained our dilemma. He gave us his charge phone card number. He was also anxious to know when we were going to be moving out, so that his plans to move in could also proceed apace. Carmen called the movers. They assured us that they would be there for loading (cargando) the truck about 9am tomorrow, Wednesday September 5^th.

Hard to sleep. We rose early to feed the cats, eat breakfast, and put our felines (who just know something is up with all the stuff in the house now in piles of boxes) in carrying cases and then in our car for the day to keep them safe, and to get them used to being in car. Oh, so many little things that we finished before the movers arrived, including disassembling the queen-size bed that that Dan had designed and John Janda had built for us so many years ago. .

First to arrive at 9am was a young local fellow named Dakota, a few minutes after the driver had called to say he'd just exited I-5 and would be there shortly. The Mitchel Moving truck bearing the Atlas Van Lines logo pulled up a half hour later and another 30 minutes later the third fellow, Josh, also a local, arrived. The head fellow, Doug, the driver, asked when we were planning to leave. Carmen told him that we planned to leave early the next morning. He told us that they usually took two days at jobs. She told him that we were told that as most items were already pre-boxed that the company had allocated only one day for their labors. Hrumph, he says.

So here is how it went. We had boxed everything that was not fragile, and had all odd shaped items together, on each floor. We found that by far the cheapest place with a selection of inexpensive cartons for household moves was Home Depot, and for the heavy garage/shop stuff Dan had also been buying various sizes of toolboxes as they came on sale at the local hardware store. Some items we had placed into plastic milk crates, in some case double height with one crate turned upside down on the other and zip-tied together. Also, we put all the electric-containing boxes separated from the others, since Mitchel staff had told us over the phone that electrics all had to go in one container (although Teresa at Strom-White said this was no longer the case). Altogether, we had just over 100 such units. Each had been entered on a spreadsheet showing box number, description, whether electric or not, and for electric items, make, model & serial number, plus a location for unnumbered items the movers would pack up. Dan could sort/re-sort the list on any column, so we had a pretty good handle on all that would be shipped. We provided a pre-move copy of the spreadsheet to Teresa so she could get a headstart at formatting things for the aduana people at the border.

All outdoors items were inside in appropriate bunches. We had taken all the furniture apart, and tied pieces together with zip-ties. We had bundled similar size uniform pieces (shelves, etc) with saran film banding. Did everything we could do to make the loading go quickly. Carmen has had professional movers before and thought it probably would all be loaded by 3pm. All the boxes we filled were left open to be inspected, then taped and sealed by movers, so that insurance would be in force. We had printed a short list of the contents of each box on one of the inside top flaps, to aid us when unpacking. Each pre-filled box had our number and last name on the top.

First, no one had told the driver that he had to write our box number (the number that we had put on each box), on his packing list along with the sticker number he put on the item. Next we had been told by Strom-White, to stay with the movers and be sure all was done correctly because Mexican customs is very particular. Our own plan had been to have one of us follow the driver around noting what company number sticker he applied to each of our items, and have the other stand by the moving van noting what items were loaded. Try as we might, the head fellow told us in no uncertain terms that they knew what they were doing and we needed to get out of their way. During the day, we heard him call his main office to complain about the two helpers they had assigned him. The fellow wrapping the fragile items took many, many times longer doing so than either of us would have done. We were able to watch the fellow loading into the truck at end of the driveway from our deck. We thought he was doing a good job, but apparently he also was slow.

For Mexico, we had to be packed into a number of sanitized plywood crates (“lift vans”) that are 7x7x4, and easily moved by forklift at the changeover at the Laredo warehouse and at the border. They brought the four empties the estimator (who had visited us last Spring before anything was packed up) had determined, plus another just in case. Our load actually filled the four vans, plus half of the extra one. The half-load will get repacked tightly into a half van box, 7x4x4, at the Mitchel warehouse. It does indeed take much longer to fit into every corner in big crates of this type, than just placing items onto the truck bed, as would be the case for a domestic move. Finally come 7:30pm the two guys went home, and the truck driver sat down to do his paper work, which took well over an hour. Meanwhile David had stopped by expecting all to have been loaded by 3pm. Sally Davis, our dear neighbor had invited us for dinner, presumably at the end of the day when the movers would have left. Carmen had gone over to Sally's house to borrow her vacuum (since ours was now packed), using it to spin around the house as each room was emptied. When she returned the vacuum, she told Sally we would have to cancel dinner, as we just could not hold her family up any longer. She gave us our meal on paper plates. We finally got to eat at 9pm. Delicious & filling, much appreciated as we had eaten little during this very busy day. What a push this has been! Made our bed of foam pads on the basement floor. Carmen did not want to leave foam pieces or dents on the bedroom rug. Brought kitties inside out of the car. Got to sleep about midnight to get up at 4:30 the next morn. Yeah!!! Our furniture is on it's way to Laredo, where it will go into a Strom-White storage unit until it is processed across the border.