Y'know, I don't actually *have* any 'moving the relatives' horror stories. Odd, considering that I've had one hotel bombed, another with a meth lab in the next room, had a high-tension power line fall *almost* on me on the road... but I digress.
I do have a minor one about moving my own family, though, about 15 years ago now.
My father is great at Getting Things Done, but not at GTD in any kind of organized fashion. He substitutes elbow grease and sweat for planning, and in general it works. But when we were moving out of our previous house, and *had* to be out by midnight on M-Day... there was a little problem.
Basically, Dad used to auto-body repair work out of the garage as a sideline. Show-floor quality work, too -- people *raved* about his paint jobs and body restorations. It's b/c he's a rabid perfectionist when it comes to his own work. Unfortunately, that also means that it takes *time,* and he had a more-than-40hrs day job to do too.
So, we've been moving for weeks -- small loads of nonessential stuff in the pickup, me and Dad doing the house>truck>house heavy lifitng, Mom and my sisters doing all the un/packing. By late afternoon on M-Day, the house is *stripped*... but there's still a customer car left in the garage, needing its final paint, buff, and polish.
Plus all the gear you need to fully paint and resurface an automobile.
My car was gone with my mother. Dad and I had the pickup and the customer vehicle. The "plan" was to finish the customer vehicle, load all the remaining gear (including the *big* air compressor) into the truck, and convoy the 35+ miles to the new house (good thing we weren't moving too far), all before midnight.
I ended up crashing on the carpet in the house, the only "furnishing" left. Around 1AM or so, Dad shakes me awake, looking even worse than I felt, and we start loading the truck. We're already well past our midnight deadline, but hey, it's not like the new owners are going to show up before daybreak.
I haven't seen a compact pickup truck so overloaded since the last time I was in Mexico. But there was no way to make two trips, we were both past our last legs and onto our last fingertips, and hey, we could drive slow -- we were going to take the back roads, for obvious reasons.
Problem is, Dad's been going for 30hrs+ w/o any sleep at this point, he's driving the customer vehicle behind me, I'm doing maybe 35-40mph, and we're in severe danger of wrecking the customer's new paint job (and a lot more) due to Driving While Zombie.
Things actually worked out, though. Mom dragged the girls out of bed and came looking for us, and found our little convoy weaving down the road about halfway along. She stuck chatterbox-sis with Dad with instructions to not let him fall asleep, and took over convoy duties to let Dad get back up to reasonable speeds and get home before he zoned out. Me, I just kept on truckin' until we finally got home and used a crowbar to pry my fingers off the steering wheel.
If I ever have to move myself, I'm going to hire a service or something.
I do have a minor one about moving my own family, though, about 15 years ago now.
My father is great at Getting Things Done, but not at GTD in any kind of organized fashion. He substitutes elbow grease and sweat for planning, and in general it works. But when we were moving out of our previous house, and *had* to be out by midnight on M-Day... there was a little problem.
Basically, Dad used to auto-body repair work out of the garage as a sideline. Show-floor quality work, too -- people *raved* about his paint jobs and body restorations. It's b/c he's a rabid perfectionist when it comes to his own work. Unfortunately, that also means that it takes *time,* and he had a more-than-40hrs day job to do too.
So, we've been moving for weeks -- small loads of nonessential stuff in the pickup, me and Dad doing the house>truck>house heavy lifitng, Mom and my sisters doing all the un/packing. By late afternoon on M-Day, the house is *stripped*... but there's still a customer car left in the garage, needing its final paint, buff, and polish.
Plus all the gear you need to fully paint and resurface an automobile.
My car was gone with my mother. Dad and I had the pickup and the customer vehicle. The "plan" was to finish the customer vehicle, load all the remaining gear (including the *big* air compressor) into the truck, and convoy the 35+ miles to the new house (good thing we weren't moving too far), all before midnight.
I ended up crashing on the carpet in the house, the only "furnishing" left. Around 1AM or so, Dad shakes me awake, looking even worse than I felt, and we start loading the truck. We're already well past our midnight deadline, but hey, it's not like the new owners are going to show up before daybreak.
I haven't seen a compact pickup truck so overloaded since the last time I was in Mexico. But there was no way to make two trips, we were both past our last legs and onto our last fingertips, and hey, we could drive slow -- we were going to take the back roads, for obvious reasons.
Problem is, Dad's been going for 30hrs+ w/o any sleep at this point, he's driving the customer vehicle behind me, I'm doing maybe 35-40mph, and we're in severe danger of wrecking the customer's new paint job (and a lot more) due to Driving While Zombie.
Things actually worked out, though. Mom dragged the girls out of bed and came looking for us, and found our little convoy weaving down the road about halfway along. She stuck chatterbox-sis with Dad with instructions to not let him fall asleep, and took over convoy duties to let Dad get back up to reasonable speeds and get home before he zoned out. Me, I just kept on truckin' until we finally got home and used a crowbar to pry my fingers off the steering wheel.
If I ever have to move myself, I'm going to hire a service or something.