Moving Sara
Saturday the 17th, a coworker, Sean, and I moved most of Sara's belongings from her downtown St. Paul apartment to my house in Cottage Grove. Luckily the snow of the past few days had stopped, though the high for the day wasn't likely to make it far into the double digits.
Renting the U-Haul took far longer than it should have (30 minutes or more), though because the rental place didn't have a chance to check in the U-Haul, I got the use of the moving blankets for free. Some of the blankets had been used to prevent slipping on the steel floor of the truck and were icy/sandy/yucky -- and while I wouldn't have ever thought to use a clean blanket for that purpose, we used the dirty ones to prevent us from sliding all the way down the truck.
Moving Sara's stuff wasn't too bad, she had (thankfully) gotten most of it boxed up and she only had a few large items. She was, however, on the second floor and even in single digit weather I worked up enough of a sweat to justify wearing only a T-shirt.
The real fun came when we were done and wanted to leave. The back driveway, that the trash man uses, has some broken concrete, and I thought that the multiple inches of compacted snow (about 8 inches had fallen that week) would even out the lip in the driveway from the broken/sunken concrete, but apparently it didn't and that lip (and the snow/ice) seemed to be all it took to prevent the U-Haul from backing out of the driveway.
I gave it more gas, hoping that I could burn through the ice. After a while I got a lot of smoke from the passenger side tires, but no movement. I tried rocking the truck back and forth. It got going a little bit after a while, but never made it over that lip. I tried turning the front wheels, but that only works on front wheel drive cars.
At that point I looked over at Sean and asked if I should go forward down the driveway in hopes of getting up some speed, or would I just get stuck farther down the driveway. Sean pointed out that the tow trucks just use a winch with a long cable, so it doesn't matter how far down we get stuck. Right-o, down the driveway we go.
I went down about 15 feet and tried from there but the truck wouldn't back up. Uh-oh. Well, let's go farther down the driveway (about half way, say 50 feet). Whew, the truck would back up from there. I tried to get a running start, but it wasn't enough. Though the speedometer read close to 40mph, the truck was only going about 2mph and that wasn't enough to get us over the lip. I did this many times. One time I almost made it out, but the truck slid sideways and started to take out the recycling cans (large 64 gallon trash cans) on the side of the driveway and I had to stop.
This went on and on for over 15 minutes. I was surprised with all the tire squealing/smoke and engine revving noise that no one ever came down to watch (or point and laugh) or complain. Eventually the snow/ice was worn down enough so that when I gunned the truck from about 65 feet down the driveway, and kept the rear wheels spinning at 40mph the whole way, I got enough momentum/traction to get over the lip and out of the driveway. Whew. No need to call road side assistance, but I was sure that I put on at least two miles (at $0.99 a mile) in that driveway.
After that, it was pretty standard unloading the truck kind of stuff, though everything in the truck was at about 5 degrees F, which required us to wear gloves to be able to handle any of it. Thankfully I'm not a professional. It's hard work.
Renting the U-Haul took far longer than it should have (30 minutes or more), though because the rental place didn't have a chance to check in the U-Haul, I got the use of the moving blankets for free. Some of the blankets had been used to prevent slipping on the steel floor of the truck and were icy/sandy/yucky -- and while I wouldn't have ever thought to use a clean blanket for that purpose, we used the dirty ones to prevent us from sliding all the way down the truck.
Moving Sara's stuff wasn't too bad, she had (thankfully) gotten most of it boxed up and she only had a few large items. She was, however, on the second floor and even in single digit weather I worked up enough of a sweat to justify wearing only a T-shirt.
The real fun came when we were done and wanted to leave. The back driveway, that the trash man uses, has some broken concrete, and I thought that the multiple inches of compacted snow (about 8 inches had fallen that week) would even out the lip in the driveway from the broken/sunken concrete, but apparently it didn't and that lip (and the snow/ice) seemed to be all it took to prevent the U-Haul from backing out of the driveway.
I gave it more gas, hoping that I could burn through the ice. After a while I got a lot of smoke from the passenger side tires, but no movement. I tried rocking the truck back and forth. It got going a little bit after a while, but never made it over that lip. I tried turning the front wheels, but that only works on front wheel drive cars.
At that point I looked over at Sean and asked if I should go forward down the driveway in hopes of getting up some speed, or would I just get stuck farther down the driveway. Sean pointed out that the tow trucks just use a winch with a long cable, so it doesn't matter how far down we get stuck. Right-o, down the driveway we go.
I went down about 15 feet and tried from there but the truck wouldn't back up. Uh-oh. Well, let's go farther down the driveway (about half way, say 50 feet). Whew, the truck would back up from there. I tried to get a running start, but it wasn't enough. Though the speedometer read close to 40mph, the truck was only going about 2mph and that wasn't enough to get us over the lip. I did this many times. One time I almost made it out, but the truck slid sideways and started to take out the recycling cans (large 64 gallon trash cans) on the side of the driveway and I had to stop.
This went on and on for over 15 minutes. I was surprised with all the tire squealing/smoke and engine revving noise that no one ever came down to watch (or point and laugh) or complain. Eventually the snow/ice was worn down enough so that when I gunned the truck from about 65 feet down the driveway, and kept the rear wheels spinning at 40mph the whole way, I got enough momentum/traction to get over the lip and out of the driveway. Whew. No need to call road side assistance, but I was sure that I put on at least two miles (at $0.99 a mile) in that driveway.
After that, it was pretty standard unloading the truck kind of stuff, though everything in the truck was at about 5 degrees F, which required us to wear gloves to be able to handle any of it. Thankfully I'm not a professional. It's hard work.
posted by Mark at 5:26 PM
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