Wednesday, July 7, 2010

Barge Right In!

Something I do NOT recommend is moving out of two houses in the space of two weeks. This has been a non-stop grind of sorting, cleaning, packing, cleaning, boxing, cleaning, stacking, cleaning, shipping, and cleaning. Enough already.

One of the undocumented features of moving from Washington to Barrow is the proximity to the barge dock. Husband came up with the idea that maybe we could ship household goods on the barge that’s bringing up our groceries. Husband had several convos with the guy on the phone (GOTP). GOTP said, no problem, relax, just bring your stuff to the staging area in Seattle. Surely it couldn’t be that easy!
Just like GOTP said, it was that easy.
We showed up with our rental truck and 42 items to ship. Husband was really smart and made sure we had an itemized list of our goods (if we hadn’t had that printed, we would have had to hand write it on the form). Was our stuff was palletized and shrink wrapped, they asked. HUH? Uh, no.
No problem. Soon the forklift guy delivered three palettes to our truck. Then the wrapping began. These guys have obviously done this before! Believe it or not, there was quite a technique involved in this process. He'd wrap it, then turn it to change direction, continue wrapping and rapped to us as he worked. Turns out he plays in a band called Bad Lattitude. His musician flavor emerged as we discussed the digital piano we were loading. (Our anniversary present to ourselves!)
Check out Travis (he let me take his picture). What a great smile and so patient with us and our piddly little load of stuff even on this busy day! You see, you get to know people quite well as you hang out in the yard. We came to understand Travis is actually from Barrow and was working in personnel for my organization when my job was being filled. So, looks like we’ll be seeing him in Barrow when the barge lands.

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