Last Saturday was supposed to be our moving day but everything went to hell in a hand-basket once the weather station announced that a severe snow storm was on its way.
It was said to start Friday afternoon so I looked out my office window around 3pm to check out the conditions. It didn't look too bad out really. Not at all in fact. Grey skies but no snow or rain in sight... Not yet at least.
We had rented a Uhaul truck the week before and were supposed to pick it up on Saturday morning. I got a call the day before from the company saying that the pick up location had moved from the one 5 minutes away from my house to the neighboring city 40 minutes away!
And so started my frustration.
That evening on Friday the weather began to rear its ugly head so we went outside and to shovel the driveway, hoping to get on top of it a little and make our job easier the next day.
I took these photos right after we finished.
You can't tell from the photos how hard it was snowing but as you can see the driveway was already covered by half a centimeter of snow immediately after we had finished shoveling it.
The next day when we woke up it was like we had never even cleared it at all. We spent about an hour re-shoveling and digging out the massive pile at the end of the driveway that was left by the snow plow when it did our street.
The plows had done a good job during the night so the roads weren't too bad all things considered. We made it to the location to pick up the Uhaul but that's where our frustrations really turned up a notch. After going through a pointless self-pickup process we were told that we needed to retrieve the keys from a person behind the counter. So much for contactless service rolls eyes until head flips over. I tried the stores front door and found it locked and then called the location 6 times with no response. Finally the guy called me back saying "I was going to call you to tell you that I live in the country and can't get in to my shop." "Oh yeah? Well why the fuck didn't you call me? If I'd have known I wouldn't have made the 40 minute drive to get the truck." My wife and I were fucking pissed. He then re-routed us to another location that had a truck available that was 6 feet longer. I didn't feel comfortable driving a 26 foot truck but I was like "Fuck it. I had paid for the extra $15 insurance so, what the fuck do I care at this point?"
We got there and of course the driveway was full of snow as well. The shop owner didn't bother shoveling it he just mentioned that I might have a hard time getting the vehicle out because the truck was parked in a really bad position. That wasn't an understatement. I couldn't get it out at all. I had to turn the wheels to avoid hitting the building but doing so just made the tires spin in the snow. I couldn't go forward or back so I gave the guy the keys back and told him to cancel the reservation. He gave me a contact number to cancel and re-book at another location. The guy on the phone was nice and did sympathize with our frustration. He gave us a $50 credit and said that he would call us back in an hour with another pickup spot. He turned out to be pretty useless in the end though since he never ended up calling us back. My wife booked another truck online for next weekend and now I'm just praying that it will all work out. I'm already anticipating having to drive to another city to get a truck though, and mentally preparing to deal with all kinds of bullshit.
In the meantime we are living in our house for another week without any of our kitchen stuff. Its either packed in boxes or has already been delivered to our new address. We ended up bringing several boxes over with our car. It's already been a huge pain in the ass trying to make food for the day and dinner at night so I really hope that it works out next weekend. Fingers crossed it will.