May 11, 2006

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U-Haul. No, really. Next time u can fucking haul it.

Bettyjoan and I are both blogging about a particular experience during the move to her new apartment, a move in which I assisted heavily. Very heavily. Some might even say that it was more like Betty occasionally gave Jason and I a hand in the move. If I'd have known all the work this would take, I'd have never started dating Betty's sister, Jeanette, for whom I gave up the chance for a torrid extramarital affair with my Property professor.

Anyway, on Saturday of last weekend, Betty and I woke up "before early" as my mother would say. You see, I have a car, so my first duty of the day was to drive Betty to the U-Haul place in NE so that she could pick up her ten-foot U-Haul truck. A U-Haul truck that Jeanette insisted would hold everything they owned, no problem. There were a number of problems with this plan, but two really big ones:

1. The truck did not, in fact, fit even close to all of their stuff.
2. The truck did not, in fact, make it Northwest past 7th Avenue. Yep. It stalled out at 7th and Mount Vernon (Massachusetts Ave. at that point).

Now this was no ordinary stalling. Betty was driving the U-Haul and following me. I was very careful to ensure that the path we followed involved no changing of multiple lanes, no left turns without a green arrow, etc. So we faithfully pulled into the left turn lane from 7th onto Massachusetts. We got our green arrow. I turned. I glanced in my mirror. Betty had not turned. Hmmm. I realized she had stalled, and I pulled over, into the taxi stand of the Convention Center, and called her.

"It won't start!" she cried.

"What do you mean it won't start?" I asked, idiotically.

"It stalled, and it won't start again." By this time cars behind her were pulling around her and honking a lot.

"Um... okay. I'll come look at it. Hang on."

As I approached the U-Haul truck, she got out and handed me the keys. I got into the truck, made sure it was in park, and tried turning it on again. The engine was chugging, but wouldn't start. Okay. Problem with the starter or fuel injector. Is this truck fuel injected? I don't know. Either way, it's not like I can fix it right here. We called the U-Haul place, and they explained that we could either call the 1-800-BREAKDOWN number and wait up to two to four hours for assistance to come, or we could go the easier route and wait for the manager of that location to send someone to help, which, they explained, would be much easier for them and faster for us. [Note: Not to get ahead of myself, but that person arrived two and a half hours, several angry phone calls, some strong words, and some shenanigans later. Oh, to have called 1-800-BREAKDOWN.)

Betty was on the curb at that point, frantically flailing her arms in a motion apparently designed to tell the cars piling up behind the truck that they should go around. She explained to me that the truck didn't have hazard lights. Odd, I thought. Her urgent arm waving, like a cruel, cruel game of charades, was to continue for the next hour and a half.

Eventually, I decided to look for the button, knob, or stalk that was supposed to control the hazard lights. Sure enough, there was a button marked with the familiar red triangle right there on the dashboard, to the right of the steering wheel. I turned it on, triumphantly, and we sat down on the side of the road assuming that now one of our problems was over, and everyone would know to go around. Unfortunately, we forgot to account for the D.C. driver factor. So for the next hour we watched as driver after dumbass driver pulled up behind the truck, waited until the light turned green, honked for a while, then finally tried to go around, each one almost getting into an accident with the cars going straight.

At some point early on in the ordeal, some guy (Possibly homeless. What is it with ambiguously homeless men trying to help me out?) came over to us, and offered to help us push it. The U-Haul truck. Push it? No thanks. But Betty continued to be very disturbed by the truck blocking the lane, and continued to wave her arms in patterns that were increasingly effective at warding off traffic. I preferred simply to sit back and laugh at the drivers. We did a lot of laughing that day.

Finally, around an hour and a half in, an ominous, late-model, black Chevy Suburban pulled up behind the U-Haul. Betty managed to communicate that the U-Haul was broken down. So, the black SUV pulled around it into the other lane, willfully blocked that lane, and parked. Two expressionless men wearing black suits and black sunglasses got out of the car. Without saying a word, they opened up the trunk, and started looking around it. After a few seconds, they emerged holding red batons and started walking toward us. Still without saying anything, they pulled the caps off the red sticks and the ends started glowing bright, with sparks coming out. They were putting down flares! The two men put down two flares behind the U-Haul, still said nothing, and got back into their vehicle. We assumed they were secret service or FBI or something. It turns out they were only Capitol Police. I had no idea Capitol Police were so badass, but they are.

Eventually, the lady arrived from the U-Haul place. Despite the fact that I told her manager earlier, and her when she arrived, that it wasn't an electrical problem, she insisted on attempting to jump start the U-Haul truck. In the middle of traffic, we were then taking up two lanes. When the jump failed, she then decided that we'd go back to the U-Haul place and get a new truck, but that we couldn't leave the truck in the turn lane. We had somehow to get it over to the side of the road.

So she decided she would push our U-Haul truck with her U-Haul truck. I've been towed before. I've pushed cars on foot, and I've pulled them by rope. But I have never driven a vehicle being propelled by another vehicle behind it smashing against it repeatedly. I had very strong doubts that she was authorized to do that with the trucks, and I had doubts about the effects such a pushing would have on the bumpers and paintjobs of the trucks. But, secure in the knowledge that she (or at worst, Betty) would be responsible for the damage, we went along with the plan. I got into the driver's seat and "drove," sans power steering and power brakes, across four lanes of traffic, while listening to the sickening crunching noises made each time her truck separated and collided with ours. But the pushing had the desired effect. We eventually were moved to the right, across 7th Ave, to a parking spot on the side of Mass Ave. Okay. Only two and a half hours wasted.

They gave us a brand new U-Haul truck, which served us nicely (though it still didn't fit even close to all the girls' stuff), and Jason and I spent the next three years moving the girls into their new place near U St. and 16th. This process involved (so far) five trips back and forth from Bethesda with my Explorer, in addition to the trip with the full U-Haul. Yeah. What a wonderful, hilarious, bizarre day. Almost as absurd and frustrating as the studying I should have been doing.

Posted at May 11, 2006 4:42 PM | Comments (5)

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