North of the border

I took a day off from work today to aid a buddy in need who was moving north to Vancouver, BC. It all started off so innocently this morning when I arrived at Matt's soon to be former house in West Seattle. There were some last minute details to work out with Matt's soon to be former car but I was able to fill a few more boxes and clear more of his worldly belongings to a staging area just outside his bedroom. Once we felt nearly everything was packed we left to take care of the sale of his car, pick up the rental U-Haul, and get some lunch.

It didn't take much to move the large and small items from Matt's place into the truck and, although later than originally planned, we powered on some two-way radios borrowed this morning from Gavin and hit the road. Unfortunately everyone else hit the road this afternoon in hopes to get an early start on President's weekend. From West Seattle we spent over an hour-and-a-half just to make it north of Everett. Although things seemed to clear up the adventure had just begun. I followed the tubby U-Haul Matt drove and we frequently exchanged notes on how large a piece of crap it was. My favorite feature wasn't the "Mom's Attic" (known to me as the "Granny Nook") nor the air conditioning but the lack of a speedometer. It seems it was upgraded to media player visualization since Matt swore it was thumping to some techno he found on an obscure radio station near Bellingham. Oh yeah, there was more trouble once we saw a rather specific traffic warning sign foretelling of an accident ahead. The two lanes of traffic going north ground to a pace of only a few MPH. Once an exit with food was in sight we took it and downed some teriyaki dinner before continuing.

Fortunately nothing further came of our time on the road. Even the Canadian customs gentlemen waived Matt through even though he bore a large moving van of material with him. The guard noted the customs sheet with 15+ categories of items Matt handed him and said something to the effect of "I can see you went to a lot of trouble putting this list together... but you can just go on through since there's a long line behind you." Matt was pretty shocked and surprised at the lack of inspection but we took this as a sign and continued into Vancouver, BC.

The plan was to meet up with Matt new building manager to acquire keys to his place. We were running really late and didn't get to the "El Navaro" building until after 9pm tonight. We pulled the truck up behind the building in a not-so-legal spot and I stood watch in the cab while Matt summoned the manager. He used the intercom to ring his room. Matt called the manager's room via cell phone. He also rang the manager's cell and office phone. Nothing. No lights came on, only one number had voicemail, and we were left sitting with no place to unload all of Matt's possessions. This we did not need.

We both spent some time scouting for a legal spot for the truck all the while grappling with the idea that neither of us wanted to leave a moving truck on the side of some street or in a poorly lit lot in the middle of this city. We couldn't think of a more clear announcement saying "Stuff inside. Come and get it," than that. We hadn't figured out a solution nor could we reach the missing building manager. A police car passed us in the ally where we sat in the truck and promptly stopped then backed up. Two officers got out, asked for and examined our IDs, and grilled us about our intentions. Why were were parked here?
What's the building manager's name? Phone number? What room were you moving into? What's the address of this building? They were both actually very kind and even offered up a possible spot for parking the truck overnight.

Although we avoided a tussle with the cops we needed to make a decision. Eleven nearly rolled around before Matt had a chat with a valet for a nearby hotel. He recommended a nearby Safeway parking lot that is well-lit and is known to look the other way to overnight parkers. We headed over there, chatted it up with some store room workers, then settled down for the night in an adjoining pay-to-park lot. Now legally parked and paid for the night we began our night of waiting in the cab of a frigid moving truck.

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