What a way to spend a Saturday

Quote of the Day:

"You can't argue with idiots." - George Hosek

Last Saturday was one of the best saturdays I've had yet. The morning was great - sleeping in until 11; mass at noon at the Cathedral in downtown Toronto; lunch about 2:00 with the guys (2 got back from New York that morning.) Then the call came.

"We're helping Flan move and we're having trouble with the U-Haul truck."

First question: "Didn't you see the documentary that W-5 did?"

Well, apparently they hadn't. W-5, a Canadian TV station, documented a study done on U-Haul trucks. According to their findings, U-Haul is terrible for automobile quality - in fact, all of the trucks are insured out of Arizona, because Arizona has the lowest standard for auto safety measures, or something like that. At any rate, it's terrible.

So we all pile into the Frassati House van and drive down to Fran's old apartment. We get there and the U-Haul has been packed to the roof, literally. There's a few things that have to be put in the van because there's no room, so we load that in. Meanwhile Dave (a different Dave) is on the phone with U-Haul in Arizona, trying to get a mechanic to come and jump-start the truck.
Finally, we are told that a mechanic is on the way, so we all sit back to wait. 20 minutes pass, no phone call from the mechanic, nothing. So the Frassati boys decide to go pick up some jumper cables, first because the van didn't have a set, and second because we didn't know if "He'll be there in 15 minutes, (plus 10 for downtown traffic, and 10 for unseen problems)" meant 15 minutes or 4 hours. So they head out.

The mechanic got there on time (which was nice) and he got the truck up and running in no time. He warned us to let it run for 40 minutes before trying to turn it off and re-start it, so we sat back to wait for the Frassati guys to return, because we couldn't fit anyone but the driver and one passenger in the U-Haul. (There were 5 people that packed the truck, plus the four of us that showed up to help unpack.)

Anyway, the Frassati boys were taking their time returning with the (unneeded) jumper cables, so Dave and I decided to drive to the new apartment and start unloading, then the rest of the crew would show up later. Low and behold, in the middle of downtown traffic (in the middle of Chinatown, no less, on a 2-lane street) during a standstill in the traffic, the engine stops running. So I get out and start directing traffic while Dave phones up U-Haul, the Frassati guys, and the people back at the original apartment.

So we do the whole Arizona process again, and we find out that the mechanic is 40 minutes away. By this time, about 40 minutes has already passed, the Frassati van has tried jumping the truck (which didn't work) and Dave has gone looking for Asian girls (with no luck). So the Frassati van goes to the new apartment to at least unload what it's carrying, while Dave and I and Jasmin wait for the mechanic. Jasmin decides he want to get a picture of the mess, since we'll all look back and laugh at the moment, so he takes off on his bike to buy a disposable camera.

The mechanic finally gets to the truck, and instead of jumping it, we insist that he tow it to the new apartment, wait while we unload it, and then tow it back to the U-Haul place. So he tows it and we start unloading.

Meanwhile, Flan, who is handling all of the stress very well, is trying to figure out how she'll get to the airport because she's flying to Saskatchewan at eight o'clock that evening (by now it's about 6:00.) A well-timed move, let me tell you.

So we start moving things in, and we get the first four loads up the elevator when Flan comes rushing upstairs saying that we need to take the door off its hinges. It turns out that Flan inherited what my comrads called "The Monster": a huge, old, heirloom desk that ended up just barely fitting. But it's the last thing we brought up, and Flan got the airport on time, and we all ended up having a well-deserved beer (with a toast to Brett, Flan's husband, whom we toasted as "the luckiest man in Toronto" because he was away that weekend).

The moral of the story? Never rent a U-Haul truck.

But at least we didn't spend the Saturday lazing around.