{"id":680,"date":"2010-08-07T21:33:17","date_gmt":"2010-08-08T02:33:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/byers\/wp\/?p=680"},"modified":"2010-09-06T08:10:43","modified_gmt":"2010-09-06T13:10:43","slug":"mnyi30es-%e2%80%93-moving-day","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/byers\/wp\/?p=680","title":{"rendered":"M2NYi30ES \u2013 Moving Day"},"content":{"rendered":"<div>\n<p>Moving day arrived in late June. \u00a0See, residents and fellows all start July 1. \u00a0This is why you don\u2019t want to go to the hospital in early July. \u00a0Brad and Brent and Brittany and Betty Sue are all standing around, trying to look competent while their palms sweat, having suddenly become aware that they don\u2019t know anything about medicine, much less the human condition in general. \u00a0They know how to sit in class, they know how to read and study, they have cut up dead people, but those skills won\u2019t do you much good with whatever medical condition brought you to them.<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" title=\"rain, rain, rain\" src=\"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/byers\/wp-img\/memoir\/rain.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"250\" height=\"188\" align=\"right\" \/>The other thing about late June is that it\u2019s hot, and it rains a lot. \u00a0Ah, the rain. \u00a0Loading our rental truck, unloading said truck, stopping briefly to check whether things had shifted in transit&#8211;all of these were occasions for a downpour. \u00a0It was uncanny, but again, the uncanniness came from the fact that we didn\u2019t yet fully comprehend the star-crossed nature of this particular expedition. \u00a0Had I known what I know now, I would have opened an umbrella each time I reached for the latch on the truck\u2019s back door.<!--more--><\/p>\n<p>How anything in that load had anywhere to shift was a matter for speculation, so full had we crammed that truck. \u00a0Of course, that was after hours of delay to get the brakes fixed the morning of moving day. \u00a0See, when I got into the truck at the rental lot that morning, and be aware, this was after waiting 40 minutes past their opening time for the guys to actually open the gate, I pressed the brake pedal and found that it traveled about four inches until it finally started to have any effect. \u00a0The pedal firmed up and started working about a half-inch from the floorboards. \u00a0I was loath to take off on a drive of <a href=\"http:\/\/maps.google.com\/maps?f=q&amp;source=s_q&amp;hl=en&amp;geocode=FfpHRAIdeopS-ymPpFDqLYaziTH8dIvDlvCGkA%3BFXFAbQIdK8KW-yk7CD_TpU_CiTFi_nfhBo8LyA&amp;q=from:+Charlottesville+to:+NYC&amp;sll=37.0625,-95.677068&amp;sspn=58.164117,59.589844&amp;ie=UTF8&amp;t=h&amp;z=7&amp;saddr=Charlottesville&amp;daddr=NYC\">350 miles<\/a> over unknown highways in a fully loaded truck with brakes in that condition. \u00a0I told them about it, they checked it out, and reluctantly decided that, yes, this was unacceptable. \u00a0They worked on it, or said they did, for the better part of four hours, and according to them, they replaced the <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Master_cylinder\">master cylinder<\/a> and fully checked it out.<\/p>\n<p>This delay meant getting a much later-than-anticipated start, but I felt that it had been for the better&#8230;until I tried the brakes and found that the exact same thing happened, just as before. \u00a0I had to admit that the brakes did stop the truck, though, eventually, if you were patient, and half the day was gone. \u00a0I decided it was \u201call systems go.\u201d \u00a0I never worked for <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/NASA\">NASA<\/a>. \u00a0Perhaps it is clear now why not. \u00a0Risk averse? \u00a0Not I. \u00a0This move had to happen. \u00a0That day.<\/p>\n<p>Coming back to the house under the ever-present threatening skies, I made a mental exercise of figuring out the best order for packing our stuff. \u00a0It was going to be tight, and the packing job would have to be efficient.<\/p>\n<p>Well, it was efficient; a cockroach would not have been able to get comfortable in there; but that didn\u2019t mean we could fit all our belongings into that truck and the aforementioned doughty <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Geo\/Chevrolet_Prizm\">Geo Prism<\/a>. \u00a0After much packing, unpacking, and repacking, I had to admit that it just wasn\u2019t all going to fit. \u00a0This was a grim realization. \u00a0We had rented the last truck on the lot, so this discovery would necessitate a return round trip, from NYC to Cville and back, even after the rigors of our initial move, to retrieve the last of our stuff. \u00a0This was to be an extra 700 miles in a tiny car, half of which would become all the more challenging in that the said tiny car would be completely crammed with the rest of our possessions.<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" title=\"Dante &amp; Virgil\" src=\"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/byers\/wp-img\/memoir\/d&amp;v.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"250\" height=\"287\" align=\"left\" \/>But I am getting ahead of the story, and that would be to neglect the tales and reflections of several of the less popular <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Shade_(mythology)\">shades<\/a> from <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Dante's_Inferno\">Dante\u2019s Inferno<\/a>. \u00a0We must let those people speak. \u00a0So, \u201c<a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/The_Love_Song_of_J._Alfred_Prufrock\">Let us go then, you and I<\/a>,\u201d for the rest of the saga.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Moving day arrived in late June. \u00a0See, residents and fellows all start July 1. \u00a0This is why you don\u2019t want to go to the hospital in early July. \u00a0Brad and Brent and Brittany and Betty Sue are all standing around, trying to look competent while their palms sweat, having suddenly become aware that they don\u2019t [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[19],"class_list":["post-680","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-memoirs","tag-past"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/byers\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/680","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/byers\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/byers\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/byers\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/byers\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=680"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/byers\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/680\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":726,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/byers\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/680\/revisions\/726"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/byers\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=680"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/byers\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=680"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/byers\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=680"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}