Moving day

We “moved house,” as the British say, on Saturday. We were a little sentimental about leaving the vicarage, since it was the first place we called “home” while in Cambridge. We had good times there; lots of relationships were nurtured; it’s where I perfected my chocolate chip cookie recipe; and, more importantly, it’s where our baby was…. well, you know.

We were stunned at how much stuff we had accumulated in a short 18 months! So on moving day, we called in the troops. I sent an email out to “the guys” asking for help, and then I started preparing what I hoped would be the most awesome move ever. Of course, I couldn’t have a move where we all just picked up boxes and carried them; that would be boring.

Ideally, since we were moving from the third story of one house to the ground floor of a place across the street, I would have liked to rig up a zipline from one place to the other, sending the boxes zooming down from the ‘top flat.’ Candice convinced me this was a bad idea. (Although, I will say that Candice suggested that we just throw all our crap out the bedroom window directly into the trunk of our car below! I convinced her this was an even worse idea.)

I decided that having two steep flights of stairs to carry boxes down might be a safety hazard… after all, what if someone fell?! So as an alternative to our zipline, I decided to build a slide :). I thought that a bunch of cardboard duct taped together would form a nice slide for us to zoom the boxes down. This way, no one would fall down the stairs, and we would have some fun while moving.

After some testing, I discovered that the heavier boxes would just collapse the cardboard slide, and they would also pick up a LOT of speed…. so, to avoid a 30 lb. box of books zooming toward the person at the bottom of the stairs at 40 mph, I decided to rig up a kind of “sled” on which to lower down the boxes.

Here’s me tying nylon cord to the end of the sled :)

Here’s the slide in all it’s glory…

As you can tell, these stairs constitute something like a 14 foot drop, so this smaller box, one of our “test shots,” tumbled down, end over end, pretty quickly… so we decided the sled was a better way to go. Once we got in a rhythm, we had the whole flat 95% cleared in about 30 min! The slide on the outside didn’t fare as well, so they had to give it up and do it the old fashioned way.

Here’s a pic of us in our new place… I thought the John Deere shirt and cowboy hat were appropriate for our style of moving…

After the move, we treated “the troops” to some pizza and had a nice Saturday lunch.

A big shout out to all our homies who helped us move. Thanks everyone! Even though the pregnant girls were not in on the heavy lifting, they made quick work of the unpacking and organizing, which, as everyone knows, is really the hardest part.

Farewell, Vicarage, you’ve served us well, but it’s time for us to part ways.