Moving To Boston – Part I
On July 31st, 2009 Shelby and I woke up in an empty bedroom on our bare mattress, ready to start the trek to Boston…
By 8AM that morning we met up with our friend Amalia to pick up the Budget rental truck. The original plan was to ship all of our stuff to Vancouver in a sort of “PODS” type of shipping service, and Amalia was moving to Boston already on her own accord. When we had to change our plans and decided on Boston, ourselves, we decided to split a larger truck with Amalia. So that day we went first thing in the morning to pick up our SIXTEEN FOOT BUDGET TRUCK!
The 16 footer
Did I mention that it was a SIXTEEN FOOT BUDGET TRUCK?
We parked in front of the house and like clockwork, spent most of the morning packing up all of our furniture and boxes from Shelby and Matt’s house. Within two hours we were finished (we definitely had a good flow going which maintained a lot of intertia) and moved on to Amalia’s house where Amalia, her mother Marietta, and I packed up the rest of her stuff while Shelby did some last minute cleaning at her place.
On the road…
We started off toward Boston, knowing that we would spend a night in New Paltz with Amalia and her mother before completing the last leg the following day. Of course with Shelby behind the wheel of our massive 16′ Budget, the weather decided to storm up with torrential downpours and slick roads. We made it though, and when we arrived we were all exhausted sore.
Driving the Truck
On our way to Boston
The next morning I stopped by The Ranch and put in a quick skydive, decidedly starting off the day on a good note. It was a fun jump and I did some canopy flight-mode exercises with a demo Crossfire 2 129 (a SWEET canopy).
Onward Bound…
After that, Shelby, Amalia, Marietta, Luna and I continued the journey and drove the rest of the way to Boston. Amalia had to speed ahead and get to Boston early in time to sign some lease papers or some detail like that, while Shelby and I continued at our pace the rest of way. When we finally did make it there, we helped unload a few things while Amalia’s friends Kendra and Aleena got all of Amalia’s stuff up to her new apartment. The original plan was for Shelby and I to throw our posessions into a storage unit but when I went to look for them (and got lost in Boston in the process), I found them to be closed — we were too late!
So I spent the rest of the afternoon looking for free WiFi to get directions to storage units, and found them all to be closed. We knew we would have to stay overnight in Boston at this point (before continuing on for our vacation plans) and I was getting frustrated being very unfamiliar with Allston. Shelby had to stay with the Budget truck and was stuck there for 4 hours while I ran around like crazy. I eventually got a ride from Aleena to Home Depot and picked up a lock for our budget truck. It was getting late and we still didn’t know what to do for storage, the following day would be Sunday and none of the storage units were open. We didn’t even have a reservation!
I forgot to mention that parking in Allston is A NIGHTMARE! So we had this 16′ truck, no parking, no storage, no Internet and nowhere to stay.
Thankfully, we got in touch with Amalia again and she said she’d put us up for the night…
On our way…
Shelby and I went to a cafe I had found earlier with WiFi and got some light dinner to hold us over. We thought about it and decided that if there was a Budget facility we could just disguise our truck in with the rest of their own trucks. So we looked it up online, and while we were at it, found a Budget facility just a few blocks away! Score! Shelby and I also found a storage unit that was open on Sunday and so we decided to opt in to both of those options.
We locked the truck, took it down to the Budget facility and carefully parked it in with at least 15 other trucks. It blended it pretty well, but just in case we left a note saying we’d be back for it first thing in the morning.
Well first thing in the morning rolls around and Shelby and I go to pick up the truck…and the people there were NOT HAPPY at all. The guy’s look was priceless but we were in no position to be snapping photos for the blog. So we quickly picked up our truck and apologized since they crashed one of their own trucks trying to get around ours, and they had to park a bunch on the street. We moved on to get some breakfast, and found the storage facility which was just a few blocks from Amalia’s apartment, basically still in Allston.
At 10AM, the office opened and we rented a storage unit. It was a Public Storage facility with air conditioning, nice location, air-tight security and the first month’s rent is only ONE DOLLAR!
Everything worked out pretty well in the end…
We unloaded the truck and got everything out in time for Shelby to return it. By the time she had come back, I had everything packed away in our storage unit. It was time to move on and start the real vacation!
Stay tuned for Part II...»
Part II describes what happened when we finished our vacation and finally landed in Boston.
Topic: Boston, The Move, Travel Tags: allston, amalia, Boston, budget, gps, internet, lost, luna, move, moving, packing, parking, pods, shelby, shipping, sixteen, sixteen footer, skydive, storage, the move, the ranch, Travel, vancouver, wifi
August 25th, 2009 at 8:14 pm
A great tip from our experience to anyone looking to rent a Budget truck:
Amalia originally placed the reservation for the truck way in advance and just got the small one since it would have been all she needed for just herself. When we decided to ban together to save the money, we figured we would need the upgrade. We went in the week before to find out how much more the cost would be and it turned out to be ZERO extra. We talked with the people at the location (who are much more likely to help you out then someone over the phone) and it turns out that more people try to rent the smaller 10′ trucks and when it comes down to it, they often get upgrade unwillingly and are upset since it’s more challenging to drive a bigger truck. Moral of the story, it might be worth it to book a smaller truck and try to upgrade for free (and pay the smaller price for a smaller truck), however, it may also backfire if you really NEED a large truck and those end up being booked on the date you move….
Also truck related: Driving that truck from Ithaca to Boston was torture for my poor knee. Thank God it wasn’t done all in one day, I’m certain I wouldn’t have made it (and only the person who’s license Budget has on file can drive the truck, otherwise any insurance is void in an accident). I have a bad knee and it’s on my driving leg. Plus, I was already getting sick. We’re not moving again until we can afford to have someone else do it for us.