Helping friends...
The last couple of days have certainly been busy, getting the last items packed up and loaded onto the truck and trailer. Friends are a big help when you're moving; sometimes it's actually physical help, and other times it's more emotional support, and sometimes it's both.
Yesterday, qualin came over to try to help me move an old, small engine out of the storage shed next to the house. Small, but heavy!!! This was a little 4-cylinder in-line engine from an old Datsun, cast-iron, not aluminium. Not sure what kind of Datsun, as it had been sitting in the shed for a good ten years or more. Way back when, an ex-friend of mine had stored it there with a ton of other junk. I actually helped him move most of that junk at least three times, until the final time when he buggered off (with over $1000.00 of mine) and I've never seen or heard from him since. So, I've got this old engine which I'm dragging out to the farm because I've always loved old engines, and you never know when something like that could be useful on a farm. Anyway...
Ten years ago my ex-friend and I hauled the thing into the shed, though I don't recall how we did it. Qualin and I tried, but we just couldn't muster up the strength to move it ourselves. Originally, we had been expecting some extra help from timbangreywolf and his mate, but Murphy came along and instead of picking on me directly, decided to go after the poor meerkat. Timban painfully twisted his ankle stumbling over an uneven paving stone, and that put him out of commission. Still, dinner plans had been made and Qualin and I went to a restaurant he had recommended: The House of Kabob, which was a little Mom & Pop Persian restaurant specializing in, well... Kabobs! I was a little leery, as I'm not quite as adventurous as Qualin when it comes to restaurants, but my fears were soon put aside. The food was amazing! Simple, delicately spiced, fresh, and melt-in-your-mouth-tender and delicious! The platter doesn't look very big when it comes, but it's wonderfully filling; just enough to leave even this hungry person feeling comfortably sated without being over-full. Reasonable prices and friendly service make this a restaurant I will definitely want to go to again when I'm in the city.
After supper, Qualin and I went back to his house to pick up calzephyr77 , and from there we went to Timban and Wolfe's house. The original idea was to watch the first Batman movie, but we wound up playing a long game of "Killer Bunnies" instead, and then watching hilarious cat videos on YouTube. Finally Qualin drove me home, arriving there a little after midnight. It was a very good day spent with very good friends, and while we didn't get the engine moved, the emotional uplift was greatly appreciated and enjoyed!
Today, wolfmatix came over and we once again took up the challenge of trying to move that engine. This time, I came up the idea of balancing the heavier part of the engine on a furniture dolly while Wolfmatix pulled the lighter (relatively) end forward. It took some doing, and a lot of pushing, shoving, and pulling, but we got the thing out of the shed, across the muddy and ice-covered lawn, and onto the firm ground of the driveway. At that point we decided that rather than ripping our spines out of our backs trying to lift it into the back of the truck, we'd rent an engine crane and do it the easy way. We got to the rental place at 3:05pm, and were told that they would be closing at 4pm due to the Easter holiday. A tight pinch, but do-able since the rental place is only five minutes from the house, and the engine was sitting there in the driveway, ready to be loaded. Turns out that the crane didn't come with bolts to pass through the engine's lifting points, so we took an extra twelve minutes to pop into the hardware store a few doors down to grab the needed bolts.
Getting back to the house, we found that only one part of the engine had a lifting-point attached, and the crane's chain was too short to wrap around any other solid point on the engine. Fortunately, I had some heavy strapping that we were able to put into service, and we soon had the engine loaded onto the back of the truck. Then it was a quick job to disassemble the crane again, load it back onto the truck, and get it back to the rental shop. We had it back at 3:46pm, so the whole process including stopping to buy the bolts took only 41 minutes. Renting the crane cost me a whopping $33 plus tax, well worth the cost to save our backs!
Once the engine was loaded, we were able to really get cracking on loading the rest of the items. We also disassembled the bed from the Master Bedroom, and got it loaded into the trailer. (I'll be sleeping on an inflatable mattress for the next two nights, but I guess that's a little better than sleeping on the floor.) By then it was 7:30pm and after a quick wash-up we headed out for a well-earned meal of Chinese Food at one of our favourite restaurants. A good meal and pleasant conversation and company ensued, and Wolfmatix dropped me off back at the house around 9:30pm.
There are still a couple of small items left to be loaded, such as the kitchen table (easily a 1-person job), two chairs, and a few last odd-and-sods... This chapter of my life is just about finished, and after more than 13 years it's taking some getting used to...