Yes, there was more moving going on this weekend in the Pfitzinger household. This time it was a trip to Michigan to bring down the rest of our “stuff” (like refrigerator, washer, dryer, chest freezer, lawn mower, bikes, and lots of etc.). Since the boys are in school as of this last week (Alaric-7th grade, Blaise-4th grade, Camber-Kindergarten), we can’t quite go during the week.

We drove up Saturday morning after kennelling the dogs. Got into Grand Rapids around 1:00pm. U-Haul STILL did not have a truck for us, despite the reservations I’d made the week before. Must be all the college students moving into their dorms. Since we had quite a bit to do at the house anyway, like moving the washer and dryer up from the basement and getting the other appliances out of the house, we started doing that, waiting for them to call back. Finally they did call back at about 3:00, saying that there would be a truck arriving at the U-Haul at 28th Street and Burlingame (the other side of town from our house) in about an hour and that they’d call us when it arrived. 4:00 came and went, and it was almost 5:00 when I decided to head down there anyway, hoping it would be in.

Turns out that the customer just 2 or 3 before me had been returning the 14′ truck and it was ready to go. I got the truck back to the house at 5:30 and had it loaded with all of our stuff (almost full) by 6:30. In the morning I drove it down to Grandville where Eve and the boys were staying, unloaded the loose stuff at the back of the truck, repackaged it and loaded our stuff from a friend’s garage and shed, properly filling the truck this time, and left Grand Rapids at 10:00am.

This was my first U-Haul truck that ran fine the whole way and wasn’t a nuisance at all on the trip. If it HAD developed problems, I would have sworn off U-Haul for life. This truck saved their bacon. At least from MY pigs! The only negative thing was the timing Saturday afternoon, and even though it would have been nice to have the truck by 1 or 2, it didn’t result in too much of a holdup. We still kept mostly on schedule, with Alaric and me arriving in Indianapolis about 3:00 and having it totally unloaded by 4:30.

The highlight of the weekend was going out to Founders on Saturday night. I’d gotten the truck loaded by 6:30, met my friend Dave Baldwin at his house (he’d also driving me down to Burlingame) for a quick washup and dinner, then we headed out to Founders to meet a couple of other friends, Randy and Jacob. Nice evening. Good conversation with friends I haven’t seen in a long time and some really good beer (Founders is a microbrewery near downtown Grand Rapids–click their link). We all ended up having at least one pint of their Frangelica beer (I forget the exact name) which very dark and finished with an aftertaste of warm hazelnut. MMMMMMM!!!! It kept tasting really good even after a couple pints!

Jacob had to leave early (imagine having two out-of-town friends visiting on the same weekend), but Randy and I accompanied Dave back to his house where we sampled some of his meads. :-D Dave is starting a new company called Michigan Meadery and is currently perfecting his recipes and building up his inventory. We were good guinea pigs for sampling and discussing some of his results. :-)
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