Moving the Lab

Well, I thought about adding some more jokes, but thought you might be tired of that. This really is a blog of the Hill family, not a blog about jokes. So, I will tell you about my experience moving the lab up here to Michigan.

First, as many of you know, I am the lab manager for the Structural Dynamics and Controls Lab. That means I get paid for an extra 5 hours per week, while doing an extra 10 hours per week. It's mostly fun stuff, and I like doing it. It allows me to organize the lab, and get good deals for my advisor.

So, with this move, I became, de facto, in charge of moving everything up Michigan. I couldn't stand to spend thousands of dollars on a professional moving company, so I came up with a great idea. I would move the whole lab. The caveat was that we could get a bigger truck, and I would be able to move all my stuff with the lab. Well, it ended up that our house hadn't sold, and some other people in the lab (who aren't as well-off as I) needed to get their stuff up, so I moved the lab and 4 labmates stuff, but left my stuff at home for another day.

So, here I was with a 26' truck, and I had to fill it up. I had been packing up the lab for a couple of weeks, so that wasn't a problem. We loaded most of the stuff in (I had 5 labmates to help out), and then we came to the two optics tables.... These tables are 5' by 3', and about 9 inches thick. They weigh roughly 500 lbs each, and are very awkward. Well, all 6 of us could deadlift them off of their feet, and set them down on a dolley. But that was the easy part. We had to move them out of the lab, into the truck. After about an hour, we finally did it, but it wasn't pretty. We got them out the door, and laid the dolley down on the ramp. Using a blanket, we slid the tables up the ramp and into the truck.

This all happened on Monday. After loading up the lab, we went to everyone's homes and loaded there stuff. At one point I thought there might be enough for my stuff, but I forgot about women... Gi-Woo, (male, married with 3 kids) who was moving his entire 3-bedroom apartment, took up about 4 feet of the truck. Dave (male, not married) took up about 2 feet of the truck. Ailin (female, not married) took up about 8 feet of the truck... Oh well, I didn't have any place to put my stuff when I got here anyway.

On Tuesday I got up early and drove up to Ann Arbor alone. Jenny went to her parents in Maryland with the kids, and the rest of the lab was going to leave a little later then me, because I couldn't go as fast. Well, I got up to Ann Arbor around 1:00 pm (we were supposed to start unloading the lab stuff at 5:30, and we had to move everyone else's stuff first). I called my labmates, expecting them to have beaten me to A2. Unfortunately, they were all an hour and a half away still. And when they finally got in, it took them forever to decide where they wanted stuff...

Needless to say, we didn't start unloading the lab quite at 5:30... more like 8:00. That went sufficiently well, except we didn't know what to do with the optics tables. Our plan to move them out wasn't going to work, because the doors were too small to get in the building! We had to tip them on their side, which I didn't feel comfortable doing with the people I had there. Well, we finally decided not to unload them, that could wait until the morning.

I was planning on staying at Rick and Tisha Marsh's house (Rick is Jenny's cousin, and they are gone for the summer). I was supposed to call someone to pick up the keys, but they never answered their phone. I had Jenny call Rick and Tisha, and they tried to get a hold of them... but no luck. So, I ended up staying with Dave and Suyi (two labmates). At midnight I finally got a call about the keys, but it was too late then. In the morning I picked up the keys and then parked the truck in the church parking lot (is that an appropriate use of church property?) I went into school, and spoke with the building manager, and he had a great idea. Why didn't I take the truck to the loading dock, and they could use a fork-lift to unload the tables, and put them on wheels to take them into the room. Fabulous!!! The only problem was that the road leading to the loading dock was under construction. I drove around to the other entrance, and convinced the construction workers I had to get through. Now remember, I am driving a 26' truck. It's a huge deisel truck. The road was all dirt, and they were just scrapping it, so there was a mound in the middle of the road about 18 inches tall. I drove on one side of it, but then there was a parked truck in the way, so I had to drive over the mound to the other side. Another truck, another off road adventure. Finally I got close to the dock, but there were two trucks parked in the middle, and I couldn't get around. I finally had to back up over a curb, (about 6 inches high) and turn around. I came in from the other side, and eventually made it. It was impressive to go offroading in a Penske truck.

We finally got everything in, of which I am very greatful. Taking the truck back to the dropoff is another long story... It only took me about 1.5 hours to do it, given traffic, bad directions, having to fill up with gas ($250 worth), and then getting lost and not being able to find the place. We finally finished everything, and now we are starting to get some work done in the lab.

And that's my moving the lab story. Needless to say, I'm glad I don't have to move those tables anytime soon.