Moving to Australia Part I: Getting North

View Part II here and Part III here.

My hands are shaking. It’s making typing a bit hard to be honest with you, what with the keys being so close together and all. It’s been a hectic 2 weeks trying to get our disorganized asses moved across the planet, and pretty much everything has been a gong show. But that’s not why my hands are shaking. I’ll get to that later. First, some highlights in chronological order:

Monday, Jan 30th: Paul’s fifth-to-last last day at work. Car export paperwork put through, car can no longer leave the US until paperwork finalized by US officials. Erika packs, Paul plays hockey.
Tuesday, Jan 31st: Paul’s fourth-to-last last day at work. Packing.
Wednesday, Feb 1st: Paul’s third-to-last last day at work. Erika packs, Paul gets a massage.
Thursday, Feb 2nd: Paul’s second-to-last last day at work. Erika packs, Paul plays hockey.
Friday, Feb 3rd: Paul’s last day at work. Slow clap as I leave the office, then drinking.
Saturday, Feb 4th: Moving sale. It’s incredible what crap people will buy. Highlights include: Old Asian man vacuuming our floor for us, selling the kitchen table I’ve had for 24 years, Erika selling my neck pillow right before we go on a 15.5 hour flight.
Sunday, Feb 5th: Paul goes to watch Superbowl in Vancouver while Erika packs (anyone else seeing a trend here? I don’t know how I’m still married. Trust me, it seemed reasonable at the time). Mad scramble to get everything loaded.

Monday, Feb 6th:
2:30am Go to bed for the night.
6:00am Try to get the remaining packing done, the U-Haul loaded, bring our cable box to Comcast, and visit the DMV for Erika’s driving record; all in time to leave for noon so we can export the car.
12:30pm Realize we’re not going to make it.
12:40pm Eat Lunch.
12:40pm Go to DMV. It’s closed. On a Monday.
1:00pm-4:30pm Pack the truck, get crap in to Comcast, have the apartment inspected, watch Erika get angry at the inspector for nitpicking, watch Erika give the inspector the “I will rip out your liver and feed it to the squirrels if you don’t give us our full deposit” look, watch the inspector give us our full deposit.
4:30pm-8:15pm Drive to Lynden, eat McDonald’s, leave the Subaru in their parking lot, take the truck across the border to the storage lot (strangely, crossing the border back home with all of our goods was the easiest part of the whole day. Thank you Aldergrove border!), and start unloading.
8:15pm Discover that we have to be done by 9pm.
8:16pm Discover that we have a storage space half the size of our truck.
8:17pm Experience a brain-shift that makes us say “We can do this!”
8:58pm Discover that we can’t do this.
8:59pm Start loading everything back into the truck.
9:15pm-10:00pm Load the truck, wake up the guy to a) let us out and b) loan us a lock for the back of the U-Haul so we can leave it in a sketchy dark parking lot behind a Wendy's. Get driven to Erika’s parent’s house for the night.

Stay tuned for Part II: Importing the car