Moving Part IV

6. Dawn's car
When last we spoke, I had finished describing everything up to our arrival at the new apartment.
The fun didn't stop there of course.
One of our friends had afternoon plans so after helping us all morning, she brought a carload of stuff to the new place and then headed home. Or tried to anyway. She called me about 3 min. after I had helped empty her car to say that her car had broken down about a block from where she had parked. This is the same friend who was the most impacted by the Caribbean Festival. I can't help but wonder if the numerous detours she had to take just to make it to our place contributed to her car's meltdown. Anyway, there wasn't much we could help her with so she called a tow truck, canceled her afternoon plans, and I think the car is still in the shop.

7. Sharing the freight elevator and loading dock
Ok, so I finally make it to the loading dock with an armful of stuff from Dawn's car and I see E* in the moving truck just hanging out near the sidewalk. He explains that apparently someone else was scheduled for the loading dock and freight elevator at the same time as us. I should have seen that coming. The building's leasing office had been very clear that we needed to schedule our move-in time to be assured that we could use the only elevator that you're allowed to fill with furniture. So we complied. We scheduled a 3-hr. block on Sat. afternoon. We think another group scheduled a block in the morning and then at some point, a 3rd group was given a block of time right in the middle of the day, partially overlapping with both the morning group and with us. WTF?!?! The poor couple that was ahead of us has been waiting since 11am to use the freight elevator. I started to panic that we had a truck full of stuff, 5 ready and willing friends, and no means to get the stuff up to the 5th floor. We then realized that because of the major hassles with Budget that morning, we were somewhat behind schedule which meant that the couple ahead of us was just about done. Yay!

8. Rain
Because we had to wait around a bit for the elevator to be freed up, I decided to go grab a couple pizzas to help get keep our friends in a docile state (didn't want any uprisings). It was right at that moment when I headed to the pizza place that the skies opened up and in a freak deluge. Luckily, Pete's Apizza was only about 50 ft. from the apartment's lobby, but it was enough to get soaked.

9. The Freight-to-Level G2 Shuffle
The final installment from moving day happened after we had successfully gotten everything up to the 5th floor and into the apartment. Everything except those boxes that were destined for the storage unit we rent in the garage. Everyone was tired, a little fatigued, and probably sick of our pack-rat tendencies and love of books. So I'm a little amazed that they all didn't just walk out on us when we discovered a snafu with the storage unit.
Here's the deal: The freight elevator only goes as far as G1 (the 1st level of the garage). However, our storage unit was on G2 - 1 floor below. In order to get our things to G2, we had to take one of the regular elevators (of which there are 2, but on that day only 1 was working....all day). Wait, it gets better.
So all our things for the storage unit are at the lobby level near the loading dock. The only elevator you can access from that point is the freaking freight elevator - which you can't take to G2! AND you can't hold the regular elevators open for more than a minute and a half or else an alarm goes off and all of the elevators lock up for like, 5 minutes (ask us how we know this!).
And that's how we came up with the Elevator Shuffle. It consists of everyone jumping out of the elevator as soon as the doors open, grabbing whatever boxes they're closest too from the landing, and then squeezing back into the elevator in under a minute. Then you ride down to G2 and do the same thing in reverse. You repeat those steps about 5-6 times until you eventually have the whole pile waiting for you at G2 to make the final trek of 30 feet to the storage unit.

Except, remember how I said that only 1 of the 2 regular elevators were working that day? That meant that we would often get interrupted during our Elevator Shuffle by field trips to other floors to take on other passengers. Often the elevator was just too full of our friends holding our stuff so the side trips were in vain and the other passengers had to wait til we unloaded at G2.

And then Saturday was over. Some of us celebrated on the roof deck later with beers, leftover pizza, and ibuprofen. A picture of the view to be added later.

** Edited to add picture:
The (tiny) Washington Monument is in the center. Check out a school's roof-top playground on the left in the foreground. (Click to embiggen...thanks to YarnHarlot for the word)