Eagle River Weather

Friday, June 6, 2008

Packing Up

Nicki and I are all packed up now and our stuff is on a barge somewhere off the coast of British Columbia. Packing was a bit of an involved process using many people, boats, and automobiles. The first thing we had to do was rent a U-haul truck and load our stuff into it. I was a bit nervous driving around a 24 foot truck at first but eventually got the hang of it. Navigating it down the narrow streets around our house was the biggest challenge.

Here is a picture of the loaded truck, the three of us, and our friend Jay from across the street. He was an enormous help in getting things loaded up and his wife Kat took care of Leo while we were working.


Don't worry Leo didn't actually drive the truck, but he had a great time pretending.


After loading our truck, I then had to drive it across town and load more peoples' things into it. Our friends Erik and Jen are headed up to Alaska for the same reason we are, and we decided to share the cost of a shipping container.

The next day we drove down to Northland Shipping where Erik (moving to Alaska), Jason (the climber), Keith (not pictured), and I loaded all the stuff onto the container. The cute orange vests were required dress code at the terminal.


It was quite the tetris problem loading two households worth of goods, including a 16 foot canoe, 2 kayaks, 5 bikes, IKEA stuff, and fragile furniture, onto the 20 foot container.


That container is currently on a barge and heading north. Now that everything is out of our house, our stress level has gone down considerably, and we are focusing on spending time with friends and family before we begin our long drive North.

2 comments:

Unknown said...

Hello,

I am new to this blog world (my wife started one about the beginning of our married lives) and found your blog through youtube. I LOVE what you guys are doing/did and have lots of questions. One of which happens to be...How much was it to ship your stuff up on the boat in the shipping container?

Thanks and great stuff

Nate

Ben Schneider said...

Nate,
We split the container with some other people who were coming up at the same time which, of course, cut the cost in half. It was about $3500 total. We went with Northland shipping who charges by weight, but has an 8,000 pound minimum charge. We discovered that that is a hard weight to meet with just household goods. Hope this was helpful and let me know if you have more questions.

BEN