The Story of Tex
or, what it's like to move your family and all your stuff overseas.....
Take it from us, it's a TON of work. It makes you realize why hunter-gatherers didn't own a lot of things.
The worst of it was, we knew it was going to be a lot of work, but we didn't fully appreciate just HOW much work until, much, much too late in the process. We started packing in March in preparation for the June 17th arrival of our 40-foot-long shipping container. By the first of June, we only had about 30 boxes packed... less than a third of the more than 100 we ended up shipping to Norway. Nancy's last day of work was June 14, and our neighbors up the street hosted a going-away party for us that weekend. Then....June 17th came and with it.....
TEX!
That's what we called our 40-foot shipping container because of the big white identification letters "TEX" stenciled on the side and back of the outside. Of course one of the biggest problems was getting the darn thing into the driveway. Dugway Road is dirt, with steep sides. Nancy was terrified the whole rig was going to tip over into the Huntington River.
But the driver, a cheery guy from Montreal who seemed like he had seen just about everything, handled it like a pro.
Then we had to fill it up.... oh, our aching backs! Here you can see Zoe, Molly, Farley and Phoebe at the very back of the container with a few of the big pieces already loaded.
We actually only filled the back half of the container half-way. The front part of the container was reserved for the car, our green 1996 Subaru wagon (you know, the unofficial Vermont state car). We thought loading the car would be the easiest part of the move -- just load it onto a flat-bed pickup truck, back the truck up to the back of the container and push the car in -- but we didn't factor in an eight-inch difference between the height of the flat-bed and the container floor. It took us nearly two hours to get the car up a little ramp we ended up building. We couldn't drive the car in because you have to drain all the gas out before you can ship it overseas. By then we were short of sleep from our frenzy of packing. It was a NIGHTMARE. Then we had two weeks to clean the house (ugh) and catch our plane at the end of June.
We vacationed for two weeks in Norway and arrived in Trondheim, our new home, on July 15. Tex arrived just a few days before us, but that didn't mean we could pick him up. We had to clear the car and the container through Customs. It wasn't that bad, although Nancy had a few panicked moments when the Customs official in charge of car importation asked for documentation proving that she had been gainfully employed for the past five years! Fortunately she had a paper from Gannett to that effect.... We don't know why this was necessary. One guess is that cars are so very expensive in Norway that some people are actually making money importing them and selling them. Even after paying import taxes it's apparently still a money maker. So perhaps the Customs folks were trying to make sure that we weren't renegade car smugglers disguised as a poor family foolishly moving to Norway!
We thought by moving to a city of 150,000 that we wouldn't have to worry about narrow streets or difficulties unloading the container -- wrong again! Fortunately the Norwegians have this great gizmo that can unload the shipping container from the side and drop it directly on the ground. We were so happy we didn't have to find a flat-bed tow truck in Norway. It was the running joke during our two-week vacation in southern Norway. We imagined querying everyone: "Excuse me, but do you know how to say 'flat-bed tow truck' in Norwegian?"
Here's the Subaru safely unloaded in front of our new home. Everything arrived intact, all the dishes, pictures, the digital piano, the computer, all except the car. The shipping straps Rick used to keep the car from pitching around in the container dented the car so badly we couldn't open the hood without a pry bar. We think it must have been a stormy crossing. Poor Tex! Poor us!