What a day. I left the old apartment this morning at around 7:30, uncertain of virtually anything.

I'd gotten out of bed at 5:00, and had not slept much since 3:00, owing to the uncertainty. I'd have gotten up then but there was, honestly, nothing in the apartment to help kill the several hours I'd need to kill before I could go and hassle U-Haul about my one-way truck reservation. The TV disconnected, the computers long since put away, the bass bagged.

The reservation, made dutifully in June, appeared to be on the brink of collapse. It had put me, quite simply, in a predicament.

My friends, they're the best. There was simply no doubt they'd all arrive. The sellers, we knew they were out, the utilities were all already humming happily at the new place, even the cable and phone, which the nice people at Comcast (who are just unbelievable when it comes to service calls) had installed Friday. Unfortunately, in their haste to get the new phone installed, they'd deactivated our old phone and voice mail, which caused panick when I imagined U-Haul making the promised call informing me when and where to pick up my one way rental, and getting a deactivated number message, then handing my orange junker off to some dirtbag freshmen from Tufts.

So Friday I paid a visit to U-Haul to give them the new number. They punched it into the computer and said I'd hear from them soon. I was unconvinced.

The truck, no matter how unbelievably shitty it may be, is the heart of the move. It is the wheel on the barrow, it is the crankshaft in the engine; it is the instrument of relocation. The reservation, particularly the timely one, is as dear to the mover as his citizenship. It is the guarantee of safe passage to new dwellings, it is the insurance against finding yourself stranded at your apartment with all your worldly goods in ramshackle packaging with a new set of angry twentysomethings trying to move in their torchiere lamps and milkcrates.

It is unfortunate that this critical ingredient, like blood reserves to the surgeon, or oil to the racecar driver, is under the control of the bunch of utter absolute fuckups as the U-Haul Corporation.

I'd like to repeat that, for clarity. When this journal is introduced as evidence in the lawsuit brought against me by U-Haul, I want both the court and the world to know that I stand behind this statement, that the U-Haul Corporation of America is a two-bit, half-assed company with the organization, efficiency, and service values of, well frankly I'm having trouble coming up with an example because I can't think of any other institution with equally shoddy performance that is actually recorded in the annals of history.

There are plenty of bad stories about the guys at the counter. They're probably true but I don't even care about them. I saw people in the store yesterday whining to the counter person about how unfair it was that their 4 o'clock rental wasn't there yet as promised, because the previous guy was late. Wah, wah, wah.

The problems with U-Haul exist at a much higher level- when a company misses an opportunity to capitalize on what is likely the biggest moneymaking day of the year simply because they are incapable of demonstrating even the simplest grasp the logistics that they're ostensibly in the business of. Standing at a U-Haul, you don't get the sense that there, somewhere at the top, is Mr. Uhaulio, raving and wicked pissed because his minions are not shuttling the trucks around. You get the sense that U-Haul is a state-run enterprise, except that, at least in Massachusetts, it would be an insult to the efficient state institutions to suggest it.

So anyhow this morning I made another trip. I was almost delusional with worry about not getting the truck. I had the new Soulive disc in, I could swear I heard Alan Evans speaking to me, saying "Soulive is looking out for you, kid. It's going to be alright", but not even their nasty groove could convince my butterfly stomach. In an hour, 5 hungry people anxious to get the show on the road would arrive, and here I would be, pacing back and forth with the cellphone waiting for the call from U-Haul that would tell me to drive over to Belmont, or hell maybe to Syracuse for all I knew, to pick up my truck. It was too much to bear.

Standing in line at U-Haul, I saw a steady stream of one-ways being driven into the parking lot by hired hands. One thing that struck me was that it was not difficult to see how U-Hauls trucks get broken in to their legendary junker customization. The drivers, strings of four or five of them, would come tearing into and out of the parking lot, crashing over curbs, barking the tires, and trying to get the ass-end of the trucks to come loose as they roared out of the parking lot onto Linden street. It was unsettling but not surprising, as I had suspected such treatment for years. After a few more minutes of waiting, I got the news I was expecting, that U-Haul was still trying to catch up some people who'd reserved one ways for the previous day, and who knew when I might get my call (it's now Monday, no call from U-Haul) I knew the prognosis was bleak, so I drove all over the place. I saw all these happy bastards driving around in their U-Save vans, their U-Haul ten-footers (how had they gotten these?), the really upscale cats in their fancy Volvo and Mitsubishi Ryders. I poked into a couple of places just on the off chance they'd take a generous bribe; nothing doing.

On the way over to Krispy Kreme, I remembered an episode ages ago, where I needed a truck in a hurry, and I went to this very out of the way Penske over in Medford, which is off in one of those industrial parks with a Fedex and a bunch of heavy machinery places. It's the kind of spot no wankers from Cambridge or Somerville would pass on their way to Target, and therefore would not think to call them up and reserve a truck. Proximity is everything, as the carless won't make a trip to Medford.

Penske is my kind of place, anyway. They have big trucks, for serious purposes; transporting heavy goods over great distances on preposterous sums of wheels and axles. They're huge diesel things, requiring exotic and expensive licenses unobtainable by mere apartment dwellers, machines without warnings about hauling hazards or explosives, because they are intended for it, and rented to you by serious, fit fellows in stylish matching golf shirts who appear to have undergraduate degrees in cargo and fleet management.

So anyway, I race over there, park the car, and walk in. There was no line. I could hear Soulive in my head. I inquired about a truck. Would you prefer a 10 or 15 foot truck, sir? Evans breaks into the intro riff from El Ron. I had to stop for a minute so I could soil myself. Moments later, I had signed a number of forms, with absolutely no regard to costs or liability; I don't have any idea what I paid. The car, shocked, stayed where I left it in the parking lot, Krispy Kreme run aborted suddenly. I roared back toward Somerville in the mighty 15' GMC 3500, me, bobbing my head to Soulive blaring from the radio, despite not having one. I have never been more overjoyed in my life, and I'm certain that the men at the counter still believe fully that I am mentally ill.

The rest, you can probably guess. Like they told me, everything did work out fine. Everybody made it, we loaded the truck in record time with no injuries, except when Damien and Carrie got carried away after we hoisted a box-spring out the window with ropes and then they decided to also try the mattress only without using the ropes and I got pile-driven by massive foam projectile which seemed not to have heard about the whole 9.8 meters per second/sec thing and hit me going about mach 12 and nearly fractured my skull. They laughed. We got everything into the new place and got the truck back with a half hour to spare, and then I had what I am sure will be one of the most memorable drives I have ever taken through Boston. The sky, the rich blue it always turns that weekend school starts, the air crisp and delicious like new fruit, the traffic zipping along at impossible speeds with plenty of gaps to fit the Volkswagen, which after the truck felt like driving one of Roger Penske's Indy cars. I kept getting stuck and having to move on up the river to find a route south, finally getting over the Harvard Bridge and down Mass Ave., which was littered with trucks and incompetent annual pilots.

And I looked at them, and could only smile, thinking that I would not be repeating this mess again for a long, long time.