Fun on Friday: Moving Is Awful

Moving is awful.

I’m speaking from recent experience. We are in the process of moving from central Kentucky to northern Florida. I say “in the process” because you don’t just move. It consumes your life for months on end.

It starts with the packing. We began packing stuff up over the summer. Every time I thought we were making progress, new stuff appeared. I’m pretty sure stuff was multiplying. We had a garage sale. We drug stuff to the curb. We gave a lot of our furniture to my daughter.

And then I would walk into a room – more stuff.

Even after the great purge, we still completely packed a 20′ U-Haul with stuff. That required a full day of lift and tote coupled with puzzle-solving skills. To my dismay, I discovered my stuff is not symmetrical. When it was all said and done, I had a tangle of stuff crammed into a 20-foot cube.

Then there was the drive.

I have a new respect for big-rig truck drivers. Navigating that 20-footer through the mountains of North Carolina wore me out. That got me about halfway. Keep in mind, a 20-foot truck isn’t big. I can’t imagine driving an 18-wheeler.

But we made it unscathed. After months of packing and two days of driving, we arrived in Florida. I felt like I’d made it! And then I remembered all that stuff had to get off the truck. Lift and tote in reverse. My back may never be the same.

And now I’m sitting here writing about it in a sea of boxes.

Now, when we packed the boxes, we thought we were being pretty clever. We labeled everything in detail, not only writing which room the box went to, but also included a list of things in the box. That was going to make unpacking a breeze. We’d know what went where and wouldn’t spend hours hunting for this or that.

Well, guess what? It didn’t work.

Oh, the labeling was really helpful. But I thought it would be clever to put my podcasting mic inside the shredder bin. By clever, I mean really dumb.

After spending three hours emptying every box labeled “Mike’s office” and then opening literally every box that still wasn’t unpacked and finding no mic, I had given up on recording a Friday Gold Wrap podcast today. I don’t even know what prompted me to look inside the shredder. But there she was. Mocking me. I could almost hear it laughing at me. No, wait — that was my wife.

So, yeah. Moving sucks.

Now, imagine moving tons of gold. In secret.

No. Thank. You.

But Poland just did it. The Polish central bank repatriated 100 tons of gold from London. It was valued at about $5 billion.

And I thought I was stressed driving a U-Haul through North Carolina.

The gold was transported to an undisclosed airport near London escorted by police. It was then loaded onto a transport plane and flown to Warsaw. It was then transferred to three armored cars accompanied by a full motorcade. It took eight trips.

The news reports called it a “secret mission,” but it seems to me that it would be hard to hide that rolling circus.

And you know something had to go wrong. Something always goes wrong during a move, right? I wonder if they packed a bar or two inside their shredder? Or maybe left a container sitting in the parking lot?

“Hey Bubba, did you get that last crate.”

“Naw. I thought you was gettin’ it.”

“Oh well, somebody will grab it. Come on. It’s almost happy hour!”

Moving gold. No thanks.

But you know, it was important. As the saying goes, you down own it if it’s not in your possession. So, I guess it was worth the hassle for the Poles.

OK. I’ve got boxes to unpack. Have a good weekend.

Fun on Friday is a weekly SchiffGold feature. We dig up some of the off-the wall and off-beat stories relating to precious metals and share them with you – with tongue firmly planted in cheek. Click here to read other posts in this series.

Photo by G4S