[Lanelle]

I know it's crazy but we just moved our company office/shop/yard during one of the busiest weeks of the season. I'm trying to unpack and also get work accomplished. This prompted me to wonder if any of you have 'moving' stories and how it affected your business?

[Bill Schwab]

Lanelle:


The night we left Illinois, we had a pick up and 16' Wells trailer loaded. We get out on Rt 30 in plainfield, and not one, but two trailer tires go BLAMMY on the same axle. This was Feb 11, 2002, and we had work scheduled for Feb 14 in San Diego!

I found a Discount Tire place, took the rims off, got them there and off we went about 6:00 that night. The delay put us (my 8 year old daughter and I) into one of the worst snow stroms ever through Iowa and Nebraska down 80. Ther were semis flying by us until about 4 AM when I decided to find a Notel Motel along the way, because the widns just got too bad. After a few hours sleep and a hot shower, we got breakfast and got on the road again.

My daughter counted 87 jack knifed semis down 80, one that if he had been any further over, he would have been dead. Instead he opened the trailer like a can of beans. We get through Colorado, Utah (most beautiful state I have ever seen) AZ, Nevada, and finally, California, onto the 15 and heading to Carmel Valley. Made it there on the 13th, unloaded and went to work in Cardiff the next day. Had very little money in my pocket, as the house and company sales had not finished all the way when we had to leave for that job. A big rent payment was due in 15 days, and I was pretty stressed. What I had no idea of was that we have no time schedule to make in CA. We work year round, and hitting the window is irrelevant.

That is one of the things I don't a bit. I can't imagine moving and then having to hit that start up window again!

[Stonehenge]

We just moved this off-season, and as many of you know, my office is in my residence (shop is off site). After the move I was working like mad to finish part of the basement to give me some much-needed office space. Until the office was complete, I pretty much had a bunch of cardboard boxes and a table. Because of that and the move, doing anything took forever - if I wanted to write something down, I had to spend time looking for a pencil and paper. If I was putting together a proposal, I had to dig through boxes to find a plant catalog, hardscape material brochures, folders to put it in....everything. Made me late for appointments, slow in getting proposals together, you name it. Drove me nuts.

Things are pretty well organized now, with room to spread out, and it's only occasionally that I have to look for something now.

[Lanelle]

It does seem to be the 'little things' that drive a person nuts. This week its been phones that don't work properly, no electricity on some strategic walls where it is needed. No internet so I have to check business mail from home. Meanwhile people keep calling looking for their proposals. Those calls seem to make it through.

[agla]

I closed on my house yesterday. We'll be moving all week. The good thing is that it is only a few miles (not like the 3,000 from Idaho).