Flying Mattresses

Next week we have the full DeVore clan and the Hales grandparents coming into town for Jacob's baptism. In the process of getting ready for our visitors we have had to prepare our guest room and key part of that is getting a bed. Holly perused Craig's List for a couple days and found a good deal.

So we packed up the kids to go get the mattress. We quickly realized that this was a bad idea. We were going to have to carry the mattress down from an apartment. What were we going to do with the kids while we did that? Luckily Sally volunteered to take one for the team and we dropped all the kids at her house.

We arrived at the place and the mattress looked great. The lady was moving to Berlin and was just trying to get rid of stuff so she threw in pillows, duvet, and a bunch of other stuff. Holly had gotten a little confused about the price. She had thought it was $100 when the lady had been asking $150. I had $120 on me and thought that we were going to have to find an ATM. But then I found a 20 euro in my wallet from our trip to Italy. Well the lady was going to Berlin so I gave her the 20 euro, and with the terrible exchange rate, we were even.

Holly and I took everything down the elevator and loaded the mattress and box spring on top of our mini van. We were a little unprepared in this area as well. We had some ropes but bungee cords would have been much better. We got it mostly tied on and headed home. We were coming back from downtown DC so it was going to take about 30 minutes.

Things looked a little scary but we thought we were all right. We were headed down Nebraska when all of the I looked in the rear view mirror and saw the box spring standing vertically behind me. We quickly pulled into the nearest driveway - the Japanese embassy. It had blown off the top but the rope had kept it barely attached so it never hit the ground. We pulled out another strap and got it tied down a little better.

Needless to say, from this point on we went very slowly. We did fine until we got to Chain Bridge and had to cross the Potomac River. It was very windy and our mattress looked like it was going to take flight. The people behind us must have been terrified. We prayed our way to the other side and after that we were home free.

I think that next time we will rent a moving truck.