Dry Run in the Living Room
With just a few weeks to go before show time, last week was all about setting up the booth and figuring out display(s) for the wholesale and retail shows, and making a list of everything we still needed (tools, tape, biz supplies, etc.) to add to our shipment.
Booth #719
It was a little reminiscent of Kramer’s Merv Griffin TV show set (did you see that Seinfeld episode?)
the living room transformed into and end cap booth display
The 2 booth pictures above were taken on Saturday. And then on Sunday, the real fun began – taking everything down, organizing, packing, weighing, numbering, labeling boxes AND pallet-izing everything to be shipped truck freight to the east coast.
same living room – one day later
At about noon on Sunday, we found out that we needed to have our pallet full of booth, lights, flooring and artwork packed, stacked, shrink-wrapped and ready for pick-up by 8am Monday morning (we thought the ship day was going to be Tuesday, but due to impending snow storms across the country, our shipping company made the decision to move things up a day earlier).
With the help of several friends, we had our 22 boxes, 750lbs of art show stacked and shrink-wrapped – an 8 ft. tall obelisk in the driveway. We set the pallet on 4 wheelie roller thingies, and loaded the first “layer” of it in the garage (it’s a wee bit cold this week), then rolled it out onto the driveway to load the “top” layer (wouldn’t have had enough clearance to stack it completely inside the garage), and ultimately, wrap it.
Ready, set, wait
The truck never made it on Monday. It got stuck on some ice somewhere, needed a tow and never arrived. And we knew the snow was coming. We also knew that we are cutting it close timing-wise to get our shipment to VT by 2/11.
Yes, the show is in Baltimore, but we’re using a shipping service called Art in Motion, located in VT, which handles all the logistics of getting booths delivered to the show and placed in front of one’s booth space, picking it back up after the show, storing it in their warehouse in VT between shows, and then will bring it to my next ACC show in St. Paul in April.
So, this pallet needs to get to VT first by 2/11 and will be put on a truck from there and delivered to Baltimore on 2/17. We covered our obelisk with a tarp and hoped for a better day on Tuesday.
Approaching base camp on stress-mountain
Sure enough, the snow came and continued all day. We kept the driveway cleared in anticipation. We weren’t sure if the truck would come – It was late afternoon when I saw the semi inching it’s way down the street.
When the driver opened his door, he said, “This isn’t going to work. My pallet jack won’t work on this snowy road.” He obviously didn’t realize what crazed women he was dealing with – there was no way we were going to to let him leave without our obelisk!
We pulled out masonite and plywood, told him we would make our own ramp to his lift gate AND we had the pallet sitting on these wheelie thingies so we could push it down the drive way to our make shift ramp and between the 3 of us, muscle that pallet onto the lift gate.
And so we did,
leaving an array of debris in our path. We broke one of those wheelie thingie’s clean in half and one half of it was still lodged under the pallet as Joe shoved his pallet jack under it once he had it on the truck so he could move it in place for it’s ride down to Denver. We’re wondering if it will still be lodged there when we are reunited with our pallet on the show floor in Baltimore!
“pallet dance drawing” – marks made as we rolled, turned, and muscled the pallet onto the lift gate
What a relief it is on it’s way. Sending out all good energies to the weather and travel Gods for a expedient safe journey to VT!
Another incredible story of heroic proportions. You two are pretty amazing and that Joe guy didn’t have any idea who he was dealing with. He knows now. You inspire me to work a little harder on my writing and my puppy mill book. Fortunately I just have to email my works to possible buyers/agents, etc. Thank you
Thanks Mary, it was a big relief to see it on the truck finally, glad to have crossed that item off the list! Now we are watching the progress updates as the truck makes it’s way across the Midwest through all the storms…seems our truck is following the same path as these snow storms so we’ll feel a lot better once we know it’s made it to VT. 🙂