Piano Man

Around New Years 2007-->2008

When you have parents hire a piano mover for the piano they are having delivered you assume the piano man will be dealing with the moving of the piano, correct? Not so if it's a piano man from the Tri-Cities. My parents offered us their piano. It's the one I played on as a kid growing up--9 years of lessons--belonged to my first piano teacher, she brought it with her to the States from Japan. For Christmas 2007 Mom & Dad said as my gift they would have the piano delivered. Wonderful! My mom mentions we may want to have a few people on this end for the delivery. Too bad I didn't really take this comment seriously. If a piano is being delivered I assumed we wouldn't have to lift a finger. I was wrong. My friend Tina was in town. With Darren and I, that's 3. No problem right? Delivery was supposed to happen in the AM. I get a call about 11 from the piano man. "Where are you? I'm lost. Quality Food Center. Satellite machine. Bad trip. Never doing this again. Cell phone low on batteries with no charger". Uh, this is the guy making the delivery? Great. I figure out where he is and give him directions. This tagged moving truck pulls up. D's outside and I see him jumping into the driver's seat of the truck?! This old man is now directing him to back the truck into our neighbor's driveway (we live on a hill and their driveway is even with out front door, our own driveway is even with the neighbor's below us). The driveway is un-even so the piano is difficult to move because of the angle. Darren moves the truck to a different position so it's more level. Ramp has to crush our roses and bushes though the piano man doesn't seem to care about that. By this time we figure out that this old man is the mover. There's a gal sitting in the front of the truck but she makes no move to help. With 4 of us, 1 being 80 or so, 2 of us females, I make a call to Sean who lives just a few miles away. Thankfully he's willing to help. The old man says, "oh no, we can handle it", but he can't even unbuckle the piano from it's ropes so it's not looking good. Sean arrives. Piano Man directs D and Sean into first getting the piano to the middle of the truck, then moving it down the ramp. The piano is on a dolly so it actually moves fairly easy without having to lift much. The piano is now on our front walk. The 'mover' uses an old door as the ramp up to our front door. Seems easy enough except for the lip at the top. We kind of have to lift the front end above the lift. We push the piano into our house. When the back end of the piano gets to the lip, it gets stuck again. This time with Tina's foot wedged between the lip and the piano wheels. I'm starting to freak--great we're gonna break a runner's foot! She says it's fine and luckily we are able to back the piano up, get Tina's foot out and get the piano in our house. Not quite done though. The piano needs to be taken off the dolly. Mover tells Darren to lift his side. He does, mover tries to get the dolly out but it doesn't budge. Tells D to lift higher. Um, he's lifting a freaking piano as high as he can! After telling him higher a couple more times, he then says oh, maybe Sean should lift his end. He does and this time the dolly slides out. We wheel the piano into it's place and it hasn't moved since. Yay for friends helping out! Boo to this supposed piano mover or at least my parent's choice in a piano mover. Next time, professional piano movers.