As anticipated, it's been 5 days of complete madness but things are actually getting done. After putting us into hyper-drive by telling us on wednesday that they would be loading the truck saturday, it turned out that the truck didn't come until monday afternoon. Nevertheless, getting the entire house sorted out in four days was a bit much!

We managed to fill a 3-yard dumpster and still have to take 900 pounds of other stuff to the dump! And that was after the used furniture guy came and took all the worthwhile stuff. It's amazing how much stuff doesn't look worth having when you've been living on a sailboat for a year...Given more time, we could have gotten rid of even more.

We knew from past moves that we have a lot of books and that professional movers charge by weight. To save costs, we decided we would pack all of our books and my woodworking tools and take them to Nova Scotia ourselves in a UHaul...After packing and loading them all into the truck, I had it weighed and discovered that we have just over 6000 pounds of books and tools! Yipe! I guess its a good thing UHaul didn't have the size truck I had reserved and gave me their biggest one instead...

Today the movers should finish loading their truck and I expect we'll be driving north shortly after lunch...We're taking the northern route because we need to get Symphony's cradle from our former home port in Duluth: It will ride on the trailer towed behind the Uhaul...It's just a thrill to drive this rig!

And so Phase 4 is coming to a close: Not with a whimper, but a bang! Phase 5, entry to Canada is next...In parallel with the sorting and packing, I've also been preparing for a major bureaucratic event when we get to border. We have to deal with getting my work permit, improting our household goods, and importing our car, each of which is a seperate operation. The number of forms, documents, letters, etc, needed for each of these isn't too unreasonable but the combination has forced me to start carrying a portable file with 30 compartments to organize all the papers...it's a good thing I enjoy this sort of challenge!