Moving Update:
The News is Good
By Mike Bennighof, Ph.D.
July 2011

Once I was a champion.

It was the 4 x 110-yard relay (Alabama high schools didn’t go metric until well after the rest of the world). I ran the second leg, and slapped the baton firmly into the hand of Chrys Jones, spelled with a y, who opened the small lead into a wide one before handing it to Wes Hopkins (yes, this Wes Hopkins) who turned the lead into a rout.

Last Sunday, I thought about that for the first time in years: a clear triumph of which I could be proud for the rest of my life. The next day, I went to sign lease papers for our new offices and storage facility (which are separate this time). And in arranging the space, I came to a sudden realization: there was absolutely no way to move the roughly 40 tons of boxes, counters and such in less than a week using staff, friends and family members. I needed a professional, and I needed one immediately. And I could not find one.

The need to move came rather suddenly; given a little cooperation from the property owner I probably would have kept us in our old location indefinitely. We wanted to reduce our space, as new ways of making sleeved boxes will drastically reduce storage needs in coming years. No longer will we need to stockpile tens of thousands of boxes; a few thousand of the generic boxes should be sufficient at any one time. In terms of space, every older boxed game that moves out the door will never be replaced.

But instead of the simple lease change we expected, instead we were told it would be all or nothing. Our new accountant recommended nothing – we’re not going to prosper by renting empty warehouse space. And since our previous lease had already expired, we had to leave right away.

That meant I needed a mover I could trust, who would drop everything to shift our mass quantities of stuff and do it fast. I wandered through the property manager’s office while she got the lease ready to sign, and my eyes lit on a rack of business cards on her desk for Pleasure Movers, with the owner’s name.

Chrys Jones.

Stunned at seeing a name I’d recalled less than 24 hours before for the first time in many years, I sort of whispered it out loud, the little hairs on the back of my neck tingling.

“Sure. Great guy, you should use him if you need a mover.”

I described the Chrys I knew.

“Yep, that’s him. Give him a call.”

And so I did, and he dropped everything. He scouted the job on Tuesday, and his crew swarmed the warehouse on Wednesday, putting the loose games and boxes on pallets and covering them with protective wrap, and taking apart our industrial-grade rack shelving. It took them all day: because I had no inkling we’d move again for years, the games weren’t packed up, and many of the empty boxes had been taken out of their cartons. Those made in the U.S. had never been in cartons and were loose on the shelves.

On Thursday, the crew returned at 6 a.m. All day long, the truck went back and forth bearing games, parts and sundry items. The last load left a few minutes before 2 a.m. They were back a few hours later to shift the office equipment to our new office, and by 1 p.m. all was done.

Just like I did at the age of 15, I put the baton in Chrys Jones’ hand. And once again, he delivered.

* * *

The new quarters are a little cheaper and a whole lot nicer, with heat and air and lights that all actually work (maintenance had been slipping on the old place, as other tenants steadily moved away). Once everything’s sorted out, internet service connected (our local provider, Bright House, has so far been extraordinarily difficult to deal with - unless I want to take advantage of their current bundle special!) and our giant printing machine has its power source in place (it has special needs, but our new landlord had the work set up within 30 minutes of getting the tech details), we should be much happier.

There's a great deal of sorting to be done. There's a supply of every game currently in stock in the new office, or at least in my current state of exhaustion I think there is, but they won't last forever. A distributor ordered 24 copies each of several titles on Friday, which wipes out all that I'd had Janet's son move to the new office. The new warehouse space is pretty haphazardly filled; not surprising since some of it went in there at the end of a 21-hour day of hard physical work. But now we've got some time to arrange the stuff and stack it properly (no boxes of counters on top of game boxes, that sort of thing).

After I hit "send" on this and adjust the website's front page, I'll pull the plug on this computer and it will be the last item moved out of here. We won't update the site again until Bright House realizes I'm not going to order their onelowpricedigitalcablebundleincludingpremiummoviechannels for an office without a television and actually responds or I get fed up and switch providers. Phone also needs to be re-connected. We will have access to e-mail and the webstore via other means, so we'll be shipping stuff on Monday. We're in much better shape than I expected, because I put the baton in the right hands.