The Move to New York City

The truck and the separate, hired guns for unloading were scheduled to arrive Monday at 9 am. It was now Sunday and, after the fiasco and near disaster of the Ann Arbor piano loading, we decided to use Real Piano Movers to unload it here.

I find out about Ilya from Esther’s email at about 1 pm Sunday. I call. Ilya will check if his mover Alexey can do it. I hear nothing till about 5 pm. I call Ilya. Alexey is on the road but will call in by 6. While hanging in Fort Greene Park with our friend Patrick and Molly the Road Dog watching the pick up soccer, Alexey calls me. His accent is heavy but it is more important that he understand me than vice versa. I remember practically nothing from my Russian major days at Rutgers, but I break the ice with my recitation of the first few lines from the famous poem by Pushkin, Я вас любил. He is less impressed than most Russians I pull this trick on.

I describe the move needed. Steinway spinnet, dimensions, down the truck ramp, up one step to the patio, down two to the garden floor apartment, 90 degree turn, down the hall and around through the kitchen. No problem, he says. What time? I say between 10 and 10:30 Monday morning when I expect the piano to be unearthed from the rubble that is the back two thirds of the truck’s contents. He can do it.

All the stars and heavenly ducks align: the truck arrives at 8:40 am, the movers (the most excellent Atlas Movers, Inc. of Brooklyn, New York) arrive at 9 am. Unloading begins. Alexey and his even more body-builder-like and younger partner-in-heft arrive at 10:05. They wait patiently with bulky arms folded and equipment ready until the specialty muscle is needed. At about 10:30, a path is cut through the chaos and access to the piano is achieved. The Russians set to work.

Some people look at the violence of American football and see the athleticism, some can even easily tease out the balletic flight of a long receiver’s leap and turn. And so it was with Alexey and his tovarishch. With nothing more than a piano sled, a small 4-wheel dolly, and four biceps each the size of Montana, they steer the piano through the course described above. You know there is a lot of mass being turned, lifted, set up on end and back again as much and as many times as needed, but somehow you only sense a small fraction of said mass, so skilled and deft are they.

The work takes a mere 10 minutes and the piano is now about 6 feet from its final position. To get it off the sled and up against the wall, each man takes one end and they simply lift the thing.

Whenever in life, any literal or metaphorical clean-and-jerk places itself as an obstacle in one’s path, or put another way, in the great Land War of Life, take it from me, you want these guys on your side.

And to tie up the bow on the package nicely, Ilya called later in the day to make sure that we schedule a tuning with him.

Alan