The Free Piano
Wednesday, February 15, 2006
For those of you not currently watching the free section of Craigslist, I would go there now and start. (If you can't stand posts without photos, like me, try this site). Let me explain… no there is too much… let me sum up:Lisa heard me playing a song on the piano (Linus and Lucy, a kids’ favorite) with some children at a breakfast we attended for new residents at Rose. Being the absolute wonderful and fantastic person she is, she found a piano on Craigslist, free. I thought, why not, so we went to check it out with the expectation that it would be terrible, out of tune, broken, and etc. It wasn’t. It was in someone’s garage (temps were getting down to 20-40 degrees at night) and still in tune! So we went for it.
Lisa sent an email to her colleagues; turns out we were able to borrow a 1984 Mitubishi “Mitey Max”, a ramp, and 3 strong male doctors.
If you’ve seen doctors lately, you might agree that 3 are not enough. Enter the random guy I talk to de vez en cuando while riding my bicycle home from work. His name is Cameron, and I met him when he pulled up to a red light on his 1972 Raleigh (cool, but not as cool as this guy), and I was riding Lisa’s old Puegeot. “Nice ride” he says, and the rest is history. I saw him again the day before we were scheduled to move the piano. It went something like this:
Eric: “HEY!!”
Cameron, hesitant: hey?
Eric: “I’m the guy from the other day on the old white bike”
Cameron: “OH YEAH!! Hey man, what’s up?”
Eric: “Not much, what are you doing tomorrow night? Do you want to help me move a piano?”
Cameron: “Sure, why not!”
It turns out that our piano never would have made it into the apartment if it weren’t for Cameron, the landscape architect, with whom I ride home from work occasionally and coincidentally. For it was he who begged help from the freshly dating couple walking down the street while we were trying to get it off the truck. And, it was he who begged help from the two stoned teenagers who were on their way to the pizza place across the street. (They actually stuck around for an hour for the whole process, most likely because they were too stoned to communicate effectively).
The result? We have a beautiful old upright grand piano, for the cost of $15.00 in pizza. Now, the fact that I fell in love with the pickup we borrowed, and proceeded to buy one the next day is a different story…
Labels: free
written by Eric Mills at 01:27 
