The most excellent sofa buying adventure

It is not always easy to get things done here . . . I don't have enough Spanish to manage something as complex as purchasing a second hand sofa and getting it delivered and into my apartment. However, with help from my friend, Lee, and two strangers, we managed . . . and I'm thrilled with the result!

It started out when my friend, Dee, told me that a friend of hers was moving and selling a love-seat size sofa and if I wanted it I had to get over there within an hour. It was only a 20 minute walk away, so I trotted over, liked it, bargained a good price and arranged that I'd pick it up between 5 and 7 that evening.

A few days earlier, my friend, Lee and I, had found the perfect small table with collapsable legs, to be used as a desk, at Coppel, a department store on the other side of Centro. I purchased it and Lee and I walked all the way through the busiest part of downtown . . . her at one end and me at the other . . . and we got it home, safe and sound. We thought that was an adventure. The sofa was to be the most excellent adventure! At least the end result was most excellent!!!

I called Lee up (she has very, very good Spanglish), discussed the options, and decided we should walk back to where the sofa was, grab an auriga (red-truck type taxi), pay the driver an extra fee for him to get a buddy and help us load the sofa into his truck, take it to my place, and unload it. Sounds pretty simple, doesn't it? Walking there was easy! Finding an auriga was easy! The auriga driver finding a buddy to help was easy! But that is where easy stopped!!! That was about when we found out that the only way to get the sofa out of the room it was in, was to take the slats out of a window and lift it up and out the window. Okay, so we did that . . . a bit more work than we had anticipated, but we were successful. Drove the short distance to my place. Did I mention that to get to my place, we go in a narrow door, up a narrow, twisting stairwell (in the dark), down another narrow hallway to the back deck, then in my apartment door. I was smart . . . I had taken the door off the hinges before I even left the house! So, these wonderful men, hoofed the thing up those stairs, down the hall and into the doorway of my apartment. And there it stopped! It was too big! They twisted it and turned it and pushed it and kicked it . . . Dennis came over from across the deck and said, "No way, it won't fit". Marion came down from upstairs and just laughed and said "Forget it". Lee was outside with the men . . . I was inside on the other side of the sofa which was perched on it's end in the doorway. All I could hear was laughter, moans, groans, yells, shouts, and the occasional bang as they tried to force the sofa through the doorway. Lee said that one of the fellows was on his back, holding on to the grillwork on the wall, slamming with his feet on the sofa, forcing it in. I was on the other side, shouting encouragement . . . “Only 3 more inches!” . . . “Only one more inch!” . . . finally, to the sight and sound of a good inch of the plaster on my wall crumbling to the floor . . . the sofa came through! The sofa was slightly worse for it's adventure . . . but nothing a bit of duct tape didn't fix! And now it sits in my livingroom . . . never to be removed!!! It looks great! I love it! I gave the auriga drivers an extra huge tip for work way above and beyond the call of duty!

But, you know . . . that's how it often is here in Mazatlan . . . they will do everything they can to help out . . . and they won't give up until they have done their absolute best! I mean . . . these were two guys we pulled in, off the street!!! I find it amazing . . . and wonderful!

And that was my sofa buying adventure! I'm sure my friend Lee is wondering what I will ask of her next!!!