I almost can’t believe it, but TODAY IS THE DAY THAT WE LEAVE FOR AFRICA.
After months of dreaming, planning, and anticipation, it’s finally here. Our bags are (mostly) packed, and our farewell tour (which stretched from Manhattan to Brooklyn to Indianapolis to Champaign to Galesburg to Chicago) has concluded. (Thanks to everyone who came out to see us and/or sheltered us at various stops along the way! We love you all.) We’re just finishing up some last-minute details, and then, before you know it, we’ll be boarding the plane …
If you’ve read Part I of our trip from Brooklyn to Illinois, you know that our road trip had hit a snag before we had even left the city. (Or, more accurately, a snag had hit us, in the form of a huge bus.1) We figured we had probably just reset our moving karma and the rest of the trip would be cake, but, alas, it most certainly was not.
First, the good: On Friday night, even with the delays attendant to being hit by a bus (dealing with the police and the rental car company and then hitting rush hour because we had been delayed in the city), we made it to our goal town of Weirton, West Virginia.
Now, the even better: On Saturday, we traveled on to Indianapolis, only about 5 hours away, and visited some friends (also former Brooklynites) who live there. We hadn’t seen them in over a year, so it was nice to spend some time with them and their son (who had turned two since we had seen him last and acquired a huge vocabulary).
Everyone had been warning us about the impending snowstorm, and we were compulsively checking the weather. The last thing we wanted to do was be stranded on the highway in a minivan full of 95% of our worldly possessions during a snowstorm, and we were trying to determine the best time to leave Indianapolis to avoid this fate (or if we could leave at all on Sunday as planned). When we woke up on Sunday, we found a few inches2 of snow on the ground (and on our vehicle) but there didn’t appear to be any ice at that point. The weather showed snow continuing to fall in Indianapolis for the rest of the day, but the remainder of our drive looked pretty clear. Continue reading Brooklyn to Illinois, Part II (Or, Do You Know Where the Jack Is Located?)→
Moving is pretty much always the worst. If it’s not a rival moving van blocking the service drive you have reserved (which happened during my second Chicago move), it’s your movers perilously hoisting your couch over an indoor courtyard (which happened during my move to Manhattan).
Our move was more complicated than a normal move since we weren’t simply moving to a new location. It sounded easy enough: sell the furniture, donate some stuff, ship some things.
Of course, it was more difficult than we had imagined. We had trouble finding buyers for some of the furniture, and then we had to schedule the service elevator (a task which proved more difficult than I thought was warranted). We were more emotionally attached to some of our stuff than we had expected, making the donation process difficult. And shipping things required either renting a Zipcar and driving to the post office or using a hand truck to move boxes down the Fulton Mall (both methods which we employed), and then waiting in line at the post office.
our IKEA bed, heading downstairs to its new owner
But we persevered, and, by noon on Thursday, less than 24 hours before we were to begin our move, we had just a pile of boxes sitting in the middle of our living room, destined to be loaded into a minivan and driven to my mom’s house in Illinois. Continue reading Brooklyn to Illinois, Part I (Or, That Time We Got Hit By a Bus)→
