Moving is a part of my life. In fact, it is probably a part of life for a great many people in a mobile nation like the United States. With a car and some gasoline, you can journey across the country as freely as you like.
My wife and I have both moved countless (as in, I don't want to count them right now) times both as children and as adults. While I graduated from the same school district that I started kindergarten in, I was raised by a single mother, and we moved a lot between rented apartments, rented houses, and eventually our own place.
So when Mrs. Monkey and I determined we would move from Tucson, AZ to Jacksonville, FL, I said, "Sure, no problem!" See, I moved from Moline, IL to Tucson, AZ with a U-Haul, my old Jetta in tow, and my two cats in the cab of the truck. I guess I forgot what a massive adventure it really was then, for our journey to Jacksonville, FL was packed with stuff to blog about.
We decided to move to Jacksonville after visiting my college roommate during a trip to Florida for my step-brother's wedding. I went to school at the University of Florida in Gainesville (Go Gators!), and that is where my step-brother is attending graduate school. We took the opportunity to see any of my friends that we could. One still lives in Gainesville with his wife (whom he met in college), and one lives in Neptune Beach, steps from the ocean. Literally, you can see, hear, and smell the ocean from his driveway.
Sitting on Neptune Beach in April, we were hooked. Looking at each other in the sort of completely ecstatic look one gets when contemplating something otherwordly, we asked ourselves, "Why don't we live here?" We were married on a beach in California (Monterrey Bay), and we knew we were miserable in land-locked Tucson. Yet, somehow, it took actually sitting there on the beach to recognize what we really wanted.
So we did it: We kicked our kids out (in a lengthy, 6-month procedure called getting a job for the boy); we packed all our accumulated crap from 8 years of living in the same house (as long as either of us had ever been that stable); and we rented a big-ass truck to haul it all. We loaded up and hit I-10 east -- all the way east.
I think I could write a book about it, but I want to try to keep this blog short. I have more to say about what we've done in the weeks since we've been here than I do about the trip out. There is plenty to say, though.
Getting the truck was a fairly straight forward deal. We looked online at Penske, U-Haul, and Budget and found that Budget gave us the best deal for a long haul. Penske was comparable, but Budget gave us the 26' truck where the Penske truck would have been only 24'. It turned out, we needed the extra space!
I will post a time lapse of the loading process some day, but I just don't have the time to bother with it right now. I did most of the work myself with the help of only a dolly. Our son helped with some of the bigger stuff, but he was working most of the time we were loading. It was mostly me. Mrs. Monkey packed, I loaded.
I've driven large vehicles before, but it still took some time to get used to the massive diesel I was responsible for. Am I going to be able to handle this thing for 2000 miles? Driving was actually the easiest part. The hard part: transporting the cats.
I mentioned that I had come to Tucson with two cats. We added one more in order to give our son (who was 10 years old at the time) some ownership of our pets, but another one latched onto my wife's skirt as we were leaving, so we ended up with 4 total. We split them between us for the trip, two in the truck with me, and two in the car with her. You'd think the car would have more space, right? I mean, it's a 4-door sedan with fold-down rear seats to access the trunk. No amount of space is adequate for a yeti, we found out. She definitely got the worst of it.
Perhaps the worst for me was ferrying the cats in and out of hotel rooms that we knew did not accept pets or that wanted a fee for doing so. I don't want to have to sneak around, but really, how else am I supposed to get my pets across country? Anything else is just animal cruelty. It was cruel enough with us by their side; I can't bear the thought of sending them in a crate with someone else. Now that they are in a place with our old furniture, they are totally back to normal. The hotels had them wondering, and they needed at least a couple of days to really believe we weren't leaving again in the morning.
We stayed in New Mexico the first night, which was disappointing. I am of the opinion that you haven't made progress on your road trip if you sleep in the state bordering your own. I was hoping to make it into Texas at least. The second night we did, and it was actually a nice room. The third night we made it into Louisiana but not all the way to New Orleans. I had hoped to spend Saturday night in New Orleans, but it just wasn't going to happen. We decided the next day that we were so far behind that we needed to just haul ass, so we didn't even stop there. I think I regret that, but I have confidence we'll be back.
The worst night was Sunday in a dry county just an hour from Tallahassee. If I had known some christians had decided you can't drink beer on that particular day, I would have blown right through their stupid county. However, the next day we made it to Jacksonville and got into a weekly rental and a storage unit.
Unloading took about as long as loading, again, because it was all me doing the labor. My wife was pretty devastated physically by the long journey, so it was on me to unload and return the truck. I look at it as a terrific workout!
Somewhere in the process of unloading, a stack full of stereo equipment crashed to the concrete floor while my wife was doing something nearby. The first thought was "look out!" but then the reality that a couple grand worth of equipment might have just become doorstops set in. She apologized profusely. I think she would have sounded just as upset if one of the cats had been injured; she knows how important music is to me. It turns out that one of the two receivers I had took some damage, but everything else is just fine. I don't need two anyway. The worst part of that was my largest cast iron skillet was also in that stack, and it shattered a huge chunk out of one side and cracked the bottom all the way to the middle. (We lost the TV, too, but I miss the cast iron more. Luckily, I have a smaller one that has served us well since being promoted to primary skillet.)
All in all, we not only had a smooth trip, but it was exciting. When we hit Jacksonville, we went straight to my friend's house on the beach and took pictures that we are currently using as our facebook profile pics. (Consequently, I would be happy to friend anyone in Jacksonville, Gainesville, or the surrounding area.) It took a week, but we found a great apartment to stay in right on the St. John's River and less than 30 minutes from the beach. We got our internet hooked up this morning, so I am just getting to update myself on the news of the world (Kim Jong Il is dead, eh?).
I will have a few more diaries coming over the next days as I debrief myself. We've been to some great restaurants (Nippers, Gene's Seafood) that I want to review. Also, there are a great deal more food markets here than I have had access to before, so I want to talk about those. So if you are interested in some Jacksonville foodie talk, now's the time to subscribe to the smokeymonkey.