Moving Day(s): Part One

Waking up at 4 a.m. is like a punch in the face.

Waking up at 4 a.m. two days in a row is an abomination.

Waking up at 4 a.m. two days in a row, driving 16 hours, moving two SUV loads of stuff at least three times (throw a flight of stairs in there), taking two trips to IKEA, putting together 13 pieces of IKEA furniture, taking two trips to the grocery store, and sleeping on a hardwood floor two nights in a row is how you send yourself to the nuthouse…but I’ll get to all of that soon enough.

Just over a month after we signed a lease on our new apartment, we found ourselves packing up everything we could fit into a Ford Explorer, saying our goodbyes, and heading north. These past few days of pure insanity began at 5 a.m. on Thursday when we hopped in the rental and headed for the highway, waving my parents goodbye.

This first day was fairly uneventful. We took I-95 through Florida, Georgia, and South Carolina, stopping at the insane South of the Border for lunch. Cradled between North and South Carolina, South of the Border is a behemoth of a place with stores, restaurants, rides, and massive quantities of fireworks. There is also an insane amount of billboards advertising this place hundreds of miles out (about a zillion more billboards than Café Risque has on I-75). We ate at one of five restaurants, Pedro’s Café. Despite its name and the giant statue of a boy in a sombrero outside, they did not serve chips and salsa…we had cheeseburgers and hotdogs with fries.

Onward we went, getting through North Carolina and a good bit of Virginia by around 5 p.m. We got a room at a Best Western in Stafford, Virginia and had dinner at Ruby Tuesday’s amongst a sea of age 60+ early birders. We were on the road again by 5 a.m. the next morning, and were shocked by the amount of traffic so early just outside of D.C. I kid you not – I-95 looked the same at 5 a.m. as I-4 does at 5 p.m.

Thankfully we were still able to make good time and scooted through Maryland, Delaware, and New Jersey without a hitch, quickly learning that everyone on the Jersey Turnpike goes at least 20 miles over the speed limit. It’s no wonder that Jersey has the most expensive car insurance in the country. These crazy drivers ended up being good practice for New York City roads, though Jonnie got into the groove of driving like a nut pretty easily. While I was gritting my teeth and slamming on a pretend brake, Jonnie was gliding between lanes like a true New Yorker.

Google Maps did us proud and we found the apartment building easily. There were no street parking spots left, of course, so Jonnie double parked while I ran upstairs to make sure the apartment was ready to go. Except for one last ladder and a few tools here and there, we were in business. First we unloaded the car into the small gated area that surrounds the building’s stoop. I waited with all of our stuff, sweating glistening profusely, while Jonnie drove off to park the car down the block.

Moving everything up to the apartment sucked about 100 times more than I had expected, but it didn’t take a terribly long time. By this point we were literally dripping sweat so we decided to set up the window AC unit in the bedroom…this was easier said than done. Basically all you do is open the window, set the grooved part of the unit on the sill, close the window to stabilize it, and secure it with two covers that slide out like an accordion to cover the rest of the open window. Simple right? No, it was very scary. We were petrified that we would drop it out the second story window and it would either smush someone or break into a million pieces (or both). Because of this, we took a ridiculously long time to line it up right and secure it (we later bought a second unit to put on the other end of the apartment and were able to install it about 25x faster).

We spent a few minutes cooling down in front of the AC before heading back to the car for IKEA. The trip into Brooklyn down I-278 was as scary as the drive to the apartment and took nearly twice as long as Google Maps said it would. The giant blue and yellow building, thankfully, was impossible to miss. Starving, we first ate at the café in the store and were amazed by the unobstructed view of the downtown Manhattan skyline.

The next couple of hours were a blur. Being the overzealous planner that I am, I came equipped with a detailed spreadsheet of everything we needed to get. We flew all around the store, filling both a regular and a flat shopping cart with as much as we could. Did you know the wheels on their carts go both front to back and side to side? Jonnie had a field day with that.

We checked out, loaded up the SUV, and headed to pick up the second AC and a microwave. By this point the rental was full to the brim and we were about to unload once again. This time sucked even more, though.

We tried to double park and move everything up to the apartment turbo speed. Before we were even through the building door, however, Jonnie had to move the SUV so a semi-truck could get by. He rounded the block while I waited, then double parked again. Take two. This time we got about 4 ft. further with the first load before another semi-truck came up the road.

Enter frustration mode. Jonnie rounded the block once more and pulled into the forbidden space in front of the fire hydrant. We loaded everything into the area at the base of the staircase inside the building and Jonnie drove off again to find a spot on the next block.

All of our stuff from home was packed into a bunch of fairly light and/or small boxes. IKEA did not follow suit when they packaged the furniture we bought. We were able to get most of the stuff up the stairs, but the last box, a 4-drawer dresser, was ridiculously heavy. Instead of trying to carry it together, we opened the box and took trips carrying up the 483,432 pieces.

Finally we had gotten everything into the apartment (until IKEA trip #2, that is). All we had left to do for the day was drop off the rental at the LaGuardia airport and take a trip to the grocery store. It was easy to find the Budget building near the airport and we hopped on shuttle to take the bus back to the apartment. We got on the wrong bus, of course, and ended up taking a little tour of Jackson Heights. I didn’t mind, though. It was nice just to sit in the air conditioning for awhile.

By the time we got back to the apartment we were hungry and decided to walk to the grocery store. While we were in Florida, my mom discovered that there was a Pathmark only a block away. Pathmark is basically the Publix of the northeast, and this particular store was no different. It was huge and even had a massive parking lot. As we were about to cross the street into this parking lot, we noticed a massive yellow banner strung across the building just beneath the “Pathmark” sign. Banners like these always say one of two things: grand opening or store closing – this one said the latter. We had been so excited to be living so close to a real grocery store, and this was semi-crushing after an exhausting day. Oh well, what can you do? We decided to buy as much as we could at discounted prices to stock up.

Back at the apartment we ate a pizza we had picked up and began putting together some of the IKEA stuff. We stayed up until nearly 3 a.m. putting together the knick-knacks we bought and most of the furniture including a dining table and chairs, desk, desk chair, and bookcase. Beyond exhausted we passed out on a makeshift bed consisting of a rug, comforter, blanket, and sheet on the hardwood bedroom floor. We fell asleep hoping we’d be able to get the next day.