, Subject= "Coast-to-Coast"
| Coast-To-Coast-To-Coast-To-Coast TravelBlog, starting May, 2005. ... rev 09.01.2005 |
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Around 08.03... Well, there are tons of papers to sign, then the usual packing of everything in sight [and some things that surface and surprise us ....]
So far:: 16 x 1.5 cu. ft. boxes filled and moved to the garage. Whew! Bought another 25, along with some new lamps for the sidewalk entryway, and a hydraulic door-closer to make the door from the house to the garage "positively close," which is a fire code requirement. Installed the door-closer and kept mashing my wrist back against the initial resistance of the mechanism. It closes the door nicely, but will be disconnected until we leave. The new owners can get used to it. Something's wrong with my LED house number-light. It doesn't anymore. Worked fine before we left two months ago. I think there's a bad transistor in it. I'll fix it before we go. I think the guy that did the building inspection pulled off one of the wires, too. Like, he needed to do that....
Claudia decided to keep the Camry, after some repairs made it as good as "new" or as good as it can be after 38K miles. I've got a graph that shows it's worth between about $10K and $18K or more at that mileage, so we'll see how it does as a "keeper" for now. We'll ship it east in a few weeks, probably. Anyone have extra room in their driveway? If it's after the NC house closes, we could actually have it delivered to our own house and put in our own garage! I like that....
Saturday, 08.06...
Went from 16 to 39 x 1.5 cu.ft. boxes this week. Sold my old Aeron chair, relic of the dot-bomb era, to a cool guy who works at Google. He spent about ten minutes figuring out how to fit it into his Miata convertible, so that it didn't fall over on him when he made a turn or tried to shift... He succeeded and took off with the birthday present for his wife.
Signed papers, faxed papers, emailed info for the loan application....
Put things up on CraigsList and eBay to get rid of stuff that's not worth shipping across the country, fretted about how to move our wine collection without paying more for shipping and storage than the wine's worth.... at least the wine cabinet is worth shipping... I think. Need storage for about 500 bottles? Got a pickup truck and two or three burly friends? Got $1950.00? C'mon Down!....
Bought more boxes and packing material for some of the fragile stuff I think I want to pack by myself.... the electric train set, some hi-fi parts and antique electronics...
Found and bought a double-wall cardboard box which turned out to have exactly the right inside dimensions for 2 layers of 3 rows of 31 CD jewel-cases..... almost exactly the number I had to pack. A nice miracle.
Decided that many pieces of our furniture won't match the styles in Raleigh, and discovered that we're very willing to sell it at auction or garage sale, rather than cart it along with us. Do you need a kitchen table for 6-10, including two leaves, six captain's chairs with arms and optional custom-cut glass cover [just a few chipped edges] ? Solid pine, hand made in 1973 or so by Staino Brothers of Califon, NJ? How about shelves and mounting brackets? Oak book cases? A wall-hanging pebbled waterfall? End tables? A PC desk? Tons must go....
Planned some of the last times we'll see some friends and relatives, face to face, for a while. [snif..]
Got our first mover to come out for an estimate on Friday the 5th. Seems like a good guy. Next one comes out on Monday the 8th. Since we're selling a lot and packing a lot, it will actually bring down the shipping cost somewhat. Yea!
Sunday, 08.21...
Oh, well, sorry about that... i's been a busy two weeks....
Up to about 50 boxes now: mostly 1.5 cu.ft., a few bigger boxes for clothes and things like that. I put a bunch of things on Craig's List and eBay, and found out that, for "classified ads" like moving sales, Craig's List is infinitely better. eBay is great for individual items, usually.
Most of the items I've put on Craig's List have sold, down to the final Big Three or so, and if they don't sell, they'll go into a trash dumpster or go east with us. The spa and wall unit don't go with us; my desk might go. Maybe even the steel desk in the garage...
But today, the house stands "pretty empty" of many things we'd accumulated over the years, and we're looking forward to the opportunities in re-furnishing the new house, redecorating and remodeling, too. It'll take time, but we've got a LOT of contacts in the area who have LOTS of contacts in the areas we'll need help: contractors, builders, etc.
Packing will be fun, because the movers can't take "opened bottles of liquor." NO, that doesn't mean we have to drink it all before we go; that would screw up many of the chores we need to do before he movers get here. Some will be given away, and some I like so much that they'll darned well get stuck in the trailer and follow along with us! A few will go as gifts to folks along the way, too. Not to mention one small bookcase which I hope to strap to the top of the trailer for one day's travel up to Truckee. It'll get off there and stay there, thank goodness! No telling what THAT will do to the aerodynamics and fuel consumption. Fortunately, that will be the last day we'll be buying gasoline in California for a LONG time... Yay!
I've gotten some of the wiring attached back up to the side of the house where the termite guys replaced some damaged wood. The cable modem still works, thank goodness! In the next days, I'll finish the wiring and repaint the bare wood, as well as the wiring covers themselves. Today we sold or gave away many items, so the house is starting to look pretty "spare," which is good, because we'll be light on furniture when we arrive in North Carolina, other than a garage full of cardboard boxes. It's going to mean lots of changes.
Change is good, right?
I've put together a spreadsheet of "to do" items, and one or two at a time, I've gotten to check them off. There are just one and a half weeks to go, and I think most of that time will be spent boxing up stuff left in about three rooms. Clothes, electronics stuff, and the garage.
Part of the time will also be spent engineering the packing of the trailer for the trip back east. This one will be a bit different, as we may need some PC equipment along the way: fax, printer, scanner, as well as the laptop that traveled successfully with us on the last two legs of the journey. We still may have some paperwork to deal with, and can't always rely on finding a Kinko's on the next street corner. We'll see what happens...
Enough for now... off to bed to recharge the batteries for another go at it tomorrow. In the next few days, the car-movers will pick up the Camry for its own adventure. Back to one car, again...
Sunday, 08.28...
It was the best of times, it was the worst of times... My friend, mentor, manager, golf buddy, and so many more things, Leon Kessler, passed away, taken by a virulent cancer, this past Thursday morning. We were going to detour our trip to see him, for probably the last time anyway, on our way east, but that detour will now revert to the "original plan." Which also messes up the timing of visiting several folks, so we'll see what happens. Really pissed me off that he didn't last longer, let alone got cancer at all. I'll miss him terribly.
So we kept on packing. The Camry was taken away, and the next day, the wine collection was packed off into refrigerated transport and storage. Worth every penny of the cost, due to one big thing less to worry about or have to handle during the moving business.
A few more pieces of furniture disappeared to donations and Craig's List sales. At this point only one item will be offered up free, and if it's not taken, it will be chopped up by me, and taken away by the refuse company Tuesday morning. A few last things I want to box up, like my electric train collection, some old magazine articles that will be source material for my Soapbox, and some of the more fragile electronics stuff I've got. That should take care of tomorrow pretty well.
Today I finished repainting the siding and wiring on the front and north side of the house, which needed replacement due to some termite damage and recent activity. It was a little easier than I thought it would be, and looks really great, now! I touched up some other parts, around the garage, which had been dinged and chipped over the past years, too. That wrapped up the painting chore hanging over me. Yay!
Tonight and tomorrow will be boxing and getting the clothes dryer and washer ready to go. A few last loads of laundry, and we pack the trailer again, to go.
Whew! The finish line is coming into view, and beyond it, the next starting gate....
Tuesday, 08.30...
The Packers came, and informed us that they thought I'd be doing all of the packing, and all they'd need to do was the furniture. NOT! A few phone calls and a promise of more money to them, plus the addition of two extra pairs of hands for packing, led to an 8 am to 7 pm packing party. I tipped the guys for their extra efforts, but I'll have more to say about the moving company after the goods are delivered safely to Raleigh...
We are exhausted from packing, painting, chasing the packers around to let them know what to pack and what to leave. They're doing a nice job, but this is one of the two exhausting stages of the process... the other is tomorrow: the moving of the boxes to the truck. The packers got tips for their extra efforts.
Wednesday, 08.31...
Now, the end is really in sight. Another day on my feet, since there's only one place in the house where we can sit down... the window seat. All of the chairs have been packed and loaded onto the truck. Mitch, the driver, is a wonderful guy from the Florida Panhandle, who thinks his house probably survived Katrina. He arrived with FOUR loaders, who did a great job of packing the loose odds and ends and tools and some small furniture that the guys couldn't do yesterday, and never had an impatient word for anyone. He and all of the workers got tips from me. His truck holds 300 gallons of Diesel fuel, which today is well over $3.00 a gallon. Nearly $1000 to "fill his tank." And the SUV drivers are bitching... You don't see the truckers on the nightly news, do you?
After all, the boxes were packed and the truck left. We took the borrowed table that my laptop had lived on for the past week back to the neighbors' and hugged good-byes. Shirley admitted on Thursday that she beat a quick retreat from home so that she wouldn't cry when we finally pulled away. We're leaving lots of really nice people behind, and hope to have nearly as many nice people in our lives in a few years. It is wrenching.
Our first stop was to top off with gas. The prius took nearly four gallons to top off, and hopefully, the last over-$3.00 regular for a while... Right... Now that the refineries are breaking and the oil rigs are "disappearing," as last night radio broadcast put it, those hopes are dwindling. At any rate, 35 mpg should still be nice, and a good part of the journey "home" will be downwind and downhill.
That's it for this page... Coast5 is the continuation.
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