The Move

For those who are interested, this is a log of the move to California, as much of it as I can remember and about as organized as a pile of gravel.

Pictures we took along the way are here. Sarah was nice enough to take the time and add all the descriptions for the photos.

Monday June 28th.
After completing all the packing and cleaning of the old place, we headed over to Mike’s just before midnight. Meaning to get up and leave early in the morning, I naturally stayed up past 4 am talking to Mike.

Tuesday June 29th.
We had called our landlady the day before to tell her that we would probably arrive on Thursday or Friday and we wanted to make sure we could get our keys and stuff. She informed us that she doesn’t have office hours on Thursday or Friday. Her office is her home. Her home is in the apartment complex. Yea, I have no idea either. Anyway, after we insisted that we couldn’t make the drive from Texas to California in less than 24 hours, she told us to get a cashier’s check and FedEx it to her so that she would receive it before her office “closed” on Wednesday. So we got up around 9 or 10 am and headed to the bank to get a cashier’s check for the first months rent at our new place.
After that, we all (Me, Sarah, Mike, Alba, Rodney, and Laura) met at the Luby’s on 620 and had some lunch. Good times. After lunch we headed over the Kinko’s with Rodney and Laura to FedEx the check. After running to Time Warner to drop all our cable paraphernalia, we headed back to Sarah’s place to load the car on the trailer and connect it to the rental truck. Securing the car on the trailer was a little confusing and seeing as how I didn’t want it flying off onto the highway somewhere along the way, I secured it as best I could and then drove it up to Budget to have them do it for me. The Budget guys were really nice and helpful and after about 30 minutes and me asking a few annoying “what if” questions, the guy assured me that the car wasn’t going anywhere. So then we were off. This was about 3pm. Way later than we originally planned on leaving but oh well. Before we left Mike and Alba’s that morning, Mike warned me about all these storms that would be hitting the area around 3pm. I blew it off because we would of course be way out of town by then. So leaving Austin really sucked. We probably spent the first few hours of the drive going no faster than 45mph. Once we got off 290 and onto I-10 though, most of the storms were behind us.
Our truck only had an AM/FM radio so before we left we went to BestBuy and picked up this nifty little device that you plug into a discman and it then transmits the audio over an FM frequency which you then tune your stereo to. Pretty cool little device though it is completely useless to us now. Anyway Sarah had had the very good idea of getting some books on CD so she borrowed a few from her friend and ex-coworker Matt. My favorite by far was Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them: A Fair and Balanced Look at the Right by Al Franken. Very funny and very interesting. I would really recommend reading… err listening to this book… err CD. Anyway, we had those CDs and of course some music CDs as well to help pass the time. I have to say though; driving through west Texas via I-10 was really not bad at all. A lot of it reminded of driving on Loop 360 in Austin. Mainly because of the hills and the highway being cut through some of them. It was actually really pretty. Also, I-10 in Texas is awesome. It’s like a normal interstate highway with 4 lanes so you don’t have to worry about getting stuck on a 2-lane road behind some grandma or say some nervous chump driving a rental truck with a trailer attached. And to top it off it seemed almost entirely deserted. Not only were there not many other cars on the road, I never even saw a cop until we got into El Paso. Anyway, our goal for Tuesday was to make it to El Paso. It was starting to get late and Sarah’s mom had warned us that we should probably just stop in Fort Stockton because there was little or nothing between that and El Paso and there was still over 200 miles to get there. So we get into Fort Stockton around 11pm and see those nifty highway signs for “Food and Lodging” and decide to exit. We head to a Dairy Queen that looks open and get some food and decide where we want to stay. We were not looking for luxury and didn’t really care about amenities so we were looking for cheap rooms. The hotels we passed on the way to DQ country advertised $22.95 per night. Sound good? Well there was a reason for those rates; it was in the ghetto. So we decided to get back on the highway and find some more hotels. We eventually did and got into our room around midnight.

Stats for day 1:
Start: Home, 1900 Fairlawn Ln, Austin Texas.
End: La Quinta, 1537 US-285, Fort Stockton Texas.
Miles: 338.2
Time: about 8.5 hours.

Wednesday June 30th.
We got up around 9 and got some free breakfast in the hotel lobby. Then we were off. It’s a good thing we listened to Sarah’s mom because there really wasn’t much of anything between Fort Stockton and El Paso. However we did find this weird little store in the middle of nowhere labeled only “Desert Outpost.” We went in and got some drinks and I saw one of my employer’s ATMs in there with a piece of paper taped over it that said “No Service” or something like that. Kind of funny. There were also these goofy wooden carvings of Native Americans and a single cowboy that we had to get pictures of. Just as we were entering El Paso we stopped at a truck stop that had a Subway inside and got some lunch. Then we gassed up and headed for the yawn-fest that is New Mexico. The only cool thing about driving through New Mexico were all the dirt devil thingies we saw in the desert off the road. The rest of it… Yawn. Once we got into Arizona the scenery got a little bit better. More mountains and boulders and stuff. Since we had made such horrible time and distance the day before, we were really hoping to get to Phoenix by the end of the day. We were willing to stop in Tucson but since Phoenix was only a little over 100 miles past, we went ahead and kept going. We got into a suburb just west of Phoenix called Goodyear around midnight. We went to a Holiday Inn but they were booked up so we went down the street to a Hampton Inn and Suites. The price was a little higher than we were hoping to pay but it was late and we were tired and hungry. We checked in and then headed down the street to a Denny’s and got some grub. After that we went back to the room and any problems we had with the price melted away when Sarah discovered that we had a jacuzzi bath tub and I found out we had wireless interweb. After some bathing and web surfing we hit the sack.

Stats for day 2:
Start: La Quinta, 1537 US-285, Fort Stockton Texas.
End: Hampton Inn, 2000 N. Litchfield Rd, Goodyear Arizona

Miles: 687.7
Time: about 15 hours.

Thursday July 1st.
Got up around 10ish and headed to the lobby for more free breakfast. Then we were off yet again. Today the plan was to make it past Los Angeles. Everybody that we talked to who had ever driven anywhere near L.A. warned us repeatedly to avoid L.A. at all costs, that the traffic was horrendous and we would be stuck there for years, maybe even forever. To avoid this we had thought of a few plans. One was that we might stop early just outside of L.A. and get a room. Then we could get up at 3 or 4 am and get through L.A. before the traffic got really crappy. Another was that we try to take some weird roads that avoided L.A. but didn’t take us too far out of our way. Finally the plan we decided on was to just not go through L.A. during rush hour. So we decided we would stop in Palm Springs for a few hours, just a hundred or so miles out of L.A. and chill until traffic died down. Sarah had heard Palm Springs was really pretty so that sounded good to me. We got there and found a place to park the truck. Then we walked around for a while looking at all the cute little touristy downtown shops and restaurants. We stopped at a Mexican restaurant and got some dinner. Palm Springs was pretty but with only a few hours to spare and no planning, we didn’t really have time to check the place out. So anyway, around 5ish we decide to get back on the road and we should get into L.A. around 7. We saw the coolest thing when leaving Palm Springs. As we were coming around a curve in the highway we started seeing the windmill things for what turned out to be a vast wind farm. As we got closer the size of these windmills were simply huge. The pictures in the gallery don’t do the sight justice. You have to see them in person with all the propellers things spinning and being surrounded by them to get the full effect. Very cool.
So anyway we finally get into L.A. and the traffic picks up considerably. Although we knew the bumper-to-bumper gridlock was coming somewhere within the next mile it never did. Don’t get me wrong, traffic was bad and the people did drive like crap, but it was fast. There were tons of cars flying past us and the highway looked full but it never really slowed down. We get out of L.A. and decide to stop in this little town and get a room and be thankful that the part of the trip I was dreading the most was over. But we passed the exits for the hotels and thought we would just stop at the next batch of hotels on the other end of town. And then passed those up as well. I blame the lack of the helpful “Food and Lodging” signs. Next thing we know there aren’t any more towns and we’re driving into some mountains. Let me tell you this was a nightmare. Its pitch black out side and we spend about an hour driving up and down all these winding roads all the while having 18 wheelers pass you while honking their horns. I don’t know why, but for some reason it seemed the majority of the traffic on this mountain road were trucks. Once that was over we finally stopped in Bakersfield and got a room at another Hampton. No cool bath tub or internet though.

Stats for day 3:
Start: Hampton Inn, 2000 N. Litchfield Rd, Goodyear Arizona
End: Hampton Inn, 1017 Oak St, Bakersfield California
Miles: 464.1
Time: about 10 hours excluding the 2 hour stop in Palm Springs.

Friday July 2nd.
After we got up and got some more free breakfast, we hit the road. This day was different than the rest because we knew it was the last. We drove through some more mountain roads but it wasn’t as bad this time because it was during the day. Before we got into San Jose we went though Gilroy, which claimed to be the garlic capital of the world. And it smelled like it. It just made me want pizza. Lots of things make me want pizza. Things like hunger. Before we got into Gilroy though we were on a 2-lane road where the cars in the opposite lane were stopped and backed up for miles. Our guess was that it was all the Bay Area people trying to get out of town for the holiday weekend. We were just thankful we were going in the opposite direction. When we finally got into San Jose it was about 3 pm and we stopped at a Budget rental place to drop off the trailer. Boy after I got that trailer off it felt like a whole new truck. Like a little sports car. Anyway from there Sarah followed me in her car to own new home. Since the cashier’s check had arrived at our landlady’s “office” on Wednesday, she had left the keys under her doormat for us. We grabbed them and checked out our new place. Its cool. And huge. All the appliances seem new and everything was clean and good. We hung out there for a minute and then walked a few blocks to get some pizza. Yum. The we came back and spent the next few hours busting our asses to get the truck entirely unloaded. After setting up the bed and unpacking a few things, the day was over and it was sleepy-sleep time.
And that’s it folks. Our move to California :-).

Stats for day 4:
Start: Hampton Inn, 1017 Oak St, Bakersfield California
End: Home, Menlo Park California
Miles: 262.2
Time: about 7 hours.

4 Responses to “The Move”

1. chris, on July 9th, 2004 at 05:18:16, said:
   

   I think this is the most I’ve ever seen you write. Sounds like a cool road trip.

2. breen, on July 9th, 2004 at 05:23:58, said:
   

   For the most part it was pretty cool.

3. MOM, on July 9th, 2004 at 14:10:00, said:
   

   SOUNDS LIKE A GREAT TRIP. DON’T YOU START YOUR JOB ON MONDAY? I AM MAD AT YOU BECAUSE I AM REALLY HOT HERE AND YOU ARE NOT ANYMORE!

4. breen, on July 10th, 2004 at 00:16:38, said:
   

   Yea it stays a lot cooler here in California. Another cool thing about California is that most of the keyboards here have functioning Caps Lock keys. :-P

Both comments and pings are currently closed.