Cardboard Canyons

One thing about moving ... it takes lots of boxes. Boxes piled against the walls.

We had three piles of boxes forming cardboard canyons (mentally, mind you): stuff to be shipped by the movers; stuff we are taking with us; and stuff we going to mail because it's more economical than shipping. Only trouble with the last one is that, for now, we would be shipping everything to a mailbox in the local UPS store.

I look at the categories of boxes and realize they are all filled with "stuff." And we've already gotten rid of a house full of stuff. We have a few things that we still want to sell ... a sofa, a dining room table, a toolbox full of handyman tools, an old TV ... but it really is all just "stuff." There is very little that cannot be easily replaced. But all that is now a moot point.

Yesterday, the movers came and the three piles became one small one ... the pile of stuff we are taking with us. Everything else has gone with the Crown folks, and is now in storage until we find a new home and have the boxes delivered. The books have all gone to Colorado, and are likewise being stored. The third pile has two more days of fiddling to get it just right, then to the airport, and we're off.

Our schedule ... today, we have a cleaning crew coming in to render our empty condo spotless. We will be staying in a resort condo generously provided by a friend of ours, Pauline. Then we go to an airport hotel, and on Friday morning, early, we will be airborne, heading to LAX.

We are on the road. No more cardboard canyons until they are transplanted at our new location, yet to be disclosed to us by the universe.

Setting the Stage

In a nutshell, I retired, and I've always lived in a very expensive place ... East Honolulu. In order to stay happily retired, my wife Wyn and I decided to move to the US mainland. We looked hither and yon. We considered weather. Pacific Northwest is too rainy in the winter. Northeast is too cold in the winter. South is too muggy. Desert is too hot and dry. Mountains are too high. Plains are too plain.

Then we considered earthquakes (especially after the devastation of the tsunami in Japan). We had been tending toward the Western US, but then turned toward the Eastern US. Okay, New York is supposed to have an earthquake for some reason, at some point in the indefinite future.

Then came social networks. That finally decided it. Our son lives in New York City. I've got a lot of unmet friends in the Philly - Boston corridor. My wife is from England, and NYC is way closer to London than the 18-hour flight from Honolulu to London, so she goes from one social network to another (she's a face-to-face socializer).

Then came a new focus. Wyn likes big cities ... she lived in London, Paris and Tokyo before we settled in Honolulu 26 years ago. But she grew up in rural areas along the Welsh border in Western England, and she craves an environment where she can surround herself with animals. I like the country as well, or at least smaller towns that are close enough that we can get to cultural events.

So we drew a line around New York City and said that we want to be no farther away than two hours. Then I discovered a nifty feature on Google Maps. If you ask for the driving distance from point A to point B, you can drag point B around and instantly see the driving time to reach point A. Point A is our son's apartment in Brooklyn. Point B ranges from the northern Philly suburbs to Allentown PA, and north along the Hudson river, then into Southern Connecticut.

It's tough, moving practically to the far side of the world (even though it's still in the US), but it has been made easier by Craigslist. We've learned to read locations like a book. We know the best deals on real estate, on sublets, on second hand cars, on furniture. We found a sublet within walking distance of our son's apartment that will be the point A pin in the map as we scour the countryside. We have a UPS mailbox as a temporary address. We can't really ship all our books to the post office box, but at least we have an anchor. We'll keep our cell phone numbers so our friends can still get in touch with us easily, and will soon learn who has the best coverage in the area we select. From the usage maps, it looks like AT&T has very good coverage throughout the region, and Sprint, which I was thinking of using, is spotty. We'll see.

Meanwhile, we've got Crown Movers booked. We've got airplane tickets, flying via LA to Houston (I've got a long-standing appointment there), then we'll probably get a car and meander a bit until we end up in NYC.

So, if you see us wandering eastward, you'll realize I'm not an illusion, though I might be a fish out of water. I'm the one wearing "slippahs" (also known as "flip-flops" or "shower shoes" or "zorries" depending on where you live), flashing a shaka sign, ceding the right-of-way to impatient drivers ... in other words, carrying with me a heavy dose of the aloha spirit. If you see me, just say "Shaka, brah." Just like in Hawaii 50.