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Well, we made it. We're here in New York and almost out of boxes. The journey to our new Brooklyn home took a week from start to finish, including a wonderful stay with Sam's family in Lexington. Here are a few scenes from our 16 hour road trip North:

TENNESSEE

















In Nash right before we pulled out of the parking lot at our old apartment.

KENTUCKY

We nestled Ellie's dog bed in between our seats. When we first started out, she was a little uneasy about the whole thing and kept resting one paw on Sam's leg for reassurance.

WEST VIRGINIA

What's the deal with West Virginia? All I really know about this state is that scary movie Deliverance takes place there and the Dancing Outlaw is from there. And a lot of people we saw were missing teeth. I also learned there are a lot of bridges. Like this one.


We made a wrong turn and wound up driving past the capitol. It seemed so out of place, this guilded building on a hill in a state renowned for it's poverty. Right after this we stopped and bought our first full tank of gas, for $140 people! This man getting gas next to us watched us fill up and was like, "How much was it?" He felt bad for us. On a related note, see Who Killed the Electric Car and you will be even more outraged about the gas crisis.

I really wanted to stop for dinner at Biscuit World, but when I mentioned it to Sam he said, "it's not any good," without batting an eyelash. Apparently Biscuit World is a West Virginia chain and he'd stopped at one on a ski trip once. He said the biscuits were terrible.

MARYLAND
It was dark. I was hoping to see a crab cake. I didn't see that or much of anything. Maybe next time.

PENNSYLVANIA

We were trying to get to New Jersey but we hit Hershey, PA around 2AM and delirium had set it. I was excited about Hershey though. I like chocolate. I was hoping to see a giant chocolate bar with maybe a man inside waving to us as we pulled in at the Comfort Inn but we didn't see any chocolate whatsoever. We did sneak Ellie into our room and all night she was barking at the slightest noise and we were shushing her. We didn't sleep so well. The next morning as we were gassing up I saw a frightful number of dead bugs on the front of the Uhaul.



NEW JERSEY
The home of Springsteen. By the time we got to Jersey we were getting really antsy. Sam had scheduled our movers to meet us at our place around 12:30. He called around 11:00 and asked if we could push it back to 1:30. They said no. So, we were basically racing to get there, cause you have to pay them whether you show up with the stuff on time or not. My heart leapt with excitement when I saw the first sign for the city!

New Jersey also has a lot of tolls cause they're cheap bleep bleeps. We paid one and right before we got up to the Holland Tunnel we rounded a bend and there was the Manhattan skyline! I almost cried with joy! I took another pic 'cause I thought our journey was almost over:

But then we got up to the Holland Tunnel toll booth and the guy was like "You're not taking that UHaul through there?" And we were like "Yeah?" And he was like, "Nope. No trucks in the tunnel." So then, I almost cried from desperation when we had to turn around, go back through Jersey, and drive through several more tolls. Around the sixth or seventh one (I lost track) we ran out of cash and they don't take cards and we basically begged the lady to let us through. She said something about charging the fee to UHaul and we were like, "do what you gotta do," and she let us pass.

NEW YORK
We ended up getting off the Insterstate way too soon 'cause we saw a sign for another tunnel and thought be might get stuck. Our mapquest directions had, of course, gone out the window when the mean man made us turn around, so with much difficulty we navigated the outlying neighborhoods, past the hasidic jews, and to our new home in Williamsburg. There we met the movers, who had been waiting on us for two hours.

Postscript: The movers felt bad about screwing us over so we actually managed to unload everything off the truck in an hour (that was all the time we had left), which was quite a feat considering it took close to seven to get it loaded. The movers were from Georgia (the country, not the state) and if they caught me carrying any box over 5 pounds they'd be all, "don't carry that heavy thing, here carry this pillow." So if you're looking to go with international movers I recommend the Georgians.