The Move

We left Saint John at around 7:30am AST, heading for the border at St. Stephen in a packed U-Haul, with two cats in their carriers. When we crossed the border, they x-rayed the truck, then we went into the office and signed a customs declaration form. We showed them our passports and visas, and then off we went, no fuss, no muss! Sweet.

We met Jenn and Stew at the Irving just before the Airliner, handed off the kitties, gassed up, and off we went.

The drive to Stamford CT, where Jenn and Stew were leaving their car, was mostly uneventful. We had a GPS unit I borrowed from Steve, plus Suzy and I had made the drive just a few weeks earlier when we went apartment hunting. The weather stayed mostly clear, and cats stayed quiet (I think their spirits had already been crushed after two days stuck in an unfamiliar laundry room). We made several stops along the way for gas and snacks, but made fairly good time, getting to Stamford at around 6pm EST, if I remember correctly.

Jenn and Stew parked their car in the large garage by Stamford Station, and we left them there to get the train into Grand Central, and Suzy, the kitties, and I reprogrammed the GPS for our new apartment and hit the road again.

It didn't take long for the driving to get pretty busy heading into the city. We weren't going into Manhattan at all, but even so, the traffic was nuts. It was getting dark and raining sporadically, but we were still doing okay until the GPS directed us onto a parkway.

See, parkways are special highways near NYC that are for passenger vehicles only. We didn not know this. We saw a coupe of saign indicating no commercial vehicles, but didn't think our U-Haul qualified. We were wrong apparently. A few minutes onto the parkway, and just after passing under a bridge that had only about five inches higher clearance than the truck, a guy drove alongside us and started honking like mad. He also yelled at us to "Get off the road! Get off!" Honk honk honk. Shout shout shout. So we got off the parkway.

He signalled us to pull over, and then jumped out of his car and ran back to shout some more. He wasn't angry, he was just really worked up. I guess our out-of-town stupidity was too much for him. He shouted that we were nuts, that we were lucky we didn't go under a low bridge and wreck the truck or decapitate ourselves, and that we were really lucky the cops didn't see us and ticket us into the poor house.

Anyway, he directed us to the right highway, at which point the GPS didn't try to kill us again, and we eventually (after more nervewracking driving through a thunderstorm and heavy traffic) made our way to our new neighbourhood. We picked up our keys, found a place to illegally park the truck, and took the cats up to the new apartment.

It was grossly hot and muggy inside, thanks to intense heat and post-thunderstorm moisture outside, but we were happy to be there. Jenn and Stew arrived shortly after us, fresh off the subway from Grand Central. Our first priority was to get the AC units we had into the apartment and turn them on. It improved immesely in there after that.

We lucked out and a police officer who lives nearby moved his car for us so that we could pull the U-Haul in and park it properly. We unloaded a few more things from the truck, but quickly began to flag; it was the end of a long day of driving, and it was so hot and sticky outside, plus the stairway in the building was also very hot.

We took a break and ordered some Chinese take-out froma place called Lichee Nut, thanks to the menu left on the fridge by the previous occupants (that menu, along with the free blinds in the main room, almost cancel out the terribly dirty state they left the place in...). It was absolutely fantastic food, and not just because we were exhausted and hungry.

Fortified by the food, Stew and I hauled the matresses and suitcases upstairs and we called it a night.