Moving (Even Further) West! Part 1

Okay, everybody, now that the Kaua'i blogs are over, it's time for our latest adventures, including our move out west!  I know the Kaua'i blogs went on...and on...and on, but the timing ended up being pretty great, at least for me.  I could still meet my (self imposed) requirement of posting once each week, but I didn't have to try to create new posts in the madness of packing up a 2400 square foot house complete with two people and three gigantic, geriatric dogs, and moving everything 6 hours away to a 1000 square foot house (yes, really).  Plus, you guys got to look at gorgeous Hawaiian scenery while Chris and I were sweating our brains out lifting heavy furniture and seeing cardboard boxes in our sleep.  Win, win?

Downtown Glendora,
our new city of residence.

Pretty cute, right?

Moving on!  It's the main theme in our lives right now, as you'll see.  To give some backstory, for the last few months, Chris had been interviewing and speaking with some folks at Johnson & Johnson regarding a Staff Engineer position with Biosense Webster, a smaller subsidiary of J&J, located in Irwindale, California, on the northern side of the Los Angeles area.  He ended up getting offered the position in mid to late April, and after getting amazing support from my bosses at UOPX who would allow me to keep my job and transition into being a full-time telecommuter, we decided to go for it.  His first day would be May 9th, so we hit the ground running, as we obviously had some work to do to make this transition happen - and soon!

We divided and conquered the list of tasks we had to complete, with Chris running point on securing California housing and me handling the stuff moving solutions.  We're planning for this not to be a short-term relocation (man plans and the universe laughs, right?), so while we eventually want to buy a house, we decided to rent for a short time first, in order to sell the house in Peoria and learn more about locations in LA (what we've learned so far: it's a YOOGE - copyright Donald Trump - area and each little 'burb has its own personality) before we really started to put down roots.  After calling/emailing several dozens of rental options, Chris finally found a house in Glendora, not too far away from where he would be working in Irwindale.  The combination of needing a dog-friendly house with a yard for our three kiddos plus wanting a short-term lease of six months had Chris doing some scrambling to find us a place, but he eventually prevailed.  Huzzah!

Now that we had a physical address and move-in date (May 6th, the Friday before he started the new job), I called up the folks at PODS and scheduled container drop-offs and pickups at both the old and new addresses (by talking with a PODS Service Agent, Edna, who lived in Clearwater, Florida, at Top of the World, a major retirement village in the area - I must have crossed through it roughly 800 million times growing up.  Small world). Chris was between jobs the week of May 2nd, so we figured if we got the POD at the Peoria house that week, we'd have time for the two of us to load the heavy stuff before he departed for California on the 6th.  The soonest date they had for a drop-off was May 4th (Wednesday), so although that wasn't ideal, we could make it work.

The POD arrives:

Taken from inside our garage,
hence the door in the top of the shot.

The PODS folks (I keep calling them the POD people, because heh) have a major selling point that when they're loading and unloading your POD onto their trucks, the POD never gets tipped or slanted, so your stuff stays level inside the box.  The way they do this is through what they call the PODZILLA (emphasis mine, because awesome); it's like the biggest remote control car in the world, and it's a large scaffolding on wheels that picks up and lowers the POD off the truck (or picks it back up off the driveway and puts it back onto the flatbed).

Here, see:

"Wartch out!  It's Podzirra!"
I'm sorry.  I had to.

And the POD just hangs there...
well, until they set it back on the ground.
You aren't expected to load it while it is suspended mid-air -
although that might be exciting.

Our friend Matt happened to come over right after they dropped the POD (actually, he was there when they picked it up, too.  New conspiracy theory: Matt =  POD), and when we greeted him, I was like, "have you ever seen one of these things?  IT'S SO COOL!"  His response was something along the lines of, "you two are made for each other.  Chris texted me on the way over here and he said the exact same thing."  Seriously, though, these things are impressive (or maybe we're easily amused.  Could be either.  Or both).  Although the schedule called for the POD to be dropped off as early as 11:30 that day, it didn't end up there until 4:30 due to some traffic issues near their warehouse.  While we can't blame them for that, it meant we were up quite late that night hauling our heaviest furniture into the POD.

The next day, while I was at work, Chris picked up an enclosed UHaul trailer and brought it back to the Peoria house, as that evening we'd fill it with the things he'd need for his two and a half weeks in CA without the rest of our household goods.  Because of our timing, we'd planned to drive him out in his pickup truck on May 6th, I would fly home on May 8th, and then I'd head out to CA with the dogs on May 21st, to allow for time to pack and settle things in Arizona.  Also, my best friend from college, Toni, had a visit planned the weekend of May 14th that we'd booked about six months ahead of time, along with nonrefundable tickets to a great Alton Brown show in Prescott.  I wasn't leaving the area until the 21st, so Chris was living like a bachelor for two weeks, whether he wanted to or not.

When I made it home that night (Chris was supposed to pick me up at the airport parking lot at 3:45 after my normal workday ended, but that ended up delayed, as when I called him to ask where he was, I got an "OH SH*T!  I'm still at home!!!!"  He had a lot on his mind), we loaded up the UHaul and the back seat of the pickup truck, so they were ready to go the next morning.

That is one full backseat.

The bubble wrap is around our larger television,
and there's a loveseat underneath everything.

Also, yoga mats.
You could camp in the backseat of that truck.

The next morning, we worked on the POD a bit more, loaded up the bed of the truck (coating things in plastic wrap, as rain was forecast - in CA but not AZ, shockingly), and we were off!  Thankfully, the drive was uneventful; Chris drove the entire way, as I'm a big weenie when it comes to hauling trailers or driving large vehicles - I just don't feel comfortable with it.  Instead, I navigated, played DJ, and even read aloud to him from a recent edition of Smithsonian, because we're just that nerdy.  We had a few stops, once in Quartzsite for lunch and gas and once outside Banning, CA for a bathroom break, and we made decent time, despite it starting to pour and having to drive slowly due to the trailer.

Bikes are loaded and ready to go!

We met our new landlord, Karen (who also happens to be a realtor - good to know!), at the rental house, signed our papers, and received our keys.  It was ours (for six months)!  We also ordered delivery pizza because it was raining and we were hungry.  

The rental house!
More pictures to come in a later post...

Inside the kitchen of the rental.

Time for foods.

The very wet backyard of the house.

After dinner, the rain abated, and we unloaded the truck and UHaul, setting up the necessities; once that was done, it was a time for the mandatory, "You Just Moved In" Wal-Mart trip.  Hooray!  As normally happens in these situations, we found the closest store, which ended up being the Wal-Mart that no one should ever visit at 10pm on a Friday night if you don't want to get shivved.  We survived and made it back to the house in time to hang the shower curtain, clean up, and hit the hay.

The next morning, we woke up early and walked the .4 miles from the rental house to breakfast at Flappy Jack's Pancake House, right on Route 66 (yes, the famous one - that's our nearest main cross street to the north).  It's a good thing we can also walk to the LA Fitness around the corner, because this place was pretty darn good.

Not my picture.
The line outside is fairly representative of
any weekend morning here after 8am.

After breakfast, we mapped out a route for our other shopping needs, including the locations of a Sam's, Lowe's/Home Depot, Trader Joe's, and grocery store.  Since the shower caddy we bought the night before didn't work well in either bathroom, we also found the less creepy Wal-Mart and returned it there.  We headed back to the rental to eat leftover pizza for lunch and finish unboxing the supplies we'd brought.  For dinner, we set out for another stroll, this time to a nearby sushi restaurant, which was quite good.  We grabbed some cupcakes in the local bakery for dessert, wandered home, and spent the night watching Deadwood (thanks, Amazon Prime!) until we passed out on the couch (given the series of late nights we'd had recently, this didn't take long).

On Sunday morning, we headed down to have breakfast with my Dad and his fiancee Risa, who live in Orange, about 40 minutes away from the rental house (without traffic.  With standard LA traffic, they live 18 hours away from where we do).  It's exciting to have family close by, relatively!  After catching up with them, Chris dropped me at John Wayne Airport, where I hopped a flight back to Phoenix and the kiddos!

Coming up in future blog posts, I perform acrobatic feats of daring while loading the POD single-handedly, I say some tearful so long for now's to my buddies in AZ, and we rent a minivan for the dogs.  Yup, that.

Later!

Amy