Actually, this day, eight years ago, was the last day I lived in Canada. On April 30th, 1998, I got on a plane in Toronto, got off in Orlando and took a Greyhound bus to Tallahassee to stay here and marry my wife. On May 8th, my best friend Mark arrived here from Canada with all of my worldly possessions on his tractor trailer with a load of lumber he arranged to deliver to Jacksonville so he could be my best man the next day. The only causalty was the vacuum cleaner, which fell off the truck while it was being loaded. There was no furniture, just boxes of stuff, my record collection and stereo equipment, etc.
To say it was a bit of a culture shock would be an understatement. It took me awhile to adjust to life in America, in the South. I guess after about a year I was assimilated, and now it feels like I belong here.
I’ve moved all over the place but most recently I moved from the metro-Boston area to the metro-Los Angeles area.
I found out that I got my first post-grad school job in L.A. a week into my bar course. I moved about a week before I had to report. It took me approximately 3 days to re-pack up my wardrobe etc. etc… I didn’t have any possessions at this point because I had been living in furnished apartments all through lawschool, and I had sold off a lot of my crap to make the move from IL to MA (I lived with my parents through the bar) so it was pretty much just my personal effects. So I guess I had it much easier. My parents came with me so I could take more bags o’ stuff. Everything else we just ended up purchasing here.
California is very different for me but I’ve falled in love with it. I still have phantom seasonal pains and sometimes the lack of trees gets to me (I grew up in the midst of hundred year old forests!).
I guess that’s not very informative but I’ve moved around my entire life on account of my father working for an MNC so I’m not really tied to any place in particular. It felt like Yet Another Move and my parents made it pretty easy on me by coming and helping me settle in.
Oh, I have to amend that I miss being able to drive up to Chicago to pop in on my sister and brother-in-law & it sucks that the flight is too long for me to just go hang out with my parents for a weekend. That was probably the hardest part of moving because I’m very attached to my family and as a result, I tend to spend any vacations I get on them.
Have relocated multiple times over the years and have always felt that once everything was loaded, it doesn’t really matter how far (if it’s not a local/same city move). Once it’s on the truck, doesn’t matter if it’s 500 or 3,000 miles. The pain is in the hassle of packing, unpacking, reconfiguring EVERYTHING.
Nah, reconfiguring everything is a peach. My brother once walked into one of my apartments, and asked something like “Hey, this is real homey. How long did it take you to get like this, six months?”
I looked around the room, at all the bookshelves, the artwork, the furniture. “Everything’s in the same place it’s been since the day after it arrived.”
Talk about perfect timing! I’m moving from California to Toronto, Canada in 6 weeks… I’ve been pouring over my AAA guides and trying to find what motels will actually let me bring my 3 dogs…
It seems that “dog friendly” really is just that… ONE dog… I may end up sleeping in the back of my truck with my dogs for days… Luckily the furniture is being sent separately… Otherwise it would be REALLY crowded back there!
I’m not sure if I’m looking forward to driving thousands of miles with 3 dogs or not… But what the heck, I’ve always wanted to see Elko, Laramie, Lincoln, and Joliet… 
I was living in Boston with my parents looking for a job in Japan. At one point, I finally found a school that would hire me from overseas based on my resume and a phone interview. That was in March. They said the visa would take a while (like 2-3 months) to process, so I should just sit tight until it was ready.
In June I got a call from them again, on a Wednesday. “Your visa’s just been processed, we’re FedEx’ing it to you right now. By the way, you’re first class on Tuesday.” :eek:
I’d made some preparations up to that point, but that pretty much meant I had to get everything together in time to get my visa stamped into my passport and buy my plane ticket on Friday (when the visa papers would arrive), then fly out on Sunday and arrive in Japan Monday night. I packed all the possessions I though I’d need into two suitcases and an overstuffed carry-on and took off. I taught my first (90-minute) class the next day jet-lagged out of my skull with no orientation, no textbooks and no training, dumped off by my boss at a remote factory an hour’s drive away with no idea of how to get back home.
Everything went so fast, I don’t think there was time for the rational side of my brain to panic. Similarly, everything started up so quickly once I arrived that by the time the jet lag wore off, I was already teaching regular classes and had been adopted by the mama-san of the bar downstairs from my apartment, so I ended up skimming over the whole “culture shock” phase.
The whole thing was incredibly hectic, but actually not so difficult. As I’ve gotten older and accumulated more stuff, moves have become more of a hassle. That first move was basically just living out of a suitcase (the school owned an apartment that I lived in for the first year) until I earned enough to buy other things I needed or, more often, learned to go without things I didn’t really need so much after all.
I had a semi-catastrophic thing happen, and moved from New York to Utah. The time between my decision to up stakes and move was measurable in weeks. I had to get all my preparations in place, including getting a place to stay out there, getting a trailer (and fixing it up), and divesting myself of excess possessions in very short order.
People were surprised that I was planning on doing this all on my own. My father offered to travel with me, but I refused. I think one of us would have murdered the other before the trip was out. Between Gary Indiana and Licoln Nebraska, I had six (SIX!!) Flat tires, two broken tire hubs, and a broken trailer spring. I managed to find someone to buy my broken-down trailer, and rented a new one. I almost didn’t make it up the Continental Divide. But I fanally pulled into SLC, echoing Brigham Young’s word “This is the Place!”, and could feel the safe relief he must have felt (I always suspected the reason he said those words wasn’t out of some sense of Religioous Destony, but because he had a few hundred kids asking “Are We There, Yet?”, but that’s another story.) I didn’t come in via Emigration Canyon – route 80 comes acdifferent way, but I wished I had some old trees to tie to the back of my rig to slow it down as I descended. I looked at the Runaay Truck lanes, and wondered if I’d need to use one. I made it though.
For the next few months, every now and then it would hit me (usually when I glanced up above the treeline and noticed mountains around me in every direction): “I’m in Utah! What the hell am I doing in Utah??!” But I wouldn’t have missed the experience.
After I got my Ph.D., I got to move back to the East Coast. Nothing exciting there, except it was in winter instead of summeer, and my car almost died on the way.