"No one ever said it would be easy." Of course I dont think any of them knew we would be making the trip in January either...
When we decided to move it was early January or February of last year. It was a tough choice to go for me, but alongside Laura's constant impulse to travel and a growing dissatisfaction in my work the choice became much clearer. It certainly would have been easier to move in the summer month, but we definitely did not had the money to go that summer, and knew we couldn't wait until next summer. I mean they don't close interstates; do they?
We had been making preparations for months prior to leaving. I felt like I was getting to know Craig and his list rather well. After several months and heartache trying to sublet Laura's apartment, we had finally found someone who didn't skip out on move in day and could tolerate Becca. Paul was actually a really interesting guy and not at all the loser who stopped payment on the check he left as a consolation the day he was to move in. With her apartment lease out of the way and my beautiful Saturn traded for some free rent, we slimmed down our earthly possessions to what would fit into a '92 Chrysler Lebaron. Well, almost. We still ended up shipping 8 boxes. I never knew that the post office didn't have an option to ship packages slower than 7-10 business days, but thankfully the apartment I had found would hold the packages for us.
Who would have known that finding a place to live 2291 miles away would be so difficult? Apparently, landlords prefer for their renters to see the property and then sign the lease. Having now seen Portland, I almost imagine it's so the landlords can see you first. In either case, I researched online and then after careful consideration of locations, prices, and building styles I started calling. Soon after I gave up on exact units and just started calling every number I could find. One of them happened to be the number for Buckman Heights. Thankfully, all I had to do was prove that we both had the money to pay rent and didn't make more than 63 thousand dollars a year. That was easy enough and away we went.