mad maison

Greetings from Iowa! mad hit the road on Wednesday. Despite a 3-hour delay where mad and our two cats were stuck camping on the highway with our fellow motorists due to a downed power line in Ohio, we’ve been having fun so far. What’s made the trip a lot less painful is that the cats (and our younger cat, Duckie, in particular) have been a lot more cooperative than they were five years ago. When I drove with my pops four years ago, Duckie would find a way to hide every morning in the hotel room, causing us to take the room apart. Both yesterday and today he emerged in the morning so we could put him in his carrier. Mike and I have taken pictures which we’ll share in a future post. Today, we drive through Nebraska–wish us luck!

We are well under way. Today, the movers came and took almost all of our earthly possessions. Yes, we have our wonderful database where our belongings are catalogued and tracked, but yesterday we were still packing in a frenzied dash (why does that always happen?). The clear sign was at 11pm when we were tired and realized we had a bunch of hangers and some bathroom items we forgot to pack. They all went in one box, requiring a little. . .brute force. In honor of this moment we selected a rather fitting name for said box.

a rather fitting name. . .and yes, that's 83 boxes!

A few months ago we selected Moovers, Inc. to move our household items across the country. They came with a bevy of endorsements, and the person who provided the estimate came across as the most honest and straightforward of the three who came to our house. While our experience isn’t over, the start of our Moovers experience has lived up to the hype. Four men showed up to pack up our two bedroom apartment. They wrapped every piece of furniture, and the inventory they completed rivaled my own. In addition, they acknowledged how organized we were before they even began. Without taking any real breaks they worked from 9 to 5 straight prepping and packing our place. And for the record, the total number of items they actually loaded was within the margin of error the estimator predicted. If our cats, Max & Duckie, hadn’t cried, moaned, and freaked out the whole time it would have been almost blissful.

Tonight we’re camping out in our own apartment. We’re sleeping on an air mattress, and we ate dinner on our windowsill (Mike said it felt like a Parisian bistro). Tomorrow we clean, and Wednesday we hit the road. At this point, however, my greatest hope is that Max emerges from the bathroom windowsill at some point tonight.

It has officially begun. Today, mad took our second car to the DAS auto shipping terminal. We received quotes from three different auto shippers–and we picked the company that provides an online tracking system, is the preferred auto shipper for ebay, and offered the cheapest price. They’re cheaper because we have to drop off and pick up the car at a terminal. For approximately $20 in tolls we drove the car the 20 miles to Linden, NJ and saved over $300 (seemed like a good trade off to us). It also gave us the opportunity to enjoy our last few moments in New York. Finally, it symbolizes the beginning of the move–there’s no turning back now. This weekend we’re packing the last of our household items and prepping our other car for the trip across this great country of ours. We’ll let you know how the car fares on its journey.

happy trails, mad car