Five years ago, Drew and I packed up most of our New York stuff, and drove back to California.
Thank God Jared was staying in the apartment, so there was a lot of stuff we could just leave – like our bed, couches, rugs, etc.
We basically packed all night while watching Roseanne. In the morning, Joe came over to help us load up the van.
Also thank God we casually said, “Yeah, let’s upgrade to the largest size van you have.” We needed every square inch of space.
It took us three nights to get home, driving pretty much all the time. We were also doing Atkins at the time, so we weren’t even really stopping to eat very much…I’m not sure how we passed the time. I remember at some point we started playing Lingo out loud, and for awhile we listened to Rent…
I also took a lot of pictures out the passenger side window, so there’s a lot of semi-blurry landscape with window reflections. This was pre-smartphone.
(I’m pretty sure Drew took that picture.)
When we got to Nevada, we wanted to drive through to Reno so we could crash with Molly. But Nevada is insanely wide, and neither of us could keep our eyes open. So our final night on the road was spent in Elko, Nevada.
The next day, I drove us across the state line into California, and later Drew and I realized that whenever we’re in a car together, he may say “Do you want to drive?” to be nice, but I generally never do, and he generally always wants to. So now we don’t worry about taking turns to be nice to each other. A good lesson for our impending marriage.
It’s been FIVE YEARS since we came back. New York is drifting further and further away from us. But it’s still an indisputable part of our lives and of our relationship. I think a reunion may be in order.






2 replies on “#tbt: Moving back to California”
I laughed so hard at the line about casually upgrading to the largest size van.
Umm do you remember that? It was like, “Should we? Oh, I don’t know…well, okay, sure, I guess.” And then we used EVERY SINGLE SQUARE CENTIMETER.