Moving to NYC is no small feat. After Richard accepted his position there, he picked me up from Field Day activities at my school in Charlotte and we proceeded to drive to NY to find a place to live. It has always been a dream of mine to live in the city, so we could not live anywhere but IN the action! We took my little red Hyundai Genesis because it got such good gas mileage, surprisingly. We had made online reservations with a hotel in the city, and had set up an appointment with a leasing agent for 10am the next day to look at 8 or 9 properties that we had pre-selected by looking at their web sites. It was about 11pm when we excitedly said, "Less than an hour to go!" We were traveling in the middle lane on the interstate, behind two other cars. The car in front of us swerved to the left violently, but there was no time for us to see what the driver was trying to avoid, until, CRUNCH, EERRRR....Whatever we had run into was now stuck under the front end of my car and was being pushed forward, scraping the pavement. We took the nearest exit and followed signs to a gas station about 2 miles away, in Lebanon, NJ. Thankfully, this was a full service station, so there were people there at this late hour. We pulled under the lighted area near the gas pumps to assess the damage. There was oil leaking out very rapidly, as well as antifreeze. The front skirt of my car was obviously mangled as well. Richard immediately took photos of the damage and got on the phone with our insurance company. We found out that our coverage did not include a rental car if this sort of thing happened. We still needed to get to the city and to our hotel, so we asked the insurance agent how we should go about that. She said to find some sort of public transportation and that the insurance company would reimburse us for the cost of continuing our trip. HA! There were no busses or taxis running at this hour in our remote location! After searching the internet from my phone, I found a limousine service with a Lebanon address. Richard thanked me for my brilliant solution, then called the number listed. He apparently woke the man up, who said he was off duty. After explaining our situation, the man agreed to pick us up and take us to the city. Phew! We left our phone number with the gas station manager, who agreed to keep an eye on the car until a local mechanic could be contacted in the morning to tow my car to his repair shop. It was 12:45am now, and our ride to NYC would take another 50 minutes. Needless to say, we were exhausted when we hit the bed. We got up early, Richard called the repair shop and gave them directions to the gas station where the car was left, and we caught a cab to our meeting spot, to meet Bevin, our leasing agent. We probably only looked at 5 of the places on our list, and knew the 3rd one was going to be it. We chose a studio apartment to save money and because it would just be the two of us living there. We love the view of the Hudson, since it allows for a wider view of sky rather than seeing only a bunch of buildings. Our apartment complex also has tennis courts, which was a major selling point for Richard. We signed the lease by 2pm, got a cab back to the hotel where we had left our bags with the concierge, and got another cab to the airport to fly home to Charlotte. So, in one weekend we had secured a new place to live, Our daughter, Alli, picked us up from the airport late Sunday night and took us to a car rental company the next day to get something to drive until my car was repaired in NJ. That Thursday, Richard moved into the NYC apartment to begin work on Monday. I would stay in Charlotte a few more weeks to finish out the school year.
While Richard was away, my job was to get everything ready for the move, because "the move" also included helping Alli move out of our apartment and into campus housing so she could continue attending UNCC after we were gone. Because our apartment in NYC was so small, I allowed myself only 8 small packing boxes of items to take from Charlotte to NYC. Each day after school, I loaded the rental car with items to drop off at Goodwill and a box to ship from the local post office. This became my routine, so much so that the woman at the post office greeted me by asking, "Another box for New York?" "Yep."
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