Seems like everyone is moving lately, there are many reasons why, cost of living is mainly the reason. Though the underlying cause is politically driven policies that have killed the "American Dream" for so many people. Moving away from everything you know is a emotional roller coaster, there many mental hurdles and financial reasons a person goes through before deciding to move. Moving across town is one thing, but moving across the country is another. This is nothing new to military and their families, I grew up moving all over, even lived out of the country for a while, but San Diego became home for me and moving away from it was not easy.
For those of you that have never been to California and have experienced the entire state, I'm going explain why it's so desirable. Forget Hollywood and celebrities I never cared about that, I always loved the geography and what it has to offer. First I want you to think about where you can go to the beach, the mountains, lakes, the woods, and the desert all in a days drive. I remember mountain biking in the near by mountains and later that day I met a friend at the beach in Del Mar. I haven't even gotten to the national parks they have either.
The catch is California has gotten so expensive to live that I couldn't afford to enjoy all those things. My wife and I where stuck in an apartment working to just pay the rent and occasionally go out to dinner once in awhile. We could never afford to buy a house and start family, let alone get financially ahead in California. San Diego had just beat out San Fransisco as one of the most expensive places the live in the country. Also forget about running a business in California. California is not friendly to businesses in terms of all the rules, regulations, and taxes, so moving out of state soon became our best option.
Now that we decided to move the question was to move where? We wanted a lower cost of living, quality healthcare as in good hospitals, and more freedom. We wanted a place that had seasons, where fall felt like fall and the leaves changed colors. Eventually we decided on Tennessee... the land of freedom, guns, and whiskey, oh and the those seasons I mentioned before. Next was where in Tennessee and house hunting, now we looked and looked and looked! The "where" was easy, it was the house hunting. The biding wars were at it's peak, in California it was not uncommon to see houses going for 200k over asking! Tennessee was no exception, although the prices where not nearly as outrageous. Still the housing market was moving up fast and we could not risk being priced out of the market, so we went with a new build home.
Once we had the home built, which took much longer... about 6 months longer, we had to make all the arrangements to move and hire movers. Now by this time, my wife is now pregnant with our first child, so hiring movers seemed like the best option....or so I thought. Around this time renting a Uhaul, PODS, UPACK were all more expensive than hiring movers or at least what the movers quoted us.
Well moving day comes and the movers going in and then tell us they will have to recalculate the quote and the price nearly doubles to over to 13k! We had no choice we had to be out of the apartment the next two days so we did it. Oh did I mention the movers came about 4:30pm didn't start packing til about 5:30pm and didn't finish till after 11:30pm. The next day we cleaned up the apartment found things broken and missed items the movers did not pack. The day after we get ready to hit the road. San Diego to Tennessee is about 30 hours that's 4 days of driving with a pregnant wife and two dogs. The dogs
turned out to be good little road trippers! My wife was not as comfortable as she would have liked.
The road trip was not a vacation, but I like road trips. What was concerning me was towing our car and keeping both vehicles secure everywhere we stayed. The car has a tow feature but is it's for short distances not a across the country so it drains the battery when using a tow dolly, in hindsight a better option would have been a flatbed trailer.
Luckily I had a full size battery pack in the truck to get the car started when we got to Tennessee. We went north through Arizona to Interstate 40 and took it all the way to the 840 to our new home. The condition of Interstate 40 differed greatly depending on the state we were driving through. Interstate 40 through New Mexico was the worst.
4 days on the road and finally on the bridge into Memphis... there is was!
"Tennessee Welcomes You"! We still had a couple hours before getting to our new home.
We got into town the day before we closed on the house so we settled into the hotel and a big relief lifted from my shoulders as I thought to myself "I got my family safely across the country." On the road so much can go wrong and I have never worried about myself but now it's my two dogs, my wife, and unborn child with me, I couldn't let anything happen to them. The next day we find out the house is not ready, turns out it will take another week before we can close on the house. Keep in mind now I need to find a hotel during a NASCAR weekend in Nashville.
Eventually we close on the house and we get the keys Yay! We have no furniture, we will have to wait weeks before movers come. So we find out the doctors want to induce my wife now have to scramble to make arrangements for the dogs. Luckily we had family come to visit and stay while we were at the hospital for about 5 days due to my wife having complications after the birth. So after an emotional roller coaster at the hospital I get to bring home my wife and son. Having family at the house to help out and cook meant so much to both of us, because I was exhausted and my wife was still recovering.
The movers came late but finally came, now I have to say the driver and the guys that unloaded everything were awesome, they were nice, professional, and careful with our boxes. These guys were hired locally and that's what they do, that being said who ever packed the truck before hand was sloppy and stacked stuff so high boxes were crushed, storage containers were broken and items were broken. Items broken were dishes, paper shredder, printer, oh and we got a ladder that is not ours and we are missing our utensils. The boxes we packed everything was fine the boxes the movers packed... well is another story.
Adjusting to all the new changes almost makes you numb, what I mean by that is I felt so busy, so rushed that I didn't feel as if I really got to enjoy the fact we got a new house and my son was born. I felt like a machine just doing what I knew I had to do. We made all the plans in the world and life grabbed it threw to the ground and stomped all over it. Now we have been in our house for about a month, still don't have everything unpacked but it's starting to feel like we are settling in a bit. It's now August and fall will soon be upon us... the views we have of open fields, old barns, and silos is pretty damn awesome.
Next is to get back into gear working and training people, but first I need to setup my garage as a filming/workshop/man cave. I will soon have a blog and video post for the that, link will be added here later. Training classes will resume by January 2023, in the mean time you can always check out the shop and other videos on YouTube.