New York and Beyond

January 12, 2019 by Galia in on the road, new york

Let’s see, where did we leave off…

After our whirlwind May, we spent a few days in San Francisco, mostly working and running San Francisco errands.

Then we got back to New York. I’d like to say things settled down a bit then -- and they did, a little -- but it was still a non-stop go-go-go that was hard to keep up with.

Mike’s brother and sister in law, Zac and Jess, were amazingly kind and let us crash in their New York-sized apartment for a while. We wanted to keep our footprint as small as possible, so I ended up signing up for a coworking space for the month we were in town so we could get out of their hair a little bit while working and not have our stuff explode all over their space.

Nights and weekends we’d hang out together and explore the city. Days, we would all go to work, and Mike and I frequented a local pizza joint enough that we started to feel like locals. And I met up with an old friend from law school whom I hadn’t seen in years, which was an extra treat!

The first-half-of-NY adventures included: a trip to MOMA, hot dogs, pickles, amazing Italian pizza at Santa Panza, bagels, Chinese food, vegan baked goods, getting lost on public transit, highlight dinner at Brooklyn Crab, the Artists and Fleas market, Smorgasburg, and watching Isle of Dogs at the Alamo.

After only a week and half in Brooklyn, we had to sever our New York time for some more travel.

Mike flew to Ohio to help build a dock and un-winterize his family’s cabin for the summer. I took the opportunity to fly down to New Orleans, where I met up with my amazing friend Andrea, so we could check out wedding venues for a few days. (Like seriously, who flies across the country to look at wedding venues with you? Amazing.) We, of course, also made a fun trip of it, and I gave her no choice but to let me drag her around town making her eat all the things and listen to all the music. After that, I flew back to Atlanta for a few days to hang out with my brother’s family.

Mike and I met back up in Baltimore, to pick up the RV, which is when we discovered it had been broken into (which you’ve already read about). We spent a fun day exploring Philadelphia on our way back to New York. (TL;DR: The liberty bell was underwhelming; the philly cheesesteaks were good but not amazing; the Mutter museum was a highlight and surprisingly creepy; the general feel of the city was neat.)

To spare Zac and Jess a multi-week Burden of Us (and to not have to figure out what to do with an RV in New York), we booked a really nice RV park right on the waterfront in New Jersey, and camped out there for another week and a half. We’d go into Brooklyn to hang out, and we all had a really fun day in Manhattan, eating Katz’s deli, hanging out at the park, and seeing Avenue Q. Another highlight was a wacky adventure getting hot pot and rolled ice cream in Chinatown.

One highlight of our time there was a day trip to Rockaway, NJ, to visit my aunt, uncle, and cousin whom I hadn’t seen in a really long time. I hadn’t even met my cousin’s kids before that! It was amazing how quickly we all just felt so comfortable, and how much fun we had for every moment we were together. They really embraced Mike into the family, which gave me the serious warm fuzzies. And the highlight was probably picking up the kids from school with the RV without them knowing in advance, and then taking them all for rides around the neighborhood. A definite highlight of the whole trip! And, yet again, another very meaningful reminder of what this trip is giving us.

New York itself was an adventure. Of course, the highlight was just getting to spend so much time with Zac and Jess. Normally, we get to see them hours at a time for holidays. It’s a funny thing, and a special privilege, to be able to spend time with family members as an adult. Once you grow up and move away, it can be hard to shed the shadows of who you were before, and it can be hard to update the old rules of your relationship to fit the people each of you turned into. It was neat to see the brothers get to spend a bunch of time together. And of course it was also really enjoyable for me to be the outsider coming in and finally getting a chance to really know my future brother and sister in law.

They did an awesome job of showing us around New York. Though I do have to admit that, while fun and interesting to visit, Mike and I agreed that it wasn’t a place we’d want to live. There are just so many people, and it takes forever to get anywhere, and everyone sounds angry even when they’re not. That said, it was a cool experience to be there for three weeks, knowing that we probably wouldn’t have spent such a chunk of time there any other time in our lives.

As always, our time in New York felt too short, and we felt like we could have used so much more time to hang out and bond. But alas, we had to keep moving.

Our next big stop is the family cabin, but on our way, we stopped in:

Hamden, Connecticut: to spend a couple of days with another cousin I hadn’t seen in years. Again, this ended up being one of the surprise highlights of our trip. We had a blast! Our first visit with a family with teenage kids, we got to try on that lifestyle for a moment, and it was really fun and loving and hilarious.

Boston, Massachusetts: to meet up with Mike’s high school friend, Harper, and successfully beat the record time at a local escape room together. He also took us on a whirlwind walking tour of the city which was super fun.

Rochester, New York: to visit one of my best friends from law school whom I hadn’t seen in six years. Rochester was adorable, his daughter was even more adorable, and it’s so fun to catch up with their whole family. If we hadn’t had the opportunity to stop there, who knows the next time I would have been able to see them.

Findlay, Ohio: to stay with Mike’s parents for two weeks, and attend Granny’s 90th birthday! Most of Mike’s family was in town, so we got to reconnect with them all and I got to meet some of them for the first time. A good precursor to our longer visits with each of them, coming up soon.

Once we hit Findlay, things finally start to settle back into normal. At least, “normal” for us these days!

Another trip casualty.

Art.

Working at coworking space

Best cocktail I've ever had, at Black Tail

SeaGlass carousel at Battery Park

Wall Street

Our RV park in Jersey

Stay classy, New Orleans

Obligatory pictures of NOLA food; Sucre pastries

1000 Figs

Doberge cake, Bakery Bar

Statue-less column in (formerly) Lee Circle

Nephew time in Atlanta

Liberty Bell - Philly

Hamden house rules

Our home outside Boston

Mother Goose

We're literally the third best.

Obligatory.

Congress Hall

Our first Philly cheesesteaks

Rochester with my old friend Brendan and my new friend Ceci

Onward to Ohio!

High tea in Findlay

A bunny keeping our RV company

Photo by Curtis MacNewton on Unsplash — Photo by Curtis MacNewton on Unsplash

May, by the numbers

September 08, 2018 by Galia in on the road

Safe to say we officially hit the Chaos portion of our trip.

Here are some stats from the first three weeks after we left Atlanta:

Beginning April 30, we visited seven states in seven days…
And slept in different beds 9 days in a row.
In a period of two weeks, we slept in a total of 11 beds;
If you bump that up to three weeks, we slept in 14 beds.
We didn't sleep in the same bed more than twice for three weeks straight.

Here’s how it went. Hold on to your butts, it's a long one...

April 30: Atlanta → Savannah

Wake up in Atlanta, pack up, say goodbye and try not to cry. Drive to Savannah. Eat dinner at a place called Treylor Park (because, c’mon, it seemed required), eat fried banana pepper rings with ranch dressing, which was one of the best things I’ve ever eaten. Also, pb&j chicken wings.

Sleep in Savannah, Georgia.

Useful reading at the Savannah RV park

pb&j chicken wings, fried avocado

fried pepper rings

May 1: Savannah → Charleston

Take a carriage tour around Savannah that is surprisingly disappointing, but ends up paying off because the retired couple we shared the carriage with was raving about Charleston. Get some of the best eggs I’ve ever eaten at Little Duck Cafe, and spontaneously decide to ditch Savannah early and drive to Charleston instead. Walk around, get dinner at Fleet Landing (hush puppies stuffed with crab and crawfish!).

Sleep in Charleston, South Carolina.

Goodbye Savannah

Hello Charleston

seafood stuffed hush puppies

May 2: Charleston → Raleigh

Hire wedding planners! Feel a large weight lifted. Lunch at cute little French cafe, appropriately called G&M. This time, a really awesome carriage tour. Drive to Raleigh, where the RV park had an actual speed limit of 7.5 mph.

Sleep in Raleigh, North Carolina.

May 3: Raleigh → Richmond

Visit Mike’s “Aunt” Mary Louise (who is actually his grandfather’s sister), who is 99 years old, and join her for lunch at her retirement home. Then drive to Richmond, while pondering life and the future.

Get surprisingly good Thai food in the suburbs. Pack up everything we’ll need for the next six weeks into three bags each.

Sleep in Richmond, Virginia.

May 4: Richmond → Baltimore

Drive the RV to a storage lot in Baltimore. Turns out our designated spot is right next to a building that’s being painted, so if we park there, we’ll get paint on the RV. Instead, we’re allowed to park on the front end of the lot, with direct visibility from the street (all the other vehicles being stored were hidden from view), and blocked only by a short chain link fence with no barbed wire. Leave the RV and hope it’s still there when we get back.

Stay in an airport hotel in Baltimore, Maryland, order room service, and veg.

May 5: Baltimore → St Louis → O’Fallon, IL

Fly into St Louis, have three and a half hours to: get off the plane, get our many bags from baggage claim, take a shuttle and rent a car, drive a half hour to our hotel, check in early, iron Mike’s suit, change our clothes, drive another half hour to Aviston, IL, for Mike’s friend, Jenni’s, wedding! Somehow make it in time.

Sleep in O’Fallon, Illinois.

May 6: O’Fallon → St Louis

Run to Walmart to get a replacement suitcase because one of our large ones already just died. Breakfast at Egg & I. Drive to St Louis, get BBQ at Sugarfire, drive through Delmar Loop, see the arch.

Sleep in St Louis, Missouri.

May 7: St Louis → Baltimore

Fly back to Baltimore, and Budget rental car does everything in their power to take as much money from us as possible. (Never again.) Stop at the RV to move it, and nobody appears to be living inside (win!).

First night sleeping in the same place two nights in a row! Visit Mike’s cousin, Rachel, and her husband, Jonathan. Walk around their neighborhood, Hampden, and get dinner at The Food Market (best fried pickles ever).

May 8: Baltimore

Jonathan gave us a personalized history tour of Baltimore, which is basically our favorite thing to do in a new place (walk, look, and learn). The highlight for me was checking out the Peabody library, which I wanted to permanently move into. Dinner all together at Parts & Labor. Lots of walking and talking. Realize what a privilege and a pleasure it is that we get to do this. What other opportunity would we have had to spend so much time with these awesome people? The people you normally only see at weddings and the occasional Christmas gathering? We had a great time, and feel so lucky. Once again, our decision to take this trip is reaffirmed.

"Whoever died from a rough ride? The whole damn system."

May 9: Baltimore → Silver Spring

Mike and I grab lunch with Rachel, then have to work. Didn’t have anywhere to do a client meeting, so Rachel’s friend let me come work at her house when she was gone, even though I’ve never met her! Bonus time hanging out with the dog, Charlie.

Say our goodbyes, and drive to Silver Springs, MD, outside of DC. Go downtown DC and meet up with an old family friend, Ruben, and his girlfriend, Kate. And again, what an opportunity to see people you never get to see! I’m also very grateful at the many good people -- strong people -- who work for the federal government right now, because I don’t think I’d have the patience (or optimism) to do it.

Sleep in Silver Springs, Maryland.

May 10: Silver Spring/DC

We spent the entire day walking around DC, and saw: the Capitol Building, the Supreme Court, the relative distances of all of the planets outside the Air and Space Museum, the Washington Monument, the World War II memorial, the WWI memorial gazebo (where I had to stop to take a networking call), the Martin Luther King Jr memorial (which was my favorite), the Lincoln memorial, the Vietnam memorial, the Korean War memorial, the White House (with accompanying motorcade, including some spectators who insisted that they’d seen Trump’s hair and red tie), the International Spy Museum, and the Portrait Gallery and attached art museum. I was surprised at how moved I was, seeing the memorials, remembering the history, reflecting on everything we’ve seen throughout America, and thinking about all the stuff that’s happened here. In a time when it’s easy to lose hope, and easy to feel anxious about the future, this country’s history reminded me that times get really hard, and then something is forced to give, and then things can then become better than before. And I want to make the choice to believe MLK, that “right, temporarily defeated, is stronger than evil triumphant.”

Despite the feeling that things are hard or getting worse right now, this is still a great country to live in. Most of us can wake up not having to fear our government, not having to worry about being murdered for our beliefs, or our religions, or our races. There is still progress to be made. But hopefully someday, none of us will have to worry.

May 11: Silver Spring → New York City

Four hour drive to Brooklyn takes six hours. Meet up with Mike’s brother, Zac, and his wife, Jess, whom we’ll be staying with for a good chunk of our NY stay.

Mike fully and immediately embraces NYC driving, honking and yelling at people while exclaiming how fun it is to drive there.

My carry-on suitcase promptly dies, too. Luggage casualty #2. Always an adventure.

Return our rental car to a hilariously creepy spot in the deep underground corner of a hotel parking garage. We brought it in 45 minutes early; the Budget system wanted to charge us an extra $200 for bringing it in early (it kept trying to charge us the day rate instead of the lower weekly rate) so we had to wait around until 9p for it to charge us the original price, instead. (See? Never again.)

Get a really late dinner with Zac and Jess at Little Mo.

Sleep in Brooklyn, New York.

Hello New York

Goodbye suitcase

May 12: Brooklyn/Manhattan

Breakfast at Le Garage, and then we all take the train into Manhattan. Go to MOMA, which further reinforces my lack of understanding of art in general, and modern art in particular. Get hot dogs on the way out, and walk around a bit. I was surprised at the anxiety response I got while walking around Manhattan. There are just SO MANY PEOPLE, everything and everyone is constantly moving, the buildings are huge, the trains are crowded, you just get swept around the city inside currents of people, and there’s nowhere to duck out and just take a breath (at least, without standing in line, taking the train for an hour, or spending lots of money). It’s fun for a visit, but I don’t think I could live here happily. What I do love, though, is that every other person is speaking a different language. And the fashion! Definitely different from San Francisco, where the rich people just wear more expensive t-shirts and hoodies.

We got stuck in the rain on our way back to Brooklyn, but stopped at a pickle store which was entirely filled with barrels of pickled things. Each armed with a pickle, our spirits were lifted, and all was well again with the world. (Seriously, why aren’t pickle stores a thing everywhere?)

First, delicious Italian-style pizza at Santa Panza. Then we spent the rest of the night at home, playing games and watching Mike and Zac eat every-flavor jelly beans while Jess and I laughed at them when they accidentally ate a Dead Fish or Spoiled Milk flavor.

Art.

Credit to Jess

May 13: NY → SF

And now I’m writing this on a plane to San Francisco! I’m headed back for a two-day business development workshop for work, and then Mike will join me for a few days.

We’ll spend just under a week here, mostly working and doing all the home-stuff that we can most easily do in SF, like doctor appointments and haircuts. And, to keep things as complicated (but as fun) as possible, we’ll of course be sleeping in three different places while we’re here! (Thanks, friends!)

Newark airport had a tablet at every seat, to order food and drinks from!

Someone broke in to the Tinker Trailer!

June 07, 2018 by Galia in lessons, on the road

Or: things we may have learned the hard way about RV security.

We just arrived back at the RV after leaving it in storage for a while. We did a walk-around and everything looked fine from the outside, but we got inside and everything had been trashed. Like, every cupboard open, everything inside it thrown on the floor kind of trashed. We were of course distressed by this, but neither of us could say we were surprised -- we had left an RV unattended for a month in a parking lot of a storage place in Baltimore. It was kind of an inevitability. (No offense to Baltimore. We still like you anyway.)

Once we started cleaning up, we noticed that some surprising things weren’t taken, but they had gone through all of the linens in the trunk and dumped out all of our extra toiletries and looked inside our fridge. Eventually we did discover that most of Mike’s camera gear (but luckily he hadn't left the actual cameras or storage) had been stolen, and also our AppleTV.

Here are some things we’ve learned about RV security, sometimes a little too late!

1) Don’t leave valuables in the RV.

Obviously, if you’re living out of your RV like us, this is not always an option. If you can, leave valuables at home or in storage somewhere. Keep copies of passports, ID, etc, and give copies to loved ones in case you need to recover them. Try to find clever ways to hide smaller things like ID or cash. Bigger things you might still be able to hide in slightly non-obvious places or at least in places that might not be worth trying to get to if someone is rummaging through your stuff in a hurry.

There are also some RV lockbox options for storing things like passports or cash. Some RVs have the option to build one straight into the RV, such as a metal compartment under the seats with a key lock. You can also buy some and add them on. Depending on your needs, you tend to have the option of either getting a really sturdy one that you can drill straight into your RV somewhere (usually the closet) so robbers can’t just pick it up and take it with them, but these won’t protect from things like flood or fire. But the ones that protect from flood or fire tend to just be boxes that someone could walk off with, so you need to find a place to hide it, which may be difficult in 320 square feet.

The new wave of security systems that doesn’t require being wired to the home can also be helpful in RVs. Complete with cameras, alarms, and remote help, and accessible via smartphone app, a security system can be a good addition to keep your stuff safe. There are also cheaper versions that are just an on-site alarm when a window or door gets opened.

2) Get insurance.

RV insurance is like a cross between homeowner’s insurance and car insurance. It’ll cover things that go wrong with the car and also things like theft of your stuff.

If the RV gets broken into, call the police. They’ll eventually show up, act annoyed that they’re there, fill out a form, and now you have a police report to help you file your insurance claim. Try not to mess with anything until the police arrive, but don’t be surprised if they don’t even bother looking around. Take lots of pictures and video of the state of things, especially the entry point where the robber broke in, and anything that’s broken.

3) Have an inventory of your valuables.

If you get broken into, it’s really hard to remember what you used to have. If things get stolen, it’ll also be really helpful to have make, model, and even serial number info for the insurance claim. At the very least, take some photos of your stuff at the beginning of your trip, or have a pack list, so you can cross reference and figure out what was taken. This’ll also help with the police report and insurance claim.

4) Leave your hubcaps at home.

Okay, this one is tongue in cheek, but our hubcaps were the first to go, really early on in the trip. If you’ll be going for a long haul or parking in sketchy places, leave those babies at home and put them back on if you ever decide to resell your rig.

5) Get extra locks for the windows.

It’s probably unlikely that a smash-and-grab robber will actually smash -- they’ll probably come in through a door or window. Always make sure your doors and windows are locked, and then get some little window stopper thingies (like this: https://smile.amazon.com/dp/B005H3N43K/) that screw onto the sill and prevent them from being opened from the outside. You can find those at any hardware store.

6) The personal data is the most valuable.

Your camera can be replaced, but the photos on it can’t. Your laptop can be replaced but your personal information on it can’t. Not to mention the risk of stolen credit cards, or worse, a stolen identity, if they get things like your wallet or social security number.

Make sure all your personal data is backed up regularly. Think photos, SD cards, harddrives, phones, computers, and personal documents. Anything you wouldn’t want a stranger to put on the internet.

Also, please put locks on your devices! (I’m looking at you, parents!) Have a password to get into your phone and your computer. Ideally, have a way to wipe your data remotely, too. The last thing you’d want is a stranger swiping your phone and having access to all your emails and accounts.

Not to mention, as we were in the thick of figuring out what was taken, the only stuff that made my stomach turn in knots was the stuff that might have personal stuff on it. Luckily, we didn’t leave much of anything with data in the RV, and the things that may have had personal stuff on it the robbers didn’t seem to care about. This is definitely the main stuff worth protecting.

7) The feeling of vulnerability is the worst part.

Almost everything can be replaced, but there’s nothing quite like the feeling of knowing a stranger has just been in your home and rifled through all of your things. There’s no solution to this one but time and doing your best to prevent it from happening again.

But now, at the very least, we can proudly proclaim that we are definitely not newbies anymore!