OUR MOVE TO LONG ISLAND – MAY 2025

Joyce Moving Van

We did it! After more than a year of planning, we are on Long Island. We signed our lease this week at Pinewood Estates, a 55+ community in the Hamlet of Middle Island in the Brookhaven community. Our new apartment is a small two-bedroom, two-bathroom apartment in a beautifully wooded area.

On May 16th, Joyce Moving pulled up to our front door with its enormous van. Despite all the planning, we were initially scheduled to move on Monday, the 19th, but that’s a trash pickup day; garbage cans would have been out in the street, and trash removal trucks would have been coming and going. Because of that, we rescheduled it for the Friday before.

As it turned out, they started painting the exterior of our condos recently. They were supposed to finish the building we lived in before our moving day. But inclement weather held things up, and they started painting our building the same day the movers arrived. It was a little chaotic out there. With the help of our daughter Deb, who speaks fluent Spanish, she got the painters to pause painting several times so the guys could move our stuff from the second floor to their truck. It all turned out well. The moving people were great and said they were used to things like that. They arrived at about 9 a.m. and pulled away at 2:30. We left about 20 minutes later. Anita, Deb, and I spent that first night at a Residence Inn in Santa Fe.

Deb arrived two days before, helped pack our remaining things, and then helped drive to New York. We had a lot of boxes. Our estimate for the move was based on 8500 pounds. We got rid of some furniture, clothing, and other things we decided not to take. The final weight for the move was several hundred pounds less, so we expect to get money back. Right now, our truck is somewhere in the south. It will arrive at our new home on Tuesday, May 27th.

We took off Saturday morning, driving from Santa Fe to Oklahoma City. Several hours into the trip, Deb was driving, Anita was in the passenger seat, and I was backseat driving when the cool air from the air conditioner turned warm. I looked at the AC light on the dash, and it was flashing. That didn’t seem normal. Anita pulled out my Toyota manual, and it said to go immediately to a Toyota service center.

We weren’t taking time away from the road because we wanted to arrive in Long Island in 4 days. The temps in Texas and Oklahoma were in the 80s. We opened the outside air vents, windows, and the overhead sky roof. It was some relief. At some point, we discovered that if we left the vents open and ran the fan on low, we could get some cold air, close the windows, and the rooftop. We spent that night in an Oklahoma City hotel just off our route.

Starting the next morning, our destination was St. Louis. It was tornado season in the Midwest. We luckily caught a window between storms. We followed a destructive tornado that tore apart a St. Louis neighborhood. More storms were following us. It was fortunate that we had lovely weather most of the trip.

Somehow, I caught a nasty cold and only managed to drive for about an hour. I could drive for maybe two or three hours on a good day. Thankfully, Deb took up the slack and did most of the driving. That night, we stayed just outside of St. Louis. The first hotel on our list was sold out because tornado victims stayed there. We drove to another small town and found rooms. We were so tired that we ordered pizza and sides and had them delivered to us. Interestingly, Midwest pizzas are sliced into 12 square slices. We were so hungry that we didn’t mind eating pizza below New York standards. We set out the next morning for Wheeling, West Virginia.

I must take a moment to mention Buc-Ee’s, one of the world’s largest gas stations and super-duper marketplaces. It has fifty or sixty gas pumps all lined up in a row. The building is larger than most Love's Truck stops. They offer everything imaginable, including a wide variety of food. We had their BBQ brisket sandwiches, which were prepared and pre-wrapped. We tried both the sliced and the chopped versions, which were delicious. In addition to the lengthy line of urinals in the men’s room, individual rooms are equipped with a toilet and sink, instead of the usual stalls. Both Buc-Ee’s locations we visited were doing brisk business. The first one was in Oklahoma, and the other was in Missouri. Deb had been to Buc-Ee’s elsewhere, but it was the first time Anita and I had visited one.

We drove a little further than Wheeling, West Virginia, and spent the night in Washington, Pennsylvania. Earlier that afternoon, we went through a Panera drive-through where we ordered sandwiches. We didn’t realize that the sandwiches we ordered were large enough to eat half in the car, and the other half served us for dinner. That was our last night on the road. We were in the homestretch to our destination, Deb’s home in Kings Park, Long Island. Of course, we couldn’t avoid getting to the Metropolitan area at rush hour. We crawled across the George Washington Bridge, all through the Bronx, into Queens, and onto the Long Island Expressway. We were happy to be home. Thanks to daylight saving time, all our driving was during daylight.

We covered over 2000 miles. Thank goodness, we never got stopped on any road or interstate because of an accident, which prevented our progress. We saw two major backups on the Westbound lanes of two interstates because of accidents that closed these roads. Cars and trucks were utterly at a standstill or creeping along to the next exit, where they were detoured.

We spent the first two nights at Deb’s house catching up on laundry and repairing the air conditioner. A faulty relay was shutting off the compressor. So far, it seems to be working.

Our 50th Anniversary Dinner

Today, May 23rd, is our 50th anniversary. We’re at a nice hotel in Riverhead, Long Island, near the North Fork of Long Island. As soon as I finish this, we will explore the area's many restaurants, wineries, and beautiful scenery.

The day after we arrived, we signed the lease for the new apartment. We’ve been busy turning on utilities, getting postal box keys, and getting new insurance for our car. Our son-in-law, David, sells medical insurance plans and is helping us secure new health insurance. We are experiencing sticker shock because all our insurance has doubled, but we’re not surprised. New York's cost of living is much higher than Santa Fe's.

In summary, the trip was a great adventure and a challenge. We enjoyed the time we spent with our daughter. Since we arrived, we spent a couple of hours this week with our great-grandson, Caleb, and that made it all worth it. We are happy to be surrounded by our wonderful, loving family.