Rumble in(to) the Bronx

It turns out that the "moving in" process of moving is fairly harrying, particularly following 3,150 miles of straight-shooting across the nation.

As we left Philadelphia yesterday morning,*  with Em driving (I convinced her she was ready, and a better city driver than I--both were true), I captured several images that I am told are overly flattering to the city of brotherly love:

The Schookill river beckons. You probably
shouldn't heed its call.

I also caught Em driving in terrible traffic, and not wanting to die while doing so:

Okay, so maybe she wants to die a little bit. But mostly she's
a champ.

Once out of Philly, things went swimmingly. That is to say, we had no trouble getting to New York, and once we reached the George Washington Bridge we only missed one turn, which meant that we only detoured into Harlem a little bit. This also meant that our terror level was reasonable.² 

After a bit of that, we successfully navigated to the block around the corner from my ravioli-shop-based apartment, and felt a great sense of accomplishment. 

Damn straight, we made it.

This sense of accomplishment was quickly replaced by pain, sorrow, and exhaustion as we proceeded to empty the contents of the White Whale into my Fourth Floor apartment by ourselves.

We could have had help from several pushy men who asserted that we were trying to lift boxes that were "too heavy" for us and actively attempted to remove boxes from our hands.  Having been warned by concerned individuals that this was going to happen (I could have guessed, though I've never moved alone in New York before), we were able to drive them off.  We took many breaks, met the neighbors and their children (some of whom very much enjoyed crawling around in the van as we ate from our bulk-sized jar of pickles³).  I even had an On-Top-Of-The-Van adventure, undoing the fabulous knots tied for us by a boy in Portland:

If you think it's difficult to attract attention in a city as large
as this, try flopping around on the roof of a minivan for
30 minutes.

Five hours, lots of sweat, and close to a few tears later, we were done. We rewarded ourselves by going to Antonio's Trattoria (which is, thankfully, a mere block away) for dinner, and then shortly thereafter met up with one of my oldest friends, CHT, who rather conveniently missed all of the moving parts of moving.  Then, we took the Whale into Manhattan--or rather, we made CHT do it, because frankly we were tired--to have it close by when we left from Midtown.

So today we leave from Midtown en route to Philly again, where I will leave the White Whale for a while as I attempt to sell it. The apartment in the Bronx has no chairs in it anyway, or really anything at all besides piles and piles of my detritus, so it's yet to become inviting. That's the next step.

Notes:

* Alright, fine. Middle of the day. But it felt like morning to us.

¹ Which, to hear Em tell it, lacks a real fraternal aesthetic of any sort.

² I would place it at Orange, which in New York is pretty much the base line.³ The only thing we kept in our cooler all across the country were pickles. We bought them from various Wal-Marts. There is no shame in this.