What a crazy week. It has been a complete whirlwind adventure and our adventure has not even yet begun. To anyone out there who has bold plans to either pack up all their belongings, sell their house, plan a 5 month trip to South America, plan a cross country trip with their dog, relocate their business abroad, or relocating their dog to the other side of the world, I would definitely NOT recommend trying to do all of them at once. I’ll skip past the part where we drove 9 hours to get to Philly for Thanksgiving on the Wednesday night and the 6.5 hours we drove to get back to Boston on the following Saturday. Sunday was a day filled with separating stuff to ship to Melbourne via ocean liner, stuff to bring travelling for the next 6 months, stuff to bring to Melbourne now & stuff to leave in Philly to bring on our road trip with Lebowski. We also were able to pull away for a few hours to say goodbye to some great friends we’ve made in our 3 years in Boston.
The real chaos all kicked off on Monday morning when our friendly neighborhood movers came in to package up all our stuff to be shipped out to Melbourne. I know what you’re thinking…lazy bastards, pack up your own stuff. The reality is that it wasn’t an option due to all the customs requirement so that’s that. Anywho, with Jo finishing up editing her final wedding and the movers wrapping away, I was concluding business at work and saying my goodbyes to colleagues at Ranor. Tuesday was the day the stress level peaked as the movers filled up their truck with our every possession and sure enough the buyer of our house came within the hour for her walk-through. Of course she was accompanied by her real estate agent. As far as agents go, she was by far the worst human being I have ever met. Immediately she began rattling off a list of things that needed to be removed from the premises before she would release our funds to us. So our Tuesday night into Wednesday morning went something like this:
1. Made our “bed” to sleep on
2. Disassembled shelving to dispose of
3. Started a fire to dispose of shelving
4. Laid out everything to pack for traveling
5. Loaded up car of miscellaneous stuff to dump
6. Poured a glass of wine
7. Started packing
8. Brought Lebowski to say goodbye to our awesome neighbors (thanks Bob, Jean, Julie, John and Ellie for everything)
9. Made a late night run to deposit said goods into local dumpster
10. Continued packing
11. Slept for a few hours
12. Continued cleaning in the morning
13. Cursed out horrible real estate lady
14. Packed up Maxima with whatever possessions we had left
15. Picked up house check
16. Dropped off plates at RMV
And finally we were ready to leave Watertown in our rear view mirror. I’d have to say it was a very sad time locking the door for the final time. We loved that house, had great neighbors, made some life-long friends and learned a lot about both photography and engineering respectively. It was a great run but the three of us are looking forward to our next great challenge/adventure: conquering Melbourne.
We drove away that afternoon thinking we would have a nice smooth ride down to Philly that we would break in half and spend the night somewhere in Connecticut so I wasn’t struggling to stay awake while driving. Our “smooth ride” became rougher and rougher as our rear brake caliper seized and just as we pulled into our luxury accommodation (Motel 6), the piston ruptured and we were spitting brake fluid onto the parking lot. By 2 pm the following afternoon, we were back on our way south with new calipers, brakes and rotors. The only stop came 5 miles down the highway when a wicked vibration had me pulled over to tighten lug nuts (apparently not included in their final bill for the brake work).
Our final few days in Philly before flying out were spent as some great quality time with both family and friends. Tim and Steph graciously put us up while we settled Lebowski into their place (thanks again guys!) The next few days were filled great company, drinks and food. A big group dinner followed by “a few” drinks and a rousing game of Catch Phrase at Tim & Steph’s place had us geared up to repack our things one last time on Sunday afternoon for our Monday flight.
Monday morning would be the most difficult as it would be the last time we would have a family walk with our Little Dude for a half a year. We’ll definitely miss his morning licks and goofy ways. He always puts a smile on our face no matter how loudly he howls or how many socks he steals. We know he’ll be in great care with Tim, Steph & Charlie watching over him until we return.
My parents were good enough to take Monday off to make the start of our journey to Melbourne as easy as door to door service from Lansdale to JFK airport. Unfortunately that’s where things stopped being easy and started being pushy – we were flying Air China. Our itinerary claims that with two flights (JFK to Bejing & Bejing to Melbourne) with a 5 hour layover, we would arrive in Australia after a 30 hour journey. In actuality our trip went a bit like this:
- Take off from JFK 3 hours late
- Sleep for a good 8 hours on the flight
- Wake up when the plane lands
- Discover that the plane decided to land in Harbin rather than Beijing, (there was not a single
announcement in English, nor did the pilot, air hostess or any airport staff speak English, just to make things more interesting! We were dealing with a lot of blank stares.)
- Find out that we will be staying the night in Harbin due to record fog and smog in Beijing
- Be the last ones through immigration to receive our one day stay permit as we were kindly shoved aside by hundreds of locals
- Load onto the last bus from the airport to a hotel as we were shoved aside from loading the previous 4 buses (a bit of a theme developing here)
- Arrive at hotel 5 hours after diverted landing
- Get two hours of sleep and a much needed shower
- Bus back to airport
- Board plane to Beijing and depart two hours late
- Arrive in Beijing, collect luggage, and beg three different AirChina employees to rebook our tickets onto different flight to Melbourne departing in one hour (ticket counter que was about an hour and a half wait)
- Board plane to Shanghai (don’t ask why)
- Change planes in Shanghai and depart for Melbourne.
So after all the diversions and confusion, we finally arrived to a smiling Bryan at Melbourne airport after a short 54 hour journey. I think next time we’ll pay the extra $500 per ticket to fly through L.A.
The real chaos all kicked off on Monday morning when our friendly neighborhood movers came in to package up all our stuff to be shipped out to Melbourne. I know what you’re thinking…lazy bastards, pack up your own stuff. The reality is that it wasn’t an option due to all the customs requirement so that’s that. Anywho, with Jo finishing up editing her final wedding and the movers wrapping away, I was concluding business at work and saying my goodbyes to colleagues at Ranor. Tuesday was the day the stress level peaked as the movers filled up their truck with our every possession and sure enough the buyer of our house came within the hour for her walk-through. Of course she was accompanied by her real estate agent. As far as agents go, she was by far the worst human being I have ever met. Immediately she began rattling off a list of things that needed to be removed from the premises before she would release our funds to us. So our Tuesday night into Wednesday morning went something like this:
1. Made our “bed” to sleep on
2. Disassembled shelving to dispose of
3. Started a fire to dispose of shelving
4. Laid out everything to pack for traveling
5. Loaded up car of miscellaneous stuff to dump
6. Poured a glass of wine
7. Started packing
8. Brought Lebowski to say goodbye to our awesome neighbors (thanks Bob, Jean, Julie, John and Ellie for everything)
9. Made a late night run to deposit said goods into local dumpster
10. Continued packing
11. Slept for a few hours
12. Continued cleaning in the morning
13. Cursed out horrible real estate lady
14. Packed up Maxima with whatever possessions we had left
15. Picked up house check
16. Dropped off plates at RMV
And finally we were ready to leave Watertown in our rear view mirror. I’d have to say it was a very sad time locking the door for the final time. We loved that house, had great neighbors, made some life-long friends and learned a lot about both photography and engineering respectively. It was a great run but the three of us are looking forward to our next great challenge/adventure: conquering Melbourne.
We drove away that afternoon thinking we would have a nice smooth ride down to Philly that we would break in half and spend the night somewhere in Connecticut so I wasn’t struggling to stay awake while driving. Our “smooth ride” became rougher and rougher as our rear brake caliper seized and just as we pulled into our luxury accommodation (Motel 6), the piston ruptured and we were spitting brake fluid onto the parking lot. By 2 pm the following afternoon, we were back on our way south with new calipers, brakes and rotors. The only stop came 5 miles down the highway when a wicked vibration had me pulled over to tighten lug nuts (apparently not included in their final bill for the brake work).
Our final few days in Philly before flying out were spent as some great quality time with both family and friends. Tim and Steph graciously put us up while we settled Lebowski into their place (thanks again guys!) The next few days were filled great company, drinks and food. A big group dinner followed by “a few” drinks and a rousing game of Catch Phrase at Tim & Steph’s place had us geared up to repack our things one last time on Sunday afternoon for our Monday flight.
Monday morning would be the most difficult as it would be the last time we would have a family walk with our Little Dude for a half a year. We’ll definitely miss his morning licks and goofy ways. He always puts a smile on our face no matter how loudly he howls or how many socks he steals. We know he’ll be in great care with Tim, Steph & Charlie watching over him until we return.
My parents were good enough to take Monday off to make the start of our journey to Melbourne as easy as door to door service from Lansdale to JFK airport. Unfortunately that’s where things stopped being easy and started being pushy – we were flying Air China. Our itinerary claims that with two flights (JFK to Bejing & Bejing to Melbourne) with a 5 hour layover, we would arrive in Australia after a 30 hour journey. In actuality our trip went a bit like this:
- Take off from JFK 3 hours late
- Sleep for a good 8 hours on the flight
- Wake up when the plane lands
- Discover that the plane decided to land in Harbin rather than Beijing, (there was not a single
announcement in English, nor did the pilot, air hostess or any airport staff speak English, just to make things more interesting! We were dealing with a lot of blank stares.)
- Find out that we will be staying the night in Harbin due to record fog and smog in Beijing
- Be the last ones through immigration to receive our one day stay permit as we were kindly shoved aside by hundreds of locals
- Load onto the last bus from the airport to a hotel as we were shoved aside from loading the previous 4 buses (a bit of a theme developing here)
- Arrive at hotel 5 hours after diverted landing
- Get two hours of sleep and a much needed shower
- Bus back to airport
- Board plane to Beijing and depart two hours late
- Arrive in Beijing, collect luggage, and beg three different AirChina employees to rebook our tickets onto different flight to Melbourne departing in one hour (ticket counter que was about an hour and a half wait)
- Board plane to Shanghai (don’t ask why)
- Change planes in Shanghai and depart for Melbourne.
So after all the diversions and confusion, we finally arrived to a smiling Bryan at Melbourne airport after a short 54 hour journey. I think next time we’ll pay the extra $500 per ticket to fly through L.A.
click on the photo below to see gallery
