Episode 1 | LEAVING NYC

---

Brooklyn, NY | April 1st to May 1st, 2021

Welcome to TheMillennialGuide.To! Thanks so much for joining us 🤩

This is post #2 - LEAVING NYC. Check out the beginning of the story at “THE PROLOGUE” here.

Long Story Short

We came back to Brooklyn from North Carolina and spent a month getting things in order, connecting with friends, and planning the 6 weeks road trip you’re about to read all about! Now, choose-your-own-adventure-on-over to the next post.

Short Story Long

 

After 5 years in the concrete jungle we decided it was time to machete our way out. NYC was full of stress, concrete, massive wealth inequality, constant struggle, tearful nights, slumlords, and noise noise noise. There were some bad parts too…🙃…but seriously, New🗽York taught us a lot of lessons and while we’ll dearly miss our friends, fam, and the sparks of creativity; but the big apple will always be there.

This past year has taught the two of us that humans need nature; we’re all animals after all. Mother Earth is much more easily accessed beyond the golden spikes of the MTA railway.

So let’s move! Off we galavant to the West Coast and our next level of existence. LA has been in the cards for us since we met. Tessa’s from there and Marshall’s been drawn since he first visited in 2018. Just like remote work, our future was expedited by the pandemic.

So that’s where we’ll begin → on the journey that turned our heads west.

The Adventure

The drive from Wilmington, NC to New York is 9 hours straight through. On the way down we drove one shot with a rental Rav4. On the way back our work schedule made it best to leave Wednesday afternoon and crash overnight in Richmond, VA. Easily done because we bought a car down south! Our cute wonderful CR-V Gloria! 🚙 Let us know if you’d like to hear more about our car buying experience. It was actually really easy but we did tons of research before gearing up that we can share.

We have no recommendations for Richmond, we slept and left. Actually one, Riverbend Coffee Co. - Cute old building with really good Lattes. Near Marshall street.

We were lucky enough to have a friend of a friend offer us a discount on a month long sublet near Fort Greene. It’s not normally rentable so we won’t list the info here. Living near friends and in an apartment with instant access to a park really changes the game. Having close proximity to a real community is the only way to really thrive in NYC. With some of our best friends two flights up we were compelled to stay; but a quick street easy search will spring you back to reality real quick. We realized that the kind of existence we would want in NYC wasn’t in our reach (just yet). That month of hangouts, movie nights, jam sessions, and really good bagels was magical and I’d do it again in a heartbeat.

but NYC had plenty of F'Us in store before we left.

We’d booked a moving company [Budget Van Lines 😈] to transport anything we couldn’t take on the road. Our Mattress, some furniture, clothing, air conditioners, etc. We priced it out and it was several thousand dollars cheaper to move everything than it was to try to sell everything and buy it again on the other side. We looked at POD but they were $4000 minimum. Other Moving Companies were around $3500. Originally budget quoted us $2400 for all the items in our 8X10 storage unit. After I itemized everything they went down to $2097. But it ended up not mattering! They tried to scam us completely.

Marshall: Ok, I’d heard of people getting scammed during moves. So I did tons of research. Overall I’d found that Budget was solid even though they were cheap. Some bad review but it looks like they at least showed up. It turns out no. At all. Don’t ever hire them. Zero stars.

So what to do if your movers don’t show up? We saw a moving van on the street and called the number on the side. It was the most New York thing ever:

Marshall: Hi, we’re looking for movers from NY to LA

Mark: I don’t do long distance but call my buddy Michael Cavalry he’ll hook you up.

We called Michael and he came through. For less than the original quote! $1665 the next day via Capital City Movers. They showed up early and were done in about 45 minutes. Highly recommend on the NY End. Just don’t get in an accident on your way to meet up with them (that makes sense if you’ve see the video ⬆️⬆️⬆️)

📝: On the LA end the movers refused to wear masks and kept dropping boxes. We ended up with three broken boxes so maybe USPS for your most fragile items is best.

Now some bullet points:

• For the rest of our gear, we used clear tote boxes, Ikea bags, and suitcases to try to make things stackable/findable in Gloria. It’ll make life 1000X easier if you know where everything is supposed to be.

• Before embarking on a cross country trip make sure to have all your essential camping gear → Our gear is listed in the description of our YouTube videos.

• Get your car an oil change 🛢 and tire rotation before you leave. We’re about to cover a lot of miles together.

• You’re about to be in a very small space for a very long time. Tension might run high. But if you’re traveling with someone else, talk about it before you even leave. Make sure you know what each others comfort levels look like and be ready to deviate from the plan when either of you need to. Don’t get frustrated at one another - it doesn’t help and besides, you’re teammates and you’re in this together. Remember it’s supposed to be fun 🤪

• Oh! Test pack the car if you can before all your stuff gets shipped. We definitely brought too much. You probably don’t need a nutribullet on the road and you’ll have to ship it separately in Nashville...

Beep beep, is that my bessie in a tessie? We’re off to Assateague Island 🐴