"Leavin' New York's never easy" (R.E.M.)

When we decided to create this blog I promised that it would not just be a recitation of our amusing foreign misadventures as most of you know that Megan and I have had getting into trouble in distant countries down for a long time. Some of you, however, may not have been around for our respective dealings the the Cuban police, know exactly why Megan's on her fifth version of the same camera or understand why we will forever be cautious of unmarked bars in Istanbul so, on the technicality that this post only covers our last few days in the U.S., I hope you'll indulge me (Sorry Karen!).

Where to start? For brevity I'll skip over our building's super demanding a check for $1000 before he'd let us move out (resolved only when we found our check stubs from 2004) and barely mention that same super announcing 48 hours before our final day that 2 years ago he'd thrown out the pile of my landlord's furniture that I'd entrusted to him on pain of my security deposit. Instead, I'll start on Thursday which began bright and early with a 6.45am trip to Long Island City to pick up our rental van (Actually it began midway through a good effort to finish all the beer left over from our wedding with Jimmy Katzman and took a brief break around 1.30am but that's not important). "Rental van" probably doesn't do justice to the rattling behemoth we (Megan) drove away that morning which could probably have moved 5 apartments like ours, came complete with a huge hydraulic loading riser and, crucially, a cargo unit that was a couple of feet wider than the cab.

A terrifying ride over the 59th Street Bridge later at rush hour and against the odds we were safely parked outside our building and ready to start.

Buoyed by our early success we decided two hours would be enough time to get loaded, dutifully fed $4 into the meter (being 2 x $2 which was the hourly rate), displayed our receipt, and set to throwing everything we owned into the truck as quickly as possible. One hour one minute later we brought a load down to the sight of a parking attendant writing us up. Anyone who's ever been in this situation will know there is something unique about traffic attendants that inspire even quiet, polite people to instantaneous fits of rage and this was no exception:

"What are you doing?!"

"I'm sorry your ticket has expired sir"

"What the hell do you mean?! It's $2 an hour we paid for $4 we're good for another hour!
"I can only go by the time sir which has expired - instructions for disputing the ticket are on the reverse"

"I don't care what the time says the machine must be broken! It says $4 right there in black and white - can't you use some common sense?! Are you giving everyone on the street a ticket? Seriously, what kind of ridiculolus job doesn't allow you any discretion even when the machine's clearly broken - you're job sucks...

"I'm sor...

"You're job sucks and you suck, I don't know how you sleep..." [I'll stop there and wish we had but the poor guy endured a few more minutes of this before walking off.]

Still fuming we decided to take a series of of photos as evidence for the upcoming lawsuit:

$65 dollars and 40 minutes later and we were off to Cold Spring! Apart from temporarily losing my new wedding ring in the grass there wasn't much funny about the next few hours of back breaking labour (I get to use "u"s again now) so triumphant photo aside I'll skip to the trip back which was going very well until...

...we got to Tarrytown. The exact details of what happened in Tarrytown are between us, the police and our insurance companies suffice to say the width of our truck proved unacceptable to the rear two panels of an SUV belonging to the biggest man I HAVE EVER SEEN. Fortunately everyone was pretty relaxed about things apart from the attending police officer who made a conspicuous show of doing up his bullet proof vest before getting within of 50ft of Megan and me (did he know the traffic attendant?) and proceeded to complicate things by suggesting that we might just want to give the guy a pile of money in "restitution" so he wouldn't have to file a report. We finally managed to explain why that wasn't going to happen and got away after about an hour and a half making it back to Long Island City a round 12 hours after we set off.

That left me just enough time to shift a bed and a dresser for Megan, sort of shower and finally make it to my own work leaving drinks at the Croton Tavern. With the six months we have in front of us I'd struggle to say I had any big regrets at this stage but it was touching to see so many friendly faces and I know that in time I'll miss everyone from the office.

I'm actually writing this from the comfort of a very nice Dublin hotel room so am pleased to say things have gotten easier but Megan will let you know all about our first couple of days in due course.