We had no idea what a pain in the keister leaving Los Angeles would be. Jeff and I packed up my belongings during the whole month of October and we were still not ready on moving day (the original moving date was the end of August, which then turned into the end of September, then became October 31...oy vey!!). Still not ready after three months, we put the brakes on and told the moving company to hold the &%$#@*! up. Fed up already and NOWHERE near North Carolina, we took a break from the chaos and went to the movies.
After seeing a really bad movie that we don't even remember the name of, we called the moving company to request a new moving date of November 1. The crooks (I'll explain further on down the blog) informed us that they could move us on Wednesday, November 2, so we went with that. Frantically we rushed to get everything packed by noon on Wednesday, since our pick-up time was between 2-4. At 3:30pm on that day, I called them to see if they got lost. It was worse than getting lost. They said they had a mechanical issue with their truck and had to pick us up the next day, Thursday, November 3, by noon. What moving company has mechanical problems and doesn't have a replacement truck to do the job? Sounded like a bunch of bs! So that gave us an extra day to finish packing, but we also had the new tenants (Ashley & Tatiana) moving into my bedroom and office. Jeff and I discussed sleeping in the RV in front of my "former" apartment that I clearly was having a hard time leaving, but luckily the girls stayed elsewhere so we had one more night to pack.
Fast forward to moving day, Thursday afternoon at 1:30pm. We were sweating bullets as it was and hour and a half past our pick-up time (again), and we was getting worried that Royal Transportation was a scam (a bit of foreshadowing here!) Suddenly the doorbell rang ( so much for a security building) and I opened the door to a huge guy named Sam, who said he was the mover. Obviously I didn't let him know he was 1.5 hours late. He wanted to see all the stuff that he was going to move to North Carolina. After his 1 minute "inspection", he told us that we were going to pay a lot more money than the $1800 the moving crooks quoted us for moving if he took our stuff to a weigh station, and that we should just accept a verbal agreement with him to move everything for $2700. It was at that time that he realized he was dealing with a crazy Italian broad from Boston and we realized with were dealing with a scam company! After fighting with the moving company for about 2 hours, we knew they were holding us hostage, and we had to give in. All of our things were packed and needed to be moved that night, so we agreed to pay the additional money, which they upped to $2800 for the hell of it.
We finally got the RV moving around midnight. There was a slight problem with getting Talulah in the RV and she managed to jump out of my arms into the bushes where I had just seen a coyote a couple of days earlier (yes, a coyote in LA!). After a brief search and rescue, we got her in the RV. What else could go wrong on this trip that hadn't even begun yet? Luckily Jeff had disconnected the battery in the RV because the battery had died about three times that day with us using up so much juice with lights on so we could see at night, so after having AAA come out and start us up, we were ready to go. But like I said, it was already midnight, so instead of heading east to North Carolina like we had planned, we headed even farther west to Woodland Hills, where we spent 2 nights "roughing it" in front of Jeff's friend's house where we were able to plug in, get electricity, and still figure out how to deal with an RV. Talulah finally got used to the RV while we sat in Woodland Hills for 2 days (see top picture). Hopefully all three cats and the the fish, Mr. Bojangles, would be that relaxed throughout the entire trip...(foreshadowing here!)
So after planning on leaving Los Angeles on August 31st, we finally ended up leaving Studio City on November 3, only to get to a farther west destination. Oy vey! On Saturday November 5th, around 4pm, we officially left LA, but we hit the traffic on the 101 and actually got out of LA around 6pm. Our first night in the RV on the road was spent still in CALIFORNIA!!
