Cross-Country Move to Boston, March 2023
Tears. Lots and lots of tears.
I awoke on the morning of March 15th, having had spent the night with Melissa one last time before I began my drive out east. It was incredibly hard saying goodbye.
Let’s Tarantino this and flashback to a week earlier: Melissa and I were celebrating our one year dating anniversary; we went to this arcade called Round One, which we’ve been wanting to do for a really long time. We got a bunch of money on our cards and just played arcade games for hours. Later that night I made us a reservation at the same restaurant we had our first date in…I even made sure we got the same table because I’m a giant cheese and like that ooey gooey shit.
To top off the evening, after dinner we went to a small arthouse theater called the Broadway Metro where we watched our first movie together: Everything Everywhere All at Once. As luck would have it, due to the ongoing Hollywood Awards season, the Broadway Metro was playing all the movies nominated for the Best Picture Oscar…including Everything Everywhere, so the night could not have worked any better as we went to the late night showing at 9:30 PM.
Back to the present, Melissa and I say our goodbyes, promising to see each other soon, both doing our best to keep from completely breaking down. As soon as she drives away, I get to work loading the car trying to keep my mind occupied on literally anything else.
Everything is loaded and ready to go by 9:00 AM. I say goodbye to my roommates, load up my dogs, and hit the road off towards Portland. Counterintuitively, the best way for me to go east is to first go well out of my way north to Portland where I can then take the I-84 East towards Idaho. This route was much safer than trying to go through the snow-covered Santiam Pass on the route through Bend.
The drive on this first leg of the trip was about ten and a half hours of road time, landing me in the small town of Heyburn, Idaho for the night. After minimal stops, I got into town around 8 PM local time (I gained an hour as I moved into the Mountain Time zone).
Known for being notoriously anxious in the car, Melissa had given me a good amount of the anti-anxiety medication trazodone to give to Jaeger to help calm him down for the cross country journey. I felt bad keeping him that sedate but I was already under enough pressure driving 3,300 miles across the country, I didn’t need him violently shitting in the back seat (something he’s done before) to be adding to my stress.
Jaeger, stoned out of his gourd
I woke up bright and early around 6 AM the next day to give Jaeger some more medication and I briefly took advantage of the complimentary breakfast provided at the Heyburn Super 8 before we hit the road again by 8 AM.
Today’s leg of the journey had us going down south into Utah, east through the rolling plains of Wyoming, and then south once more into the greater Denver area.
The trip was smooth and uneventful and, once again, by making good time we were able to get into the Denver area by 8 PM, spending the first night with my friend Taylor just south of the city which was fantastic as I didn’t have to spend money on a hotel. We spent the night chatting and catching up and watching her gaggle of pets interact with my two little roadtrippers.
The next morning, Taylor and I had lunch at the Great Divide Brewery where I had a pretty tasty bison burger. It definitely was not nearly as gamey as I had expected but it was very good nonetheless.
We said goodbye to one another before going our separate ways. I drove to a La Quinta in the Aurora area that night. After checking in and resting for a bit, my old college friend Christine (who hung out with me and my friends in New Orleans) met me at my hotel and we walked to a Mexican restaurant nearby. It was nothing to write home about. After doing some friendly catching up and bantering, Christine had to get going home.
After spending most of the last 24 hours with friends (in one way or another), I was finally in my hotel room…alone with my thoughts and, although this isn’t the first time I’ve traveled by myself, my hotel room had never felt lonelier than it did that night. I smoked a lot of weed and cried even more before going to this random taco truck, Taqueria Columbine, located in the parking lot of my hotel.
With my craving for proper Mexican food unfulfilled by the place Christine and I went to, I decided to give it a try, and oh boy…am I glad I did, but what really made the experience special was a small interaction I had while waiting on my food.
After placing my order, I stood outside in the cold Denver evening and struck up a conversation with Reggie, another customer waiting on his food. Reggie told me he had heard really good things about this truck and was just grabbing some food on his way home from work. After some brief conversation, the subject came up that I was driving out east for a job as a chef, Reggie told me that he himself was an Executive Chef in Denver. We exchanged contact information and told him if he’s ever in Boston to give me a ring. I don’t know why but, emotionally, I really needed that moment. A brief moment where I got to feel a connection with another human being.
I got back to my hotel room and went to town on an absolutely amazing grilled chicken burrito. I still continued to ugly cry the rest of the night, but at least I could cry into some bomb-ass Mexican food before going to bed.
The next morning, I met my old Houston friend (and recent Denver transplant) EB at her mom’s condo which I was being allowed to borrow on my last night in Denver.
After a brief chat with EB at the condo, I had to leave to meet my other friend Holly, her partner Rhonnie, and their son at the Denver Biscuit Co. for brunch because that’s just what Millennials do on Saturdays. I ordered myself “The Cordon Blue” sandwich: fried chicken, ham, Swiss cheese, and honey butter on a large house made biscuit.
The food was fantastic but the company was even better. It was fun to just talk for hours about our lives, current events, excited at the possibility that Trump would get indicted the next day. That kinda thing.
A week or two earlier, I had seen a Reddit post about a massive street mural of The Mandalorian in Denver and, as an unabashed massive Star Wars fan, I hoped I’d get a chance to snag a picture of it while I was there. As luck would have it, that mural was a literal block down the road from the Denver Biscuit Co. on South Broadway. Unfortunately there was some construction blocking part of the mural so it was hard to get a picture of it but it was still really cool to see…especially since I have been following along with the third season as it’s been airing (I’m not being paid to say that but I wish I was. I love you Pedro Pascal).
We said our goodbyes before I headed back to the condo to check on the dogs and let them out. Afterwards, EB picked me up to show me around the city where we had an impromptu culinary and cultural tour of Denver. We visited Union Station, got pizza at the Denver Central Market, and got some drinks at a couple of breweries before calling it an early night as I would be hitting the road bright and early.
Denver is an amazing city and I could definitely see myself living there someday. The food scene is wonderful, there’s skiing close by, and the landscape is just beautiful.
On Sunday, March 19, I once again woke up bright and early to feed Jaeger his anxiety meds before loading up the car once more and hitting the road. We were on our way to our second-to-last stop before reaching Boston: Des Moines, Iowa.
The drive was rather dull if I’m being honest. As I drove through the vast openness across the entirety of Nebraska and halfway through Iowa, I once again found myself feeling lonely.
Driving for hours on end and listening to old podcasts with no one to talk to made this whole trip feel weird. If you include the time when we helped her mom move from Texas to Oregon, my ex and I had moved across the country three times while we were together and now, for the first time since when I left home for college, I was venturing off completely on my own.
As I got further and further from West Coast, second thoughts and doubts began creeping into my mind. These doubts didn’t arise because I was worried that I wouldn’t be happy with my job or because I thought maybe I wouldn’t like Boston as much as I used to, but out of fears of becoming my father.
My father is a brilliant man and one of the best oncologists on the planet. That’s not a subjectively biased opinion because I’m his son, the man is internationally recognized for his contributions to his field and has been awarded medals in his home country…but that success doesn’t often just fall in your lap.
My dad is obsessed with his career. He works 10+ hours a day and then goes home and usually works another 2-4 and it’s why he’s the best at what he does. It’s also why he’s on his third marriage; it’s hard to be a “loving husband and father” when you’re married to your career, and thus the doubt kept creeping into my head: was I becoming my father? Am I choosing my work life over my love life and, if so, will I regret it?
I’m a sappy bitch, I’ll admit it. I love loving another person and being loved in return by them. Probably because I was raised by an absent father who never showed me enough and so now I seek it from everyone else in the fucking world, but in the last year since Melissa and I started dating, we had such a wonderful connection…and now I began to fear: did I throw away something potentially amazing by moving out to Boston? Did I sacrifice something that made me happy in my personal life for career advancement?
This thought plagued me the rest of the trip and still does to an extent at the time of this writing, but at the end of the day I remind myself that, for the first time in my adult life, I need to put myself and my career first. I have been held back for too long either by circumstance or, in the case of Eugene, by lack of opportunity. Eugene, OR is a culinary wasteland. Few restaurants are particularly impressive and of those even fewer would impress in a major city. Staying in Eugene was career suicide.
I make it safely to my Super 8 just East of Des Moines. It was by far the least impressive of the Super 8s I’ve stayed in during this trip. The one weird highlight was this little convenience store called Casey’s right down the street from my hotel room and with it being the only thing open at like 12:30 at night, I went there to get some snacks, only to find the place sold hand-tossed pizzas??? With an actual pizza maker and oven?
Fuck it, why not? I ordered one, took it home, and even got a few free donuts because they were going to be thrown out soon. I gotta say…to my surprise it was pretty solid pizza…better than some nationwide chains like Little Caesar’s even.
“I don’t know about this place, man. I just stayed in my hotel room, man. It’s pretty depressing out here, man. It’s bad...No going out in Cleveland, man...
Do you like it? Do you think Cleveland is cool? I mean, I never heard anybody say, ‘I’m going to Cleveland on vacation.’ What’s so good about Cleveland?”
On to Cleveland. The last stop on our journey before Boston. The journey was relatively uneventful this time as I made a few more stops this time around to stave off monotony, still making pretty good time and made it to my hotel in Cleveland just a little before 8:00 PM.
I got dinner at a local restaurant a block from my hotel before calling it a night and heading to bed early with a big day ahead of me. The front office of my new apartment complex closes at 6 PM, so if I wanted to get into my new apartment that night, I’d have to get to the complex by then.
With a bad case of “Get-there-itis” in full effect, we left around 7:00 AM, making few stops along the way until getting to the Boston area right around 4:00 PM…just in time to hit rush hour traffic. As I maneuvered through the city’s highways, I finally got to my apartment shortly before 5, with plenty of time to spare. The dogs were antsy as we got out of the car which made it awkward when I met with the leasing manager who was giving me my keys and all that good stuff before letting me get on my way to the apartment.
I opened the door to my new place, unleashing the dogs and letting them get familiar with their new environment and what is now their new home. As I looked at my bare, unfurnished living room, I went into my new bedroom and set down my things. My voice echoed as I talked to Jaeger and Tessie and I suddenly began to cry. I don’t know how much of it was sadness, how much of it was joy, or how much of it was just utter exhaustion after traversing from one side of the country to the other.
I think the biggest thing is that what was now my apartment still didn’t feel like my home. The lack of furniture definitely didn’t help that but fortunately, a week after I arrived, the movers showed up to my apartment with all of my stuff.
