One Week

I'm coming to you from the series of empty rooms that was our apartment. It looks like Cindy Lou Who's house after the Grinch left nothing but a crumb not big enough for a mouse. A stray tack or two on empty walls. A bag or two of garbage. The stained and disintegrating area rugs we couldn't sell at the garage sale. The lone island of detritus is my computer desk, where survivors of the purge have come for refuge. Things cling to each other like monkeys in a falling tree, surrounding my monitor as I type. Scissors, a Bobble Head doll, an ipod, four or five cameras, a drill.

Our garage sale ridded us of anything truly valuable we wanted to gone, we've even found a home for our grizzled veteran of a microwave.

Keep your dentures in

Our bags are packed in the other room, optimistically light, waiting for all of the 'extra' things we are sure to sneak in hoping the scale won't notice.

An amazing group of friends braved early Sunday morning to come and help us move much of our stuff to the Bronx. We shoved and tugged boxes outside onto the sidewalk and when the jovial moving man finally showed up, he helped us shove and tug everything on board. We then all jumped in the back of S and S's car and pursued him up into the storied borough. Unloading was painless enough despite grabbing a rolling palate with a bum wheel. Thanks to C and Magda's cyclone-like spacial planning we precariously arranged everything easily into the 5'x7' space. In fact it was pointed out that there was plenty room for more, including our bicycles and liquor cabinet. Once finished it was back to our chairless apartment to sit on the floor and drink Guinness and decompress, the biggest single hurdle of preparation being over with: emptying out.

There have been a few bumps in the road, I won't mention anything specifically since if you manage to look in your mirrors properly I doubt you'll repeat my mistakes. Minor issues arise daily in NYC and are tending to couple with the ones we've brought on ourselves by picking up and leaving. Will we get our damage deposit back? Probably. Will I actually be able to shut down my whole computer and consolidate to the laptop, which will in turn go to storage? Maybe. Will the Blackberry we plan to buy off Craigslist from a Russian in midtown actually work? Doubtfully.

So other than that, what's left? Following up with a few contacts abroad, talking to our accountant about what do in case of financial ruin, figuring out what to do with all the stuff that somehow didn't make it to the Bronx. Since I hate everyone in my building, not everyone, but you know, I don't want to put our free stuff in the hall. I'd rather take it up to the busy street near us (Bedford Ave) and leave it there. Those of you outside of New York might might consider that illegal dumping, New Yorkers know that that is just a free garage sale with nobody minding the register. I've never seen anything worth more than a dollar sit unclaimed for more than half and hour around here. So keep your dentures in.

I haven't talked at all about the stomach churning fear that our looming departure is causing. That's because I don't want to talk about it. A friend asked a good question the other day, one that seems like it has an easy answer, "Why are you doing this?"

I was ready to go into my shpiel about how traveling makes you better, wiser, etc... but suddenly found myself at a loss for words. Why are we doing this? Because it's there? Because we can? Perhaps because its possible, though from this end of the trip I'm not sure I completely believe that. It's possible to do today what millions of people have never been able to do. Exploring our planet was out of reach for all of history, until very recently, so now I feel I have an obligation to all those who wanted to but couldn't, to do. We are doing it because we can, and because we can, we must.

That's still a long winded and inelegant response to a simple question. Maybe we are traveling to learn a better answer.