Moving always sucks and relocating from one continent to another is its own special brand of agony. The logistics of organizing such a move can be a two-month long full time job. I accepted a job offer in Seattle and arranged for our stuff to be shipped out via an ocean container ship. We flew with about six huge suitcases and two boxes into Little Rock a couple days after Christmas. As a note, traveling with a cardboard box is humbling. Your fellow passengers at the baggage carousel look at you as you reach for your battered container like you are about to spread leprosy and back away from the belt as you manhandle the now not so square, not so together carton (baggage handlers worldwide are “super-friendly” to boxes…) onto a luggage buggy.

Anyway, we flew into Little Rock, Arkansas to pick up our car, spend a few days with the kids, and start our drive across the US. The couple days with the kids were good. Madison LOVED her new cell phone and Carlton really liked his Guitar Hero – I may have played it after everyone went to bed until 4 in the morning, but I cannot confirm that… Madison was sweet as was Carlton. He is at the age though where he thinks it’s fun to poke and pick on his sister and she is at the age where EVERYTHING is irritating, so there was some friction there and I had to separate them at the movie, but they got along fine 90% of the time.

We have done the I-30/I-40 drive from Texas to California a couple of times, so we went north to experience some different country. Well, that was the plan anyway. After making a quick overnight stop at my Mother’s place, we headed north into Oklahoma and Kansas. We spent New Year’s Eve on the Kansas/Colorado border and were so tired from the driving and such that we fell asleep before midnight – yep… a rock star life! As we drove north, serous winter weather moved into the Pacific Northwest ahead of schedule so we had a torturous 4.5 day / 12-14 hour a day drive trying to beat the storms. We hit 50mph sustained winds in Utah and Idaho with 80mph+ gusts and crossed a mountain pass in chain-up conditions before being turned back trying to go over the Cascades. A day was added to our trip going south to Portland, away from the closed ice and snow encased passes. The last leg of our trip was a leisurely drive up I-5 on the last morning from a friend’s house in Portland.

We got into Seattle on Saturday before I started work on Monday – a schedule that I do not recommend. No speeding tickets and Laurel drove a good bit of the time. Our Subaru is her first car with a standard transmission, but she is learning quickly. There was only one incident of clutch related frustration/tears on the whole drive. I was really proud of her for picking it up so quickly as a 285hp rocket sled is not the easiest car to learn the nuances of the clutch on.