We Closed, We Moved, We're Vagabonds!

After a week of frantically packing, we filled "store and move" container #2.  It was hauled off to storage Thursday, January 16.  That evening we made our last fire in the fireplace and burned the small chunk of an oak post we saved from when we built the house in 1988-89.

The morning of Friday, January 17, was devoted to last minute clean up and gathering items to take with us in the Prius or ship to Erika & Michael in California.  Our neighbors and local charities were the beneficiaries of useful items we weren't going to take with us.

We closed on the sale of 13071 McKinley the afternoon of January 17 with about 2 hours left to make a 4:30 PM deadline to have all our belongings and cats Ziggy and Sunny out of the house.  It took two trips to our room at Comfort Inn in nearby Chelsea to do it (one for our stuff and one for the 2 cargo carriers with cats), but we met our deadline.

Friday evening, we met with Erick's former work colleagues for one last happy hour at Dexter's Pub. We'll miss those folks.  After that, we dined at Common Grill in Chelsea (one of our favorite restaurants) courtesy of our excellent real estate agent, Rick Taylor.  Then it was back to Comfort Inn for a night sharing our room with the cats.  Ziggy, the explorer and the more vocal of the two was a bit noisy; Sunny, the younger, small and more skittish spent his time hiding in places that were hard to extract him from.

Saturday morning, we had breakfast at the Coney Island (the former Lighthouse restaurant) in Dexter with Emily and Scott, the best next door neighbors one could hope for.  Scott & Emily and our up-the-road neighbors Leon & Lisa were life-savers.  They helped us load the moving containers and dispose of surplus stuff, fed us a farewell supper, and provided tons of moral support, too.

Saturday afternoon, we took the cats to Delta Cargo at Detroit Metro to ship them to California where Erick & Michael picked them up and took them to home to their apartment in Oakland.  Then Erick went to the UPS store and shipped out a large box of items that just wouldn't fit in the car.  Our final stop on the way out of Chelsea was The Chelsea Collection where we said good-bye to our neighbors and the shop's owners, Gary & Eric.

By 3:00 PM Saturday, we were headed up M-52 on our way to visit Erick's brothers and their families in Tustin, Michigan and thereabouts.  We paused at the Stage Stop diner in Stockbridge for a bite to eat. At around 7:00 PM, we arrived at Larry & Linda's - the first stop on our planned two-week vagabonds' journey to California.  After chatting for a few hours, we got our first uninterrupted, full night's sleep in weeks.  No more moving deadlines to meet! - until we find a place to buy in California, that is.