Day One:  June 1, 2009
St. Louis, Missouri to North Platte, Nebraska.
Distance: 673 mi (~ 10 hrs)

As previously mentioned we didn’t exactly leave early. But the timing was in our favor as we missed all rush hour traffic. The closest we came to hitting some was in Kansas City, and this was also a spot where we ran into a detour marked on the road that was not in our mapped route. It was quite a different route but the Atlas proved its worth early on to calm our anxiety about the deviation. The detour only ended up adding maybe 10 extra miles, so not a big deal.

Day one was all about keeping an eye on the U-Haul towing dolly hauling my car. I kept glancing at it, making sure my car was still there!

Day one we also hit a bunch of crappy weather. Make of it what you will, but we were driving through the worst of it in – Oregon, Missouri! Weird huh.

Despite pummeling hail the vehicles were okay. The worst casualty we experienced was the utter battering of the tarp over the back of the truck.

We drove in a sliver of Iowa.

After a rainy entry to Nebraska we drove in the dark on a highway surrounded by vast flatlands, and for a couple of hours we could see lightning storms happening miles away.

Yesterday marked one month since our pilgrimage to Portland. In that time we have accomplished a lot. Sadly the accomplishments do NOT include updating this blog nearly enough. But, thanks for reading anyhow. Last night the city of Portland celebrated our one month Portlandversary by setting off an incredible display of fireworks. It seemed like everyone in the city attended. I thought it was a nice gesture. ;)

We enjoyed sharing the celebration with an amazing country we are grateful to live in. A country we are free to roam about and settle where we please.

OK, so after much confusion about how to become a legitimate Oregon citizen, I figured I would write up my experience in case others are lost as well. When we first moved here we were trying to determine the rules on how to register a 49cc scooter. I also purchased a 125cc scooter when I arrived here. Of course, we still needed to register our passenger vehicles to get new plates, and finally, we needed to get new drivers licenses.

First things first, here is the actual Oregon DMV website. I found like three or four that seemed legit, but the DMV will tell you that they only update one site. Here is the link you will need to do your own research. http://www.oregon.gov/ODOT/DMV/

So here is what I learned. In Oregon, if you have a 49cc scooter or moped you need to have plates for it.  That was not the case in Missouri, as you did not need anything for a 49cc there.  Not even insurance. So here is what you will need to register your different vehicles.

MOPEDS / SCOOTERS / MOTORCYCLES

http://www.oregon.gov/ODOT/DMV/driverid/driver_manuals.shtml#motorcycle

49cc Scooter/Moped

• Vehicle Title
• Social Security Card or Passport
• Valid Drivers License
• Proof of Residency (Utility Bill)
• Check book

50cc+

If you are getting something above a 50cc (like my 125cc) you will need to get a motorcycle endorsement in order to legally drive it in Oregon.  You can still get plates, (even custom plates if you you want) but you will still not be able to drive until you have completed two more steps.

First you will need to take a written test that shows you know your stuff.  Once you have passed this, you are still not legally allowed to drive by yourself.  Just passing the written portion gives you the equivelant to a learners permit.  You are only allowed to ride if you are accompanied by an Oregon motorcycle endoresed citizen who is above 21 years of age, and even then, you can only ride during the day.

To become fully endorsed, you will need to wait at least a week after taking the written test so you can go back to the DMV to take the skills test.  This is just what it sounds like.  You will need to show them you can ride.  Once you have passed both tests, you will get your endorsement and you will legally be allowed to ride.

Since this all sounded like a pain to me, I found out that you can SKIP BOTH OF THESE TESTS if you take a class at a local college.  The TEAM OREGON program has something called a Basic Rider Training (BRT) course that you can take (costs about $175) where you will will be trained by a professional on how to ride a motorcycle.  The course is three days long.  The first day is 6 hours and you sit and learn.  The next two days are about five hours each, and you learn to actually ride.

Once you pass that class you will get a card that last for 2 years.  You can take that card to the DMV and they will waive both the tests (and their fees) and you can skip right to getting your endorsement.  Pretty sweet if you ask me, and it never hurts to get some professional training!

PASSENGER VEHICLES

Here is what you will need to bring:

• Vehicle Title
• Social Security Card or Passport
• Valid Drivers License
• Proof of Residency
• Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ) Passing Certificate (Emissions Testing)
• Check book

One thing that surprised me here is that you do not need to do a safety inspection, or provide proof on insurance.  It is legally required that you have insurance, but you are not required to bring that with you.  They will, from my understanding, check that you have it before the licese plates are generated, though I am not 100% sure how they do that…  so make sure you are insured either way :)

DRIVERS LICENSE

I will assume that you already have a drivers license… so all that you will need to do is bring in the following:

• Social Security Card or Passport
• Valid Drivers License
• Proof of Residency
• Check book

Oh ya, you will also need to take a knowledge test to prove you know your stuff. If you have ever driven before, it’s pretty easy. There were a couple of ones I got wrong though as I never really knew them. Those were questions about how fast a “slow moving vehicle” is allowed to travel, and how fast you are allowed to travel on a business street if there are no posted speed limit sings. So make sure to study up on those if you do not know them. Those are the only ones I got wrong, so I still passed.

Here is the manuals again, so you can study:

http://www.oregon.gov/ODOT/DMV/driverid/driver_manuals.shtml

They will punch a hole in the top left corner of your out of state license and give it back to you. Then you will get a printed “interim” Oregon drivers license. You will need to carry both your old and new license until Oregon mails you your real license in the mail.

That’s about all I can remember, if I missed anything, or you have any questions… let me know.

Good Luck, and welcome to Oregon!

Our moving day was scheduled for Monday, June 1. PODS don’t pick up on Sundays, so we scheduled to have the POD picked up on Saturday before. Here’s a movie I made crudely showing the “patented technology” of how they load it onto a flatbed truck while keeping it level. I was overseas when they dropped off the POD originally so I was really excited to see it in action for the pick-up:

It is very simple yet effective, and the entire process took less than ten minutes. The POD took about two weeks to get to Portland and now lives in a storage facility somewhere near the city, where it will stay until we call them with our new address and pick a date for them to drop it off. For those moving somewhere ahead of the POD and needing all of their things right away, this timing might be an inconvenience. But since we don’t need our stuff right away it was not a big deal to us.

So, with the POD gone, we had two days in an empty house with just the essentials that we’d be taking with us to our temporary dwelling. And thus I created a makeshift workstation (because I worked til the last minute!):

After one night on an uncomfortable, leaky old camping air mattress that was basically sleeping on a hard floor, we invested in an AeroBed so we could be well rested for the long trip the next day. Those things are pretty nice! They have a cord attached so you just plug it in, hit a switch, and it inflates in about a minute. Deflates in seconds. It costs a lot more than cheap-o camping mattresses but the quality reflects that.

So after a better night’s sleep, it was finally June 1st, Moving Day!!

Some of our dear neighbors kept us company as we were packing up and snapped these photos. So you can see the last minute prep. These photos are by Bob LaRouche.

Yeah, we decided to take two trees with us!! We planted them as seedlings a few years ago on Earth Day and it’s always been a dream of mine to plant them in the yard of our first home. They’re an Oak and a Maple, so obviously our yard may or may not be able to accomodate such someday-large trees, but I’m not ready to let them go yet.

Also pictured here is Peter earnestly tying that tarp down to shield the scooter and some other items from weather we may encounter. That tarp did not even make it through half of the first day before becoming utterly shredded from the winds of driving on the highway. We picked up a better tarp at a truck stop but that tarp also bit the dust within a few hours, at which point we shrugged our shoulders and let the contents of the truck bed face the elements for the duration of the trip. And for the most part they were fine.

The leaves of the trees were but little stubs when we got to Portland but I think they will be okay with some TLC. They’re hardy trees.

Above – Peter tying down the items, me walking to load stuff into the cab of the truck for our ride. Not pictured – my car, stuffed silly with boxes (the “bare essentials” take up a lot of room!). We put it on the towing dolly for the trip. The dolly was rented from U-Haul and cost $510 for the one-way rental plus full insurance for 9 days.

Our goal was to pull out between 6am and 8am. Final departure time: 11:30am. Oh well, at least we missed traffic! Next post: The first 700 miles – St. Louis, Missouri to North Platte, Nebraska.

Peter and I had our yard sale on May 23 – exactly a week before we moved. Overall we would say it was a success. In eight hours we made about $800. This, paired with the previous craigslist selling of single items – mostly furniture – rounded out our profits to about $1,300. Not too shabby, and it was plenty to pay our gas for the trip and go toward our rent on the temporary place we’re staying in Portland.

May is a very unpredictable month in St. Louis regarding weather (though all months in St. Louis are, really). Peter and I married in May and barely escaped rainshowers for our outdoor wedding so we know this all too well. We watched the weather closely for the day of the sale, and the outlook was good. Weather.com and Accuweather agreed that rain wouldn’t fall til mid afternoon. Since our sale was for 7am-3pm, this was great.

Well at 8am a clap of thunder sounded and it rained on our stuff for almost an hour. Peter had the foresight to erect a canopy over our sale table so we ran and put a bunch of stuff under the canopy when it started raining. There was quite a bit of furniture, however, and we had to scramble for tarps and towels to cover them with, as well as the boxes of books and movies.

So, the most important ingredient in preparing for a yard sale is: time. It takes a lot of time to go through your stuff, categorize everything and sticker it. For several weeks leading up to the move we designated our guest room as the “yard sale room”. As we packed items into boxes and ran across things we wanted to sell, we would just stick them in the room. As it got closer to the yard sale date, I started categorizing and pricing.

Other important things to have on hand: Trash can, plastic bags (we saved em up for several weeks for this purpose), a chair to sit during down-time. Markers, Tape, Scissors, etc come in handy when you want to go change prices or if a pricetag falls off. Packaging paper was nice to have at the table to wrap fragile items that people purchased. The towel was used to wipe down items that got rained on. And like I said, a canopy is great for where you are sitting. It shields you from rain and keeps you from getting cooked in the sun.

A few people we asked said we should have a lot of change on hand, which we got at the bank the day before. But we never actually needed any of it. For the most part people paid with exact change and small bills. Of course that’s because we had the change – you know if we hadn’t gotten change people would’ve paid with large bills! So I am glad we had it for back-up. Rather than use a change drawer, I purchased a 99¢ tool apron from Lowe’s hardware store and kept money in there. I periodically went in the house to put away money so I wasn’t carrying around a bunch. But it was very nice to have the money on me at all times and be mobile with it.

We bought a few signs to stick in the ground to direct people to our sale. Here’s a hint you can learn from our mistake: Buy a sign that has two stakes, not one. Because we had some signs with one stake and a gust of wind would whirl them around. Not too good for a directional sign. We stuck the signs out on the Friday night before the sale. About 5 days before the sale I put a notice on the Craigslist yard sales section with a description of some items we would have as well as the enticement of the FREE STUFF Box I promised would be there (which we did have!).  I made sure to put “No Earlybirds” on the ad and signs. I have heard that people will show up absurdly early or even days before to try and get first dibs. We were preparing til the last minute so I didn’t want this. Actually we were preparing past the last minute and well into the day, as I was still pricing stuff and putting it on tables. Here are some more photos:

Tables came in handy! We had to borrow one from a neighbor also.

Clothing was what we sold the least of. Maybe our prices were too high? Or maybe there were so many clothes it was just overwhelming to go through. Not sure. I did categorize them by type and size on the hanger rack though.

We had no issues selling plastic clothing hangers!

This is one of my favorite memories of the day. Peter was making a sign directing people to the back of our house where the furniture was. He had a brain fart and misspelled Furniture, so I added an apostrophe and some fancy cursive and made it, uh, foreign. Classy. Hilarious.

People actually bought my old trophies!

Other highlights included our friends sitting and chatting for awhile to pass the time, a kid buying a painting I made (now I’m a professional artist!), and the day finally being over. It was a lot of work!

The next day I boxed up all the unpurchased items and took them to my friend Karen’s house, who so kindly volunteered to give them to a charity she donates to.