The Big Move

tl;dr 

Hailey and I (and cat) have moved to San Francisco. If you’re looking for us in Boston — we are no longer there! Logistically, I think we really nailed it. The move was mostly painless and we did a lot of things right in my opinion. If you want to read about the decisions that went into this move, see my next post (WIP). We were on and off the road from June 19th to July 3rd. This post is about our road trip West.

06/19/25 (Waltham, MA to Eerie, PA)

Frankly, I have absolutely nothing to say about this leg of our journey. My cat screamed for the first 4 hours of this drive and then slept the next 4 hours of this drive. Something I wasn’t expecting: Canadian flags being flown all over Eerie? I suppose it is closer to the border than one assumes.

We started Bunny by Mona Awad on audiobook.

06/20/25 (Eerie, PA to Chicago, IL)

The day was spent driving through Ohio. Fun fact: Ohio is the state that you need to drive through to get the state you actually want to be in. Ohio! The heart of it all!  I love my mom but she is also incapable of cooking a meal that feeds no less than a family of 6. We were greeted with a whole rack of ribs, homemade barbecue sauce, and a big, fat heatwave.

We finished Bunny by Mona Awad (I’m sorry, I hated this book). 

06/21/25 – 06/23/25 (Chicago, IL)

The major reason for the Chicago pit stop was to drop off the cat so that she wasn’t tortured by two weeks of driving. Not to mention that she has a special talent for finding gaps in hotel furniture that only she can fit into (one time she climbed into a mattress box spring in our hotel and refused to come out until I slid the mattress off the bed frame and shook her out). Because of this, the plan was to have my mom fly her out to us a week after we arrive in SF — this worked beautifully, by the way.

I also needed to get my car’s serpentine belt inspected and thank god I did — I had leaky tensioner! Trust your car gut: if I hadn’t brought it into the dealership it’s very likely I would be writing to you from a dusty ditch halfway between Phoenix and Bakersfield.

We also hosted a small dinner for a few of my hometown friends that are still living in Chicago. We spent the whole day prepping enough food to feed a high school football team: chicken kebabs, turkey meatballs, salmon fillets, pita chickpea salad, garden salad, potato salad, sardine tatin, caprese salad, chimichurri sauce, and, for dessert, garden-grown strawberries and homemade whipped cream (this isn’t even including the four different varieties of chips and four bottles of wine that were also present). This was all for 6 people.

My mom gave everyone a tour of her garden where she is growing beans, tomatoes, chives, sweet peas, shallots, parsley, beets, basil, eggplant, bell peppers, cucumbers, zucchini, radishes, strawberries, dill, mint, rosemary, sage, thyme, oregano, currant, lettuce, and swiss chard. She’ll inevitably have too many tomatoes at the end of this season and will pickle them and then promptly store them under my childhood bed. My mom has a pet guinea pig named Misha, sometimes he'll eat some of the greens she grows.

For a final outing, we stopped by an antique mall. Illinois thrifting is dirt cheap and this presented a great opportunity to buy! some! crap! (see end of post for a haul). Also, check out my dad’s old (burned) DVD art.

06/24/25 (Chicago, IL to Nashville, TN)

I haven’t seen my friend Adele in years. We met in the 5th grade. I was reminded of this yesterday: in 2020 the two of us made a pilgrimage to the 100 gecs tree. Adele lives and works in Nashville now. We got thai food with their partner, Will, and then a drink at a rainforest café looking bar (strong drinks and swamp ass <3, shared some good laughs though). The next morning we went to a super tasty Somali café and parted ways.

06/25/25 (Nashville TN to Fort Smith, AK)

On the way out of Nashville we drove past the Bass Pro Shops Pyramid megastore. It is the 10th tallest pyramid in the world (by some standards).

After an 8-hour driving sprint, we needed to stretch our legs so we went for a walk in the local Fort Smith woods where we ran into The Suburbs. Real simulation, liminal space territory over in these parts. There was a pond with frogs that sounded like bleating sheep (Gastrophryne carolinensis). The male toad has extremely short arms that make it difficult to hold onto the female during breeding and so it relies on the female to literally secrete glue to stick them together. So glad I am not a toad.

We started listening to All Fours by Miranda July on audiobook.

06/26/25 (Fort Smith, AR to Amarillo, TX)

Saw some industrial cattle ranches — depressing. Drove past a town named Claude — cute. Stopped by Buc-ee’s — crazy. Also stopped by a used bookstore — you know you’re in Texas when the science section doesn’t have anything by Charles Darwin. Then we paid a visit to Tex Randall. He has a flat ass and weighs 7 tons.

Next we stopped by the Giant Legs of Amarillo, which served as inspiration for Percy Bysshe Shelley’s “Ozymandias” poem.

Then we drank a bottle of Buc-ee’s wine, started Season 1 of Twin Peaks, and demolished two bags of beef jerky.

We finished All Fours by Miranda July (I’m sorry, I loved this book).

06/27/25 (Amarillo, TX to Taos, NM)

That night, rain fell in Amarillo and the next morning it smelled like sewage everywhere. We drove over to Cadillac Ranch, where the rain had created an impenetrable mud moat around the cars. Usually, you can buy a can of spray paint and add your own tag onto the crumbling exteriors of the cars.

The drive from Amarillo to Taos was HARD and SCARY. Not sure how this happened but we ended up on — literally on — Green Mountain, taking a really old, unmaintained logging road. Do not take your city slicker car with stiffly tuned suspension up into these crags. The logging road then spat us back out in Angel Fire where there was some serious interstate construction underway. While waiting for the pilot car to guide us up the mountain, we saw hundreds of prairie dogs (which as an Illinoisian, I’m ashamed to say is the first time I’ve seen a prairie dog in the flesh). Sadly, they are considered vermin in those areas, see this article where they literally tried to explode them out of existence.

We eventually arrived in Taos and  spent that afternoon at the Harwood Museum, which had on a beautiful exhibit of paper works from Larry Bell, Ron Cooper, Ronald Davis, and Ken Price, who had all resided in Taos in the 70’s through the 90’s. Hailey and I were especially enamored by Larry Bell’s little portals, called Fractions. The photos don’t do it justice, it was like looking into a deep, colorful little cavern on each piece of paper. Over the course of 5 years he produced more than 12,000 of these! There was also a room designed to house pieces specifically for Agnes Martin, who lived and worked in Taos from 1993 until her death in 2004.

We drove over to our beautiful Airbnb. We stayed in an Earthship, which is a style of sustainable off-the-grid home that is solar powered and uses reclaimed rainwater. There is an entire community of them located 20 minutes outside Taos, right past the Rio Grande gorge. Earthships are built by hand and are custom-made. When I see one, I think Star Wars cantina and Jizz music and Dune worm. The one we stayed in was built over the course of 8 years by a woman named Kirsten. It had a glass bottle bathroom and a sexy, steel kitchen and giant, indoor plant beds.

However, right as we arrived, so did a swarm of fire ants, which began to rain into the kitchen through a vent we propped open to cool down the main room. Earthships are wonderful, but you also need to be real with yourself — can you live a life that is completely dictated by the natural environment and the weather? Are you afraid of bugs? Of not having wifi? Despite the ants and the heat (since the vents were promptly closed for the evening), we slept deeply and well.

P.S. Check out my Mazda CX-Bug Murderer. So many dead dragonflies in my grill, very grim. Told Hailey about the windshield phenomenon and she didn’t believe it was a real thing to monitor relative bug populations.

P.P.S We started The Love Hypothesis by Ali Hazelwood on audiobook.

06/28/25 – 06/29/25 (Taos, NM)

The next morning Hailey discovers a grasshopper the width of her thumb hiding in a pant leg of the jeans she had discarded on the floor. We drive over to the Rio Grande gorge. Breathtaking. There was a big horned sheep in the parking lot. We then mosey on over south and once again find ourselves scaling a rocky, unfinished road down the inner face of the gorge. The actual hike was totally moderate and flat, the car had done a lot of the legwork for us.

In the afternoon we stopped by op.cit. books in Taos (they have another location in Sante Fe that we are obsessed with, it stocks phenomenal selections of used books). See the end of this post for the haul.

That evening I notice the sun beginning to set behind the mountains and I pull Hailey outside to watch the sky change colors. We are in our underwear. We are wearing flip flops. When we turn to go back inside the door is locked. The front door is locked. The car is locked. For a brief five minutes we begin to consider the reality of spending the night outside in the desert, where it was rapidly approaching 53 °F. Boy are we lucky that Kirsten had her notifications on and that there was a spare set of keys on the property. We slept in a warm bed that night and not under the outdoor picnic table.

On our last day in Taos I spotted a lone hot air balloon out through the kitchen window while making coffee. We went for a hike that locals called “extremely easy” and “great for 70-year olds” and that had “stunning views for a quick out-and-back”. This hike nearly killed us. The elevation gain was almost 1,000 feet in under 2 miles. We gave up making it to the crest and as we were headed down we passed a group of elderly women who asked us how the views were from the top and we had to hang our heads in shame and admit we didn’t make it. You heard it here first: Taos seniors are a completely different breed.

We went out for dinner at ACEQ which we learned is known for its “Wangus” steak (hybrid of Wagyu and Angus). These special cattle are raised less than a hundred miles from the restaurant. However, our favorite dish by far was the corn ribs (sorry, we took no photos). Hailey declined a glass of wine which immediately gave us away as non-locals. Why is it so embarrassing to say that you’re visiting from Massachusetts?

06/30/25 (Taos to Los Alamos to Santa Fe to Albuquerque, NM)

This day was like a New Mexico speed run. In the morning we drove over to Los Alamos, which is an eerily cheerful little town, and walked through the Los Alamos History Museum. I had no idea that it was an all-boy’s boarding school and that they were evicted by the US government to make room for what later became the Manhattan Project. What stuck with me the most was that many of these boys were from extremely powerful Midwest families. Think big names like Shedd of the Shedd Aquarium in Chicago, or Sears of Sears Department Store. It was partially through these well-connected families that this remote location was pushed onto the radar of Oppenheimer and other government officials.

From Los Alamos we drove down to Santa Fe to go visit the other op.cit. books location (we are addicted). I learned that behind the counter there is an aquarium with a real, live pet tarantula. Two hours and $300 later we were booking it to Albuquerque, giant rain clouds chasing us all the way down south. That evening we hung out with Aunt Vi – Hailey’s honorary great aunt who is 94 years old and just had a hip replacement! She is genuinely one of the coolest people I have ever met.

07/01/25 (Albuquerque, NM to Phoenix, AZ)

On the way down to Phoenix we drove through Petrified Forest National Park. It was like driving through the valleys of Venus and my car was a little robotic rover scavenging for ice crystals that may or may not contain the fundamental building blocks required to make amino acids. Every few miles the landscape would completely change from giant striped mounds to deep white caverns to carved red soil.

We got lunch at McDonalds on historic Route 66. Very americana. Very Lana Del Rey. Very denim cut-offs American flag buttpocket. When we got to the hotel, I swam in the pool. I hadn’t swum in a hotel pool since middle school. The moment I climbed out of the water the air began to instantly evaporate, and this had a nice cooling effect. But within a few minutes I was completely dry, at which point my body would begin to warm up again. Like a baked potato, I could feel my skin gently roasting in the sun. Then I would climb back into the pool.

07/02/25 (Phoenix, AZ to Bakersfield, CA)

It’s all farms. The moment we crossed the border, gas was $5.49. Oranges grew on trees. We filled up next to a Vietnam War memorial that housed a couple of parked tanks out front. We stopped by a Target and bought a big frying pan. Thai food for dinner. It cost $70. California! Eureka!

Unpopular opinion, In-n-Out Burger is so just okay. The fries aren’t salted, what’s up with that.

We finished The Love Hypothesis by Ali Hazelwood. My culture (biology PhD candidate at Stanford) is not your porny romance (Reylo fanfiction).

The Big Move Haul