I moved into the apartment today.  My dad unexpectedly took a few days off work, so I didn’t have to wait for a car to be free over the weekend.  It was strangely reminiscent of driving down to Florida for college with him, with a few key differences.  For one, the car wasn’t quite as loaded.  We could actually see out the back windshield this time.  For another, dad took the first shift driving.  Last time we almost wiped out about ten miles from the house.  A car had stalled out in the far right lane, and I didn’t react in time to switch lanes.  We ended up a few hundred feet behind it, waiting for a chance to merge over, and almost got rear-ended by a giant suv that pulled into the next lane at the last minute.  My dad’s never really forgotten that one.

Two hours and change later, we see a “Highway closed, seek alternate route” sign.  Not a problem – dad wanted to experiment with the back roads here anyway, and he already knows exactly which exit to take.  About ten minutes into our detour, I start thinking we should have hit the other highway by now, so I pull out my phone and check.  Sure enough, we’d gotten off on the wrong exit and were now heading east (back to Boston) instead of north (toward the state road).  We got that straightened out and ended up on the prettiest little state highway.  It must have been part of the WPA projects in the 40’s, because there were art deco bridges every few miles.  They were all different, but each one had been carved with just as much time and attention as the last.  The sides were completely covered in trees, with hints of fall colors starting to show through underneath the green canopy.

Sometime around 3:00 we  made it into the city (the apartment is, miraculously, a breeze to get to from the highways), found the building (after driving by twice, because they’d put up construction scaffolding and I didn’t recognize the entrance), parked near the back entrance, and started to unload.  The doorman let me borrow the bellhop cart, so the suitcases and such went off the car and into the building no problem.  Which left us with the 150 pound desk I’d bought up in Boston on sale.  Dad got it out of the car, I managed to pick up the back end, and we went about 15 feet to the back door.  Then he called out, “put it down,” and promptly dropped the thing.  I let go of my end a split second later, but it was already too late.  The desk was at rest, but I was still going.  On my knees across the sidewall and straight to the brick wall, ripping my favorite jeans and bruising and scraping the hell out of my knee in the process.  It hurt so much I felt like I was all of five years old again, but we still had to get the desk into the apartment, and the band-aids were all packed away.  I took a deep breath and calmly suggested to my dad that we find a way to use the bellhop cart instead of carrying it.  For a minute it looked like he was going to insist on moving the desk himself, giving me visions of driving back to Boston and explaining to my mother why I’d let my father throw his back out.  We got it onto the cart though, and after that getting the thing upstairs was a breeze.

The car is now parked right outside the building in a space that I think is legit.  They don’t make it easy out here to tell what the parking rules are, at any rate.   The view from here is pretty incredible.  You can see the Empire State, and a little bit of the Chrysler Building, and another, probably less famous but equally spectacular, building which I don’t know the name of yet.

All in all, this is not a bad first New York apartment.