Background (which you don’t have to read)

Randall and his wife Lily have decided to move from Fremont, CA to Weymouth, MA! They actually decided to do that about fifteen minutes after they arrived in California, but it took six years to make it happen.

Randall and Lily are both family-oriented folks, and both found it hard to move so far away. Lily grew up near Boston, and her parents still live there, in the house she grew up in. Randall’s idea was to become fabulously wealthy and then they could move back and live near family and do whatever they wanted. Lily, who is an awesome middle school English teacher, is probably a little more realistic, but both have been planning their return since they arrived in the Golden State.

Randall is a software engineer and the San Francisco Bay area is the promised land. He left NY in May of 2013, only one semester from graduation from college, and flew to CA to take a job with a digitial startup – he was the first employee. The company was just starting, so to speak. In December of 2013 he came back east to marry Lily, which was, in our opinion, an excellent idea, and they flew back to CA, shortly followed by me in my Prius filled with all of Lily’s belongings that would possibly fit. What a trip! It was the first of five round-trip journeys along the Interstates of America from sea to shining sea.

Those were great trips. My extended family has dwindled to four cousins, all of whom moved from Long Island to the westernmost reaches of the country, and I got to visit them as well as Randall and Lily. I also completed my 50 states (last one: Oklahoma), did an end run around the Rockies on a number of occasions to avoid snowstorms, and saw more beautiful country than I can possible process.

This isn’t a blog about those trips, but they were great trips. I’ve written about them elsewhere. This is a blog about helping Randall and Lily move by driving their Tesla from one ocean to the other. They get to pack up and move themselves, their stuff, their baby, and three cats from one coast to the other; I get to drive a high-concept luxury car across this endlessly stunning land, for a week.

So that’s where we start.