distorria.com

We’ve settled in Portland but not without a lot of problems. We moved here in a rather insane way. We saved up some cash, rented a UHaul, found a motel on expedia.com, and left Ohio. Not the most sane way to do it. Most people would have flown here and found a place, then brought their things. We didn’t have the money to do that, so we just took a risk and did it. I don’t regret it, but it was extremely stressful.

It seemed like we ran into any problem possible on the road. The lock on the truck broke and had to be cut off. So we had to find a Walmart in the middle of nowhere off of the highway. The bank decided that someone had stolen a credit card and froze the account. Then in the middle of the country we ran into nasty rainstorms that had tornado warnings across three states. The wind was so strong it rocked the truck. We sat in a rest area for three hours waiting for it to calm down. It didn’t so we were forced to drive in it.

Then when we wanted to stop for the night all of the hotels in the city were completely booked because of some sports crap. We had to keep driving because sleeping in the truck was not possible. We finally found a place after fifty miles but had to pay much more than we wanted to.

Three adults squished into a cab of a Uhaul is not comfortable. I started getting sick within a day of starting. By the time we made it to Portland, my legs were two bloated sausages that I could barely move. I collapsed in bed and didn’t move for a day or so.

I was born and raised in central Ohio. I learned how to drive there and never really took any road trips because I never had cars that were capable of it. So I never learned how to drive on mountains. That’s quite a problem when you move to the Pacific Northwest. I couldn’t really drive my far share because of the fear or mountains and my legs swelling and getting stiff. This caused a ton of resentment from my roommate who had to drive more than I did. Tempers flared and we fought like miserable stressed out people tend to.

We somehow managed after four excruciating days to make it here. Then we had to rush and find a place to live. Portland is strange because most of the apartments here charge a large application fee. Usually around $40 per person. We had to be extremely picky about what places we chose because money was running out. Most of them have insane standards on the application and basically say if you have bad credit there is no fucking way they will let you in. They lie. The only place we put in the application accepted us, despite the huge amount of debt both of my friends have. We looked at a few other places but didn’t like them as much as the one we chose. One was a total crackhead neighborhood with people checking us out and being creepy as hell. It felt like we were going to be jumped just looking at the apartment. One was a nice apartment, but in a unpleasant neighborhood. One place was a bit nicer than what we chose, but we didn’t like the area as much.

I love the apartment, but certainly wish I was closer to downtown. We currently live near the Milwaukie area. In a year or two, I want to move closer. For now, it’s a convenient area and an acceptable place to be.