Border Crossings

You would think that, with billions of goods crossing the Canadian-US border every year, moving our humble 22 boxes of stuff would be easy. Alas, that was not the case.

Given that we didn’t know we were moving to NY until the beginning of June, and wanted to leave that month, we had little lead time. I called around a few moving companies first; if it weren’t too expensive, they’d be the easiest: they know about cross-border moves, for one thing. It turns out that the end of June is the busiest time of year for moving house. A number of places actually laughed at me when I said I wanted to move in 2 weeks. Apparently I needed to have booked months to half-a-year in advance! Too bad I didn’t have that much advance notice myself!

So courier companies it is. They know about moving stuff, and since we weren’t going with a moving company, we’d really only have the 22 boxes of clothes, books and kitchenware. Some couriers said we should go with a mover (“we’re not a moving company!”, others wouldn’t do personal shippings. Purolator said they’d do it. But every time I talked to them, they had a different set of forms they felt I needed to have ready for the shipment. Ugh.

Since we didn’t have a destination address yet, it was difficult to get the shipping stuff set up. Luckily, our friend Leah kindly offered to store our stuff for the summer and be present for the pick-up.

Fast forward to the end of August. Now that we had an address, I called Purolator again. The person I spoke to confirmed that all we needed was The Declaration of Free Entry for Unaccompanied Goods form. Okay, that was simple. It required a list of all our belongings in each box, which we had already documented (good thing we’re anal that way), and how much each was worth, also not too hard to estimate.

So I called back once the form was completed. In quintuplicate. This call, I was told I needed the Harmonized Tax Code for each item in the box. What’s that? Good question. Apparently there are books of lists of goods for border-crossing reference. At first this seemed only a minor incovenience. After all, all used clothes fit under one category, as did printed books. No problems there. Not until I got to the boxes with kitchenware did things get complicated. Was that glass mug we bought for $0.50 at the Goodwill worth $0.03 to manufacture? Did it contain less than 0.1% aluminum by weight? How much lead did this glass contain? Each of these had different Harmonized Tax Codes.

Three hours later, I was frustrated, bleary-eyed, and no closer to figuring out these stupid codes. People move across the border all the time; this can’t be the right thing! However, Purolator refused to budge on this – “We don’t want to be responsible if your stuff gets held up at the border”. Whatever.

So a week later, I’m staying with my aunt Eva in Toronto and decide just to have our stuff shipped to my aunt’s place. No borders to worry about, and Leah can have her storage area back! We’ll rent a UHaul and drive our stuff across the border.

The pick-up guy complains that there are too many boxes. Huh? The delivery guy does the same. He also tosses the boxes with abandon and complains that they’re not a moving company. He wants to leave all the boxes at the front doorstep. In the rain. And blocking entry to 6 condos, including the one I’m in. Luckily, I’d been in NYC long enough already to regain my arguing skills.

My poor aunt Eva then has to deal with all our stuff in her 2-bedroom condo. Plus she’s been storing things for my brother (who was in the midst of a move to Montreal), and for one of my cousins! It made for a crowded place!

Toby comes up the first weekend of October, taking an overnight bus from NYC, and arriving in time for sunrise. Yawn… I was heading back from visiting friends in Hanover, a small town in southern Ontario. We meet late on a Friday morning at the bus depot. We were to pick up our UHaul rental truck that afternoon. We wanted a cargo van, since we had a small load. Unfortunately for us, their vans aren’t allowed for out-of-town moves. The smallest truck we’re allowed is a 10-footer. That’s 10 ft long. Oh well, what can we do?

When I had booked the vehicle, UHaul said they’d call the day before to tell me when and where exactly to pick up the truck. But no call came that Thursday.

Friday afternoon, I called UHaul, and was put on hold for an hour. Then their answering service hung up on me. I tried again, but this time it took only 45 minutes, and someone answered, saying they’d send the Toronto office an email. Well, that hadn’t worked the night before, but what could I do?

Friday late afternoon rolls around. We’d wanted to pack up the truck Friday afternoon and leave Toronto early Saturday morning, but that plan was looking unlikely. I finally get a call from UHaul, saying that the closest truck was in Kingston. “But we’re in Toronto,” I reply. “Well, the closest truck is in Kingston.” “That’s three hours away.” “Oh.” So I suggest I can wait until the following day, Saturday, as long as they can guarantee me a truck. They say we’ll get a phone call by 9am as to where we can get a truck. My aunt cooks us a lovely lamb dinner, which helps ease the frustration of dealing with such incompetence!

Saturday morning we receive a call. At 11am, two hours after they’re supposed to call. They’ve a truck for us! Finally! We get the truck and load it up. The truck’s floor is less than 2/3 covered, with only one layer of boxes. It’s ridiculously empty! We stop at the Home Depot in Buffalo and add some rugs to our truck, and stay overnight at the scuzziest motel in a Rochester suburb. The next day, we drive to the Ikea at Elizabeth, NJ and pick up some odds and ends (dressers, bookshelf). Still, our truck’s floor is visible!

The George Washington Bridge connects Manhattan to New Jersey at the north end, where we live. It seems that Sunday night is a busy time for the bridge. We wait over an hour in snail-pace traffic to pay the toll, and creep along the bridge. Get home well after dark, and spend another 2 hrs unloading all our stuff.

Now, UHaul claims you can drop off a rental truck after hours simply: just leave the truck in a UHaul lot and deposit the keys and contract in the “after hours drop box” at the office. I guess this doesn’t happen in Manhattan though. The closest UHaul is just a few blocks to the north of us (in Harlem, that is), and the lot is fenced in and gated shut. No place to leave a vehicle, no place to leave keys and contract. Hmm… We drive around looking for a place to park nearby, but the signs are confusing and ambiguous, and we’d rather not have to deal with a towed rental truck the next day. So we drive back home and find parking on the next street over. The next day we’re able to return the truck (the gates have opened at that Harlem UHaul place).

But, we did get a $65 parking ticket. Commercial vehicles aren’t allowed to be parked on NYC streets overnight. GRRRR!

The Quest for Stuffing

I've been knitting away at teddy bears and bunnies, but am now at a point where I need some stuffing. That shouldn't be hard to find in this humungous city. All I need is a sewing store.

So off I went, yesterday, down to Chelsea, where I'd found a number of sewing stores listed online. I got off at 28th St, and intended to walk along each street between 6th and 7th Aves (or further afield if there looked to be something promising). It turns out that 28th St has many many flower/plant shops! We'd walked by before, but at night, and so it was like being there for the first time. The sidewalk was crowded with pots of cyclamens and orange trees. Occassionally more exotic plants were displayed. Delivery trucks blocked the road, so traffic was minimal too. Quite pleasant!

Unfortunately, pleasantness seemed to stop there. Every block seemed to have a moment of gag-inducing stench (urine, dog poop, unwashed person, icky sewer...) Besides dodging dog poop, puddles of mysterious and murky liquid had to bve missed. Why are there so many mysterious puddles in this city?

The only sewing stores I found were tiny places with floor-to-ceiling shelves of bolts of fabric. Cool, but not what I was looking for. The other type of sewing store sold sewing machines. Also not what I needed! On the other hand, I rediscovered the cleaner, less smelly of the Goodwill stores. It was one at which I'd found a fabulous pair of pink Rockport boots which had never been worn! This time I had less luck.

Today, I headed further south on the island, down into the unnumbered streets! I'd read about this one store, called P&S. It's really a sewing store, but I'd found it on a knitter's website, as this store also sells some cheap wools. What luck! It had a lot of variety of cheap wool, tons of funky buttons and zippers and tassels and trims and so much fabric! Even better, people who worked there were courteous and helpful! I felt like I walked through some twilight zone into non-New-York-land, where people are friendly and stores are useful and fun! Yippee!

I found stuffing, which was in the basement. I think there was even a subbasement, but I didn't venture that far.

P&S is on the outskirts of Chinatown, so I figured, since I was so close, I might as well do a bit of shopping in Chinatown as well. It would be nice to have some green veggies, we needed a few more bowls, and I could use a snack. Chinatown here is just like Chinatown every where else I've been, so I don't understand why there are so many tourists! In addition to the usual traffic of grandmothers getting their daily goods, children running around crazily, and mafia-like young men, the streets were jammed with tourists stopping to take photos. The sidewalks were, of course, spilling over with wares: an ocean of smelly fish embedded in ice, dried unidentified things reeking, fresh fruit and vegetable stands and actually Made in China kitcschy crap. And why is it that so many people in Chinatown need to hork and spit?! What do they eat/breath/drink that causes so much phlegm? And why do they feel the need to share with everyone within literal spitting distance? Ugh!

So in addition to avoiding stepping in mysterious puddles, I had to avoid flying spit, smelly dried fish stands and getting hit by veering traffic! Why did I think this was a good idea? By the time I had gotten greens and bowls in which to eat them, I had to pee. Shouldn't be hard. I'd seen a Starbucks and a McDonald's right by the subway station. Starbucks was so packed with people, I just didn't have the energy to push my way into the back in search of a possible bathroom. And I got kicked out of McD's for not being a customer and trying to go upstairs to use their bathroom! Can you believe that labour is so cheap it's worth their while to pay someone to stand by the stairs and stop people who aren't 'customers' from ascending? I suppose I could have argued my way in ("I'm meeting a friend upstairs." "I ate downstairs and need to pee now." etc.), but it just seemed easier to get on the subway and use the one at home. At least I know my bathroom is clean, has toilet paper, and doesn't have mysterious puddles on the floor.

New Year's Eve in New York City

Everyone knows about New Year’s Even in Times Square, where hundreds of thousands pack in together and watch the excitement of a 1000-lb ball of crystal drops to mark the beginning of a new year. With Karen in town, we had to experience it, of course. Toby was feeling ill, so it was just Karen and I trudging our way southward to mid-town, bundled up to prepare for the forecasted rain/sleet, riding the packed subway cars amidst other revelers.

We exited the subway at 42nd Street/Times Square Station at about 8pm. We were shunted south along 6th Avenue along with dozens of other tourists. It was like the Halloween parade again, with what seemed like every police officer of the NYPD on the job. We walked past 43rd and 44th and 45th streets, blocked off to pedestrians. Cops were only allowing people with hotel reservations in along these streets. Onwards we trudged with the growing crowd of confused people. We could hear the stage shows along the side streets, but every block meant the show was that much further away. At one point, we stopped a cop and Karen asked, “How is all this working?” After all, we were wondering if maybe they’d closed off Times Square for crowd-control reasons. The cop replied, “The operation is running perfectly smoothly, thanks.” We had a good laugh. He then explained that we just needed to keep walking south (away from Times Square, might I remind you) until officers were allowing people through.

Unfortunately, it seemed as though every block we overheard cops saying the entry-point for the spectacle would be TWO more blocks further away! Not a convergent system! Nevertheless, we’d come this far, we figured we might as well continue.

Finally, at 49th Street, there was an opening! We joined in the herd, crushed in the throng of tourists and revelers hoping to catch a glimpse of the famous festivities. And in an amazing moment of herd-ness, we realized that we were heading into a “pen” (official word) at 49th Street and 7th Avenue! We would be penned in with several hundred people, seven blocks away from the dropping of the ball. It turned out that there were 2 pens per block. I’m not sure what was happening at Times Square itself, as we were way too far away to see. We couldn’t even hear the stage bands by that point. We could see the gaudily lit up ball of crystal, though from our vantage point, it looked more like a ridiculous disco effect with flashing lights of varying colours!

I guess in the marketing scheme of things, we were close enough to Times Square to warrant giant billboards on our block. For the building to our left carried a block-long lit screen displaying a world map, the current date and the current time. As we pushed our way to near the front of our pen, we marveled at the buildings, the crowds of people and the billboards which were still legible from 7 blocks away. We chatted with people around us, watched the giant, yet tiny, crystal ball dazedly, talked about paint drying… ant it was still only 9pm! At this point, we began to worry about the dearth of port-a-potties that had been promised, the growing chill, and the occasional fog which would envelop the upper part of the building behind which the crystal ball was hung. Wouldn’t it have been ironic to have had the entire area fogged in right around midnight, I thought.

At this point, we were bored silly, I was already chilled, and we were tired of standing next to a stinky sewer grate. Karen and I decided it would be more fun to be at home than spend another 3 hrs of our lives standing in our pen! So got ourselves “unpenned”, and walking several blocks and getting (mis-)directed by several officers, we found ourselves at an open subway station. (Many in the Times Square area had been closed until midnight.)

We stopped by the local liquor store, found a cheap bottle of champagne, and came home, much to Toby’s surprise! He’d made chocolate chip cake though, we were happy to scarf down. Then, we cleared off a table, took out a board game, and had a grand old time hanging out! We even listened to a bit of the festivities from a live internet feed. Midnight came with the sounds of fireworks and glasses of yummy champagne! We were warm, happy, and very glad we’d not spent the past 3 hrs in a pen watching nothing happen.

I think the best part was our good deed just after midnight. Karen and I took down a piece of still-warm cake to the night-guard down the street! These guards always look bored, and it seemed sad she’d be celebrating New Year’s alone in this tiny fishbowl. She was very surprised and quite taken with our gesture. And it made me feel like 2006 was to be a good year.

Christmas Eve with Gray Squirrels

The last several years, Toby and I have set up a tradition of sorts, going for a nice, quiet walk on Christmas Day. This year, we thought we’d continue this tradition. However, weather forecasts called for rain and sleet. Somehow that seemed so much more daunting than the -25C walks in Edmonton! So we opted to go a day early, when sunshine was predicted.

As luck would have it, the entrances to Riverside Park up by our area were finally reopened. They’d been closed for about 10 blocks for most of autumn for reconstruction. Turns out they’d put in stone steps, doing away with the sloped dirt paths into the park.

Riverside Park runs along the Hudson River (separated by a 4-lane freeway and bike/jogging path) for 2.5 miles. (Every 20 streets on Manhattan is one mile.) So entered the park from 122nd Street and ended up walking to the end of the park proper at 72nd Street. (The jogging path and bike route continues along the Hudson River to the south end of the island, but the thought of walking directly next to the freeway was uninviting.)

The park has several paved paths running parallel, with many benches on which to rest and enjoy the view. Often, we found ourselves above the highway traffic and so could pretend we weren’t walking alongside the freeway. Once in a while, we encountered a dog run. The city has many of these fenced in, sandy areas in which dogs are allowed to run off-leash. Unfortunately, they’re only about 50 ft long, so “running” is only available to lap dogs! Luckily, parts of Riverside Park are quiet enough that larger dogs can run and fetch without much hassle.

Certainly the highlight of our walk were the abundance of gray squirrels! Being a warm day (in the 40’s, if I remember correctly), many many squirrels were out, digging through fallen leaves in search of acorns. We could tell which parts of the park were more heavily used by the level of shyness in the squirrel population! In one part, squirrels came right up to us. One even appeared ready to leap onto my coat! So much so that I took an involuntary step backward, just in case.

Unlike the western red squirrels we’d watched in Alberta, these eastern gray ones seemed to spend more time on the ground than in trees. They were also quieter. In fact, we’ve not heard a squirrel chatter since we arrived! What a contrast to the raucous red squirrels made if you even thought of going near their terrirtory!

We made our way back along Broadway and marveled again at the ridiculousness of wealthy New Yorkers. This district is known as the Upper West Side, and is one of the posher neighbourhoods in Manhattan. Children were trussed up in adult clothing, with salon-done hairstyles and wearing make-up! Ugh! Ridiculous shoes abound. On one end, there are the Ugg boots, those giant things made to look like arctic-ready wear, only they probably couldn’t stand up in -50C weather. On the other end are the pointy-toed stilleto boots, which I’m sure would hold up along the icy slopes we’ve been getting, thanks to rainfall and temperatures hovering near freezing! What a strange place I’m living in!