This is life: I’m about to drive from California to Florida with a cat, bearded dragon, two turtles, and six boxes of legos

My journey in the next three days will be a moment in life that shapes this very life. Its images — preceding the departure like at this very moment when I’m packing and staring at a huge mess as I rush to vacate our rented house in California — and the subsequent ones — thousands of miles on the road, coast-to-coast, will create memories to last a lifetime.

I know — I’ve done it before. Each one of these journeys can be a separate chapter in the book of my family’s life. Moscow to London. Then back to Moscow. Moscow to Boston. Boston to Moscow. Moscow to Northern California. Northern California to Memphis. Memphis to Dallas. Dallas to Southern California. Now Southern California to Florida.

I once drove a big Penske truck from Texas to California, with a trailer carrying my car. The trailer broke loose and it was in the middle of a desert, somewhere in Arizona. I had to wait for hours for Penske to send me help. Actually, it wasn’t that bad, considering the circumstances. They came, towed my car to a nearby gas station and a new trailer arrived a couple of our later. I continued my trip.

I had a call with a friend the other day, a potential business partner. “You’re not very stable, are you? all these moves…”, he said. “You’re always moving somewhere.”

“Well, I’ve been together with my wife for twenty-two years,” I was quick to react. “I’m stable!”

“That’s true”, he said.

I got him there, kind of. He has a reputation for being wild (unstable!) when it comes to women.

But he’s right too. We’re on the move, often. Maybe too often. It’s really hard for some people to understand why.

Why?

Well, every move is a separate story. This time it’s both simple and complicated. My kids, my second son, and my youngest daughter play competitive tennis. We’re a tennis family, a really committed one. That means doing crazy things, like this one right now — moving to Florida where tennis is better.

We probably wouldn’t have rushed this but my landlord in California is selling his house we are being kicked out. The housing market is crazy hot — that’s why he’s selling. We could try moving to another house where we live, but it’s out of our budget. It’s crazy expensive. We have four kids and they play tennis. It’s not that the move to Florida will reduce our expenses. All-in-all it won’t. For example, my oldest son is a junior at high school. To pull him out of his school would disrupt his path to college. So we’ve made the difficult decision of living separately, as a family, for the first time in decades — I’ll have to rent something tiny in California and help my son finish school. I’ll be traveling back and forth between California and Florida.

My wife and our three kids are already in Florida for a couple of weeks. My oldest finished his semester today and will be flying to Florida tomorrow. He didn’t fancy spending three days on the road. The movers came earlier this week and collected most of the bulky stuff. There is still a lot left for me to pack. Every time we move I realize — it’s incredible how much stuff you have, how hard the last day always is when you’re vacating the house. I’ve been taking some things to self-storage and in the final hours before my departure, tomorrow will be testing to the limit the capacity of my Toyota Highlander. Its trunk door broke a while ago and I haven’t yet fixed it so I have to put things through the passenger door. Not fun.

But it’s ok. I’ll manage. This move has an extra challenge. My almost ten-year-old son built a lot of legos in the past couple of years, including the Harry Potter cattle with some six thousand pieces. They were on display in a glass shelf cabinet. Now I have the responsibility of taking them to Florida. I placed them in five containers that will take up a lot of space in my car. I’ve damaged them quite a bit already but I’m hopeful they can be fixed. A have a separate small box for all the loose pieces.

And I still have a huge amount to clean up and pack.

But the moment will come tomorrow, without a doubt — I’ll say goodbye to what was our home for almost 3 years and set off for a long road trip. I’ll feel uncertainty and the weight of many challenges that we’re facing as a family, but I will also think of how we’re persevering through our journey, and of how some struggles have been resolved; of how our dreams remain. I’ll listen to some audio book — I’m yet to decide which one. I’ll listen to music. I’ll drive through America coast-to-coast, in solitude. Human solitude that is! There will be 4 other hearts beating in my car. Our cat Memphis (it was a stray kitten we picked when we were in Memphis!), our bearded dragon Techy and our two turtles Luca and Andrew. Silly creatures — the turtles, but they are part of our family!

Oh, and I have an opportunity to finish this story with my beloved topic — running.

My trip to Florida looks like this — 2,702 miles:

In the last twelve months, I’ve run this — 2,703 miles:

The journey! Family, tennis, travel, running — it’s all part of a master plan!

And here is Memphis, sleeping in the chair that I’ve just taken apart. The movers were supposed to take this chair, according to my wife, but I forgot and now have to take it with me!