We are moving to Peoria, Illinois! Gary got offered a job with the Peoria Chiefs that we couldn’t pass down. We move and travel alot due to my husbands job. My husband works in minor league baseball, and we tend to move a lot for his job.
Our Background
Climbing the baseball corporate ladder is VERY different than normal corporate ladder. In baseball life to get to upper management you need to bounce team to team. I only know of a handful people who have stayed with the same team from account executive or manager title to General Manager. I don’t want to say it’s not possible, but like I said only know a few people.
We met while we were both working for the Iowa Energy (now Iowa Wolves). We started dating while I was working for a team in North Carolina, and he was working for race track in Topeka. Our first team together in baseball was the Oklahoma City RedHawks (OKC Dodgers) (Houston Astros). Then Arizona State Athletics. West Virginia Power who was a Pittsburgh Pirates. Followed by a season with the Quad City River Bandits. (Houston Astros) This was our shortest time with a time. IYKYK. Next Everett Aquasox for 2 almost 3 years. (Seattle Mariners) Again another quick one season stop in Modesto with the Nuts. Also a Mariners affiliate. IYKYK again. This season still gives me all the negative feelings. Then 2 seasons with the Stockton Ports. (Oakland Athletics.) Which brings us to right now, Peoria Chiefs with the St. Louis Cardinals.
It’s kinda crazy that California was the place that we lived in the longest. We were in the same apartment from the beginning to end. There was a lot of stuff both good and bad that I liked about California. The things that I am going to miss the most is the amount of stuff there is to do. I love traveling and exploring so it’s going to be sad not having so much so close. I also am not a fan of cold weather, so this is going to be interesting.
The Move
This move is going to be insane. We are getting rid of everything, and starting over in Illinois. Even if we were going to move within California we were going to do this. We had a lot of stuff for a long time. It was time to get new stuff. We also decided that we weren’t going to get a uhaul, and only fill our cars. The cars were filled more than we thought we would.
We had 2 options with the drive from California to Peoria, Il. We called it the Northern and southern routes. I really wanted to go the southern way because there were things that I wanted to see like Zion National Park. The northern route was a familiar route because we took most of it when we were driving from Iowa to Washington 5 years ago. We actually debated it for a really long time. It came down to quality of seeing things. It didn’t’ make sense with the 2 cars and Heisman. Also I hate driving, so the quicker I can get to a place the better. The stop and starting with seeing everything would have made the trip so much longer.
Trip breakdown
We broke the trip down into 4 days. We left our apartment mid afternoon and got to Reno Tuesday night. Gary said his goal was to get out of California that day. When we got closer to Reno, I felt like I could drive more but we pre-booked our all of hotels so we knew that they took dogs. From Reno, we drove around 8 hours to Evanston, Wyoming. It wasn’t a bad drive because it was mostly flat. We stayed at this hotel before when driving to Washington. IT was interesting talking about the differences in the 2 trips. We were leaving the sunshine and getting more into fall on this trip. The last time we stopped there was after sitting in a blizzard for 2 hours, and almost being stranded.
From Evanston was our long day of about 12 hours. We finished the day with about 12-14 hours on the road because we took more stops that day. I honestly thought this was going to be the worst drive. I wasn’t excited about it at all. This day flew by because I listened to podcasts all day. Then our last day was Grand Island to Peoria, Illinois. This day we took more stops than any other day. It was also long because we knew every exit in Iowa, so that was really long.
Peoria, Illinois
There were a lot of things that happened leading up to our move that felt like this place was going to be home. The biggest things was that we were going to be able to get into our apartment 2 days sooner. We got to move in on Saturday instead of Monday. Which was also Gary’s first day of work. So I knew I would have help in the morning, but the afternoon would be all me. The furniture was also able to come sooner and our place was starting to feel more like a home.
We picked an apartment off apartments.com and never saw it before moved in. We have been pretty lucky with apartments minus Arizona and West Virginia. Arizona was just bad being a campus town. West Virginia wouldn’t rent to us until we moved there. We were lucky to find something on the last day of living in a hotel.
My Job
My goal when moving to a new city to find a job within the first week. I usually start looking before I leave and try to have interviews lined up within the first few days. I actually had a job lined up before I moved to here. IT was awesome feeling to know I didn’t have to worry about anything. Then I had a interview while we were driving out, and ended up accepting that job because it was within the gym industry.
My end goal is to be able to work from home so I don’t have to stress about finding a job if we were to move again. I would love to be able to stay home and write all day. I am currently working towards that.
