Moving to California — April 11–17, 2016
April was a hectic month, saying goodbye to friends, squeezing in some skiing, and clearing out our apartment in Vancouver. Back in March I had accepted a job working at Strava in San Francsico. Nobody likes moving, and moving to another country (albeit relatively close) is even more of a pain.
The plan was to spend 10 days road tripping through Washington & Oregon before arriving in California. This was abruptly cut short when we read that the US border only accepts TN Visa applications within 7 days of your start date. Although it seems with all border issues it all depends on the mood of your particular officer. To add to the uncertainty, Tyler would be entering as a visitor with the intent to get a job after we arrived. With a start date of April 17th, we chose to enter the US a few days later via the Peace Arch crossing.
Taking advantage of our Nexus passes, we breezed to the front of the line, however the visa application took longer than expected. About 1.5 hours later, after rounds of questions from multiple officers and a lot of anxious waiting, we were cleared! (When Tyler subsequently applied for his TN visa in August at YVR it only took 20 min).
The first day we drove all the way to Portland where we booked a last minute hotel. We got to meet up with Evan at Basecamp Brewery for a quick visit that night before hitting the road again in the morning.
The next day we set off to Bend. We choose to drive through the Columbia River Gorge, stopping to see a few waterfalls along the way. For lunch, we ate in Hood River at pFriem Family Brewers.
With the trip cut short by a few days we decided to spend the majority of our time to Bend, Oregon. Being the furthest point from both Vancouver and San Francisco it made sense to make the most of our time there. Read about our adventures in Bend here:
With a weather window opening up on Saturday and needing to be in SF by Monday we huffed it out of Bend towards Mt Shasta. Read about it here:
After a long day on Shasta we still had a few hundred miles left to go before San Francisco. That night we drove to Redding, CA and found a hotel. Both of us were fairly sunburnt at this point and ready to finish up the road trip.
We made it! The city was warm and sunny on our arrival, a weather pattern that would later discover to be not so common during the summer thanks to Karl the Fog. We had an AirBnB booked for the first two weeks, just a 10 minute walk from the Strava office.
New home. San Francisco.
