Our Move to Havasu…and back
During our 2018 cross-country “mid-life crisis” trip, we stopped in Lake Havasu, Arizona a couple of times. The first time in, we planned to stay a night or two and visit a friend my wife went to school with. He owns a high-performance shop in town, and I’d been thinking about having him do a few upgrades to our car. But as luck would have it, he and his wife were up in Washington visiting family the exact week we rolled into Havasu. No communication beforehand—just my wife sending him a photo of his shop with a “We’re here.”
In hindsight, I’m really glad he wasn’t there, because a week later—while we were in Mesa visiting other friends—the engine in our Mustang decided to commit suicide. The warranty company sent someone down to investigate, looking for any signs of performance mods or hot-rodding. They found nothing. The car was pristine and bone-stock. If I had gotten the upgrades I wanted done in Havasu, the warranty would’ve been void and we would’ve been screwed.
We finished the road trip in a rental (blah blah blah, whole story is in the mid-life crisis post), but we returned to Havasu a few months later, spent a day with Brian and Heather, explored the area, and headed home to Washington.
On that drive home, we decided:
We’re moving to Lake Havasu.
New chapter, new life.
I rented the biggest U-Haul available plus an enclosed trailer. We loaded all our belongings into the truck, the motorcycles into the trailer, packed the cat and a few things into the Mustang, and hit the highway. I drove the truck and trailer; Jahanel followed in the Mustang. We drove straight from Washington to Arizona—no stops except food and fuel. At 3 AM, we rolled into Lake Havasu again, exhausted but excited for the next chapter.
Nothing was open yet, so we parked in a grocery store lot and slept a few hours in the rigs. When we woke up, we started looking for a place to live—because planning ahead is overrated, apparently. After striking out all morning, we checked into the Days Inn for a couple of nights. Jahanel kept hunting for rentals, and I went to talk to a guy about a job.
This was the one thing I had planned. While we were packing back home, I contacted Chris over at Low and Mean Cycles. Told him we were moving down, and he said to swing by when we got into town. So I unloaded my bike, rode over to his shop, and we talked. He brought me on as a product designer. I had the ideas; he’d train me on fiberglass. The shop was great, the people were awesome—but Chris was stretched thin between the bike shop, the jet ski shop, and his professional jet ski career. He didn’t have the time to train me the way he wanted, and after a couple weeks, we agreed it wasn’t going to work. I was bummed, but things happen for a reason.
I ended up working at an auto repair shop, and honestly, it was fantastic. Great owner, great customers, great cars. I couldn’t ask for more… except maybe a paycheck with an actual pay stub. I got paid cash—no documentation.
We managed to secure an Airbnb for four months, but finding a long-term rental was nearly impossible. The first issue: we had a cat, and almost every place said “no.” The second issue: I technically had a job, but without a pay stub or an employer anyone would call, no one believed I was employed. The third issue: no local bank. And when we tried to open an account, they denied us because we didn’t have a verifiable Havasu address.
Well duh—we were renting an Airbnb. But since utilities were included, we had nothing in our names. It was a nightmare trying to get established.
A few months in, with our Airbnb time running out and summer approaching, I had a hard time finding a job that came with an actual pay stub. Most places were hesitant to hire us because they thought we’d bolt the moment the heat hit. That wasn’t our intention at all—we planned to stay at least a year—but the hits kept coming. Eventually we threw in the towel and decided to go back to Washington. My old job was happy to take me back.
So the plan became:
Trade the Mustang for a truck.
Buy an enclosed trailer.
Tuck our tails and head home.
We found a badass F-350 crew cab in Phoenix and traded the Mustang for it. Then we drove to Kingman for the trailer. If you ever feel the urge to load a black 24-foot enclosed trailer in the Arizona sun when it’s 113 degrees—don’t. The plan was to load the trailer in the morning, go back to the rental to sleep through the hottest part of the day, then hit the road at sundown so I wouldn’t be pulling a heavy load through the desert heat.
And the plan actually worked.
We loaded everything, packed three motorcycles into the truck bed, piled ourselves and the cat into the cab, and hit the road. Made it back to Washington in about 20 hours.
We still love Havasu. I’d love to own a place there someday. But for now… it’s just not in the cards.
Have you ever had a dream you tried to chase, just to have it smack you in the face and say “Nope, not right now sweatheart!” Let me know in the comments below.
