The Cost of Moving: Two Days in Cedar Rapids

Photo credit: Paul Sableman, CC BY 2.0.

I wanted to give you an update on my Cedar Rapids adventure!

First of all, I love it here. I was a little nervous that I wouldn’t, but I spent several hours biking and walking around town on Tuesday and I feel like Cedar Rapids is going to be a really good fit.

Yes, of course I rented a bike. How else was I going to go apartment-hunting? I am a firm believer in beginning as you mean to continue, so I was at the local bike shop at 8:30 a.m. to pick up a Trek hybrid bike that was way fancier than anything I’d ever ridden as a kid, and to hope that the bike shop staff wouldn’t ask me how long it’d been since I last rode a bicycle.

(They didn’t. Also, turns out I remembered how to ride a bike with no problems. Don’t worry, I didn’t ride in the street even though I probably will someday. I was able to take bike trails everywhere I wanted to go.)

The apartment market is a lot like every other apartment market I’ve experienced: you call a lot of landlords and property managers and only a few of them get back in touch with you. I toured one unit and turned it down, primarily because it was at the high end of my price range and no utilities were included, which meant it would be over budget by the time I added in gas/water/electric. I toured another unit that I’m probably not going to pursue any further, and I still have two more units to view this morning.

Here’s how much I’ve spent so far:

Monday

Bottle of water and banana at LAX: $4.23

A BLT that came with melted cheese (???) and no sides at DEN: $10.15 (there was no Huel on this plane trip because I was flying United Basic Economy which limits you to one “personal item” and I couldn’t fit the Huel in there)

Taxi from CID to the Airbnb: $35.50 (Lyft service was available, but it would have taken the driver 20 minutes to get to the airport)

Restaurant delivery, enough for three meals: $22.16 (I had wanted to go to the grocery store, but I’d also gotten just four hours of sleep between the end of Space Time and the flight out of LAX)

Tuesday

Bike rental for two days: $44.94

Lunch while I called more landlords and property managers: $7.91

Chocolate truffles, because I stopped into a store that sold candy and other novelties and talked to the clerk for a while and there was a $3.00 credit/debit minimum: $4.44

TOTAL: $129.33

I’ll let you know how the rest of the week goes.

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