How do you start the journey of this magnitude (for us)?
By taking the first step.
When you think about it so many things in life require a strategy.
Onboarding Indiana, Chapter 1 Seeking Flex Space
Onboarding Indiana Ch 3 – Work From Home Has New Meaning
Windy City Parrot Now Shipping From Lowell, IN (on WindyCityParrot.com)
Not everyone thinks like this but it’s true.
Hypothetical
You think you found “the one” who will be your significant other.
You plot a strategy to make this acquisition.
Dinner, flowers, tickets, trips all require planning and strategy.
The Art Of War by Sun Tzu is written for the military but can be applied to achieving goals for many things in life.
Me?
I like to start with a spreadsheet, we use Google Docs in conjunction with G Suite making all of our communications ubiquitous.
The Google doc I built has too much sensitive & private information to share with the public but here is a list of almost every task and procedure in no particular order that we needed to “scratch off our to-do list”
- Find Housing
- Find Work Space
- Trailer rental
- Truck rental
- Move Comcast 1 2618
- Move Comcast 2 906
- Incorporate in Indiana
- Dis incorporate in IL
- Migrate 7 policies from State Fam IL to State Farm Indiana (across the street)
- Create Interim shipping
- Banking MB records
- MR drivers license w/ motorcycle endorsement
- Close City of Chicago Busines Licence
- New Gas & Electric Acct (Nipsco)
- Change Yelp listing
- New Water Account, Lowell
- Certificate of occupancy, Lowell
- Open DOR IN (Dept of Revenue)
- Close IDOR IL (Dept of Revenue)
- Close IDES (Illinois Department of Employment Security)
- Cancel State Farm biz policy 5/5
- Garbage recycling (Republic)
- IRS tax ext corp
- IRS tax ext personal
- Recycle computers
- Bing address change
- GMB address change
- Ill certificate of registration
- Corp Banking chase
- Ford Escape plates title
- Rocket (motorcycle) move
- Rocket plates title
- KZ (motorcycle) move
- KZ plates title
- Phone #s ported to the new system (Mighty Call)
- Sign approval Lowell
- Migrate birds
- MitchR prescriptions
- Catherine prescriptions
- Remove copier
- GLAIC Insurance MR – new bank
- GLAIC Insurance Cat – new bank
- AARP United health – new bank
- Cancel Chicago license
- Cancel 906 alarm company.
- Water delivery new address
- Close Electric 2618
- Close Electric 906
- Close Gas 2618
- Close Gas 906 Front bldg
- Close Gas 906 Rear bldg
- PO Change of address MR
- PO Change of address Cat
- PO Change of address WCP
- Find a mover
- PO prepaid envelope Chicago neighbor
- Notify Walton Landlord
- Notify Attorney
- Notify 906 N Western Ave Landlord
- Notify Accountant
- PayPal Corp Info
- PayPal Personal Info
- PayPal SuperEZ Info
- Indiana DOR Web Payments (2 steps) USPS
- Change Get Response (ESP) address
- Superezsystems.com update address
- Update website physical address
- Update website tax collection
- Change FedEx profile and banking
- Blog privacy policy page address change
- Zen cart store address
- Order 2 signs fo the new shop
- Fire Dept Lowell 1 and 2nd Inspections
- Replace 2 exit sign emergency batteries.
- Recharge 3 fire extinguishers getting 2019 tags
Some things were easy like incorporating in Indiana.
We did everything online with Swyftfilings for around $500 and it all went quite smoothly.
This is necessary to get a commercial bank account from Chase, across the street.
One of the most difficult tasks was getting Comcast to install our two high-speed Internet modems, one from our home in one from the business.
It took them over 90 days just to find the house in Lowell in spite of it having been a Comcast user with a Comcast junction box on the west side of the house for six or seven years.
I’m not going to bore you with the details here but if anybody’s interested, here are my notes and how we got live Internet a week before we moved in.
An interesting thing about strategies, you have to execute for them to work.
The cost of professional movers can be astronomical and we had a lot of stuff.
1800 ft.² apartment, two-car garage, a retail store with basement, two-story coach house in the back and 2 motorcycles.
Like I said a lot of stuff.
By the middle of March, I was making daily roundtrips to Lowell dragging a good friend’s trailer.
Aside from cost-saving we were concerned about things like collectibles, lamps, and artwork.
Computers and other electronic infrastructure.
Bird cages.
You can’t just put dozens of bird cages on a big truck and move them 60 miles without anticipating damage.
We decided to fill up the trailer as best we could with lots of padding and make several trips.
Speaking of across the street beside Chase, a State Farm insurance office is just a few dozen paces on the other side of Commercial Avenue.
No phone calls just dropped off a stack of policies and let an agent take care of our coverage for all our property and vehicles now residing in Indiana.
Speaking of vehicles, the plates were expiring 3/31/2019 on both our Ford escape and my Triumph Rocket 3.
I did not want to give Illinois anymore of our money.
I caught a break in the weather the last weekend in March and on a 50° Saturday.
I was able to ride the Rocket down to Lowell and park it in the funeral home parking lot next door.
In order to get plates for both vehicles in Indiana, I would have to get an Indiana drivers license.
My Illinois driver’s license is a motorcycle endorsement.
I could port over the motorcycle endorsement if I passed the written test along with a written test for four-wheel motor vehicles.
The BMV in Indiana is very efficient.
There’s a kiosk in the lobby of the BMV office in Crown Point (about 12 miles north of Lowell)
BMV Connect is a new concept in customer service which gives Hoosiers the option to visit a BMV branch any time of the day to complete routine transactions.
BMV Connect kiosks are 24-hour self-service terminals, where customers can conduct multiple BMV transactions including:
- Registrations
- Drivers License or ID
- Update Contact Info
- Get you Official Driving Record
- Pay Driver’s License Reinstatement
- Duplicate Title
I needed to see an agent because I was moving into the state.
They required a birth certificate with the actual seal (from in my case, Cook County) which I ordered online.
An expedited basis cost $75.
They also needed at least two documents showing my Indiana address.
Having opened up bank accounts with Chase, they printed out a statement for me.
Walking across the street to State Farm I was able to get a copy of one of our new policies.
After the documentation was vetted at the BMV I needed to take written (computer) two tests.
A four-wheel test and a two-wheel test.
If I pass the two-wheel test my motorcycle license would port over automatically.
If I could not pass the two-wheel test I would be subjected to 10 hours of classroom and 10 hours of road safety instruction by the state of Indiana.
I passed the four-wheel test but failed the two-wheel test which allowed for only three wrong answers.
I found the problems in the test because the questions and answers were contradictory.
I brought this to the attention of an agent who simply shrugged and said: “We get that a lot.”
I ordered a “sample test (for Indiana) at a cost of $39.
The test had 600 sample questions.
I took it twice, passed on the second time and then answer all 600 questions again the night before going into BMV for retesting.
The next day I went in and aced the 2-wheel test and became an official Hoosier.
I ordered plates and a re-title for the Escape.
Indiana is not as trusting as Illinois.
I know over the years I’ve sent a form of a check and gotten a title to a vehicle from Illinois.
The BMV would issue new plates and a title for the Escape if it passed an emissions test where they verified my VIN and verified it back in the BMV before they would issue plates in the title.
Interestingly, a month later in order to get the Rocket titled (it started to get warmer) I had to visit the local police station, pay a five dollar fee and then meet an officer back in our new place who physically verified the VIN of the Rocket on a form the BMV had given me.
Later I took the form in to transfer the title to Indiana and got a new plate.
My “77 KZ 1000 had become another issue.
I bought the bike in 2004.
After bringing the bike to a near-flawless performance I had let it fall into disrepair and it would no longer start.
I had it set up old school with a Vetter fairing and a couple of leather saddlebags with a high backrest.
KZ on left
After much thought, rather than storing it and feeling bad I dragged it down on the trailer to my friend Danny’s shop, AmCat Cycle.
Talking with some motorcycle friends I decided to turn it into a “bobber” which means it would get stripped-down to only the barest of components.
Here are the beginning stages of the conversion.
For all you motorcycle guys and gals you can see the fairing is gone.
It’s hard to see but we put on a straighter handlebar a little shorter.
The dual seat came off replaced by a single-seat and we have moved the rear fender about 4 inches forward.
The engine will come out and get fully bead blasted.
The frame will get powder coated black and the wheels will get powder coated white and if all goes well we will install whitewall tires.
The rear tire currently is 130 and we will squeeze in a 140.
And new black (versus chrome) shocks have been installed dropping the rear end about 3 inches.
I’ll end things on that high note continuing with chapter 3 in a couple of weeks.
Written by Mitch Rezman
Approved by Catherine Tobsing
