You may be wondering why I, who am ordinarily organized to the nth degree, had so much trouble finding things in our bags during our packing and leaving Delray phase. It’s very unlike me. Bear with me while I backtrack a bit to fill you in.

When we first decided on our many-years-long cycling trip, we had the burning question of how to carry our gear. After a great deal of research and discussion we chose to use Burley trailers. Overall we were very pleased with our decision.

However, once we knew we were leaving the country, we also knew we wanted to switch to panniers. Again, we researched and discussed everything thoroughly, because using trailers had very compelling pluses. We decided on panniers.

So we bought our Ortlieb panniers, bright yellow with black trim, a year ago. Then during the summer we sold our trailers, feeling some distinct anxiety about it.
(more…)

Thursday Feb 16, closing day
Thursday slipped from hectic into frantic early in the day.

From seven in the morning until we collapsed at Jose and Carmen’s at ten-thirty in the evening, we worked without a break, under the gun the entire time. It was tough just remembering to breathe. We didn’t remember to eat.

We worked through breakfast, we worked through lunch, we worked through the afternoon, we even had the title company owner come up to bring me the closing papers, working right up till he came at one, then starting again immediately when he left.

We packed the final, final boxes, got a load to storage, broom-swept the house, and continued working right through the lengthy walk-through of the new owner and his workmen, steadily assuring them we’d be out that night.
(more…)

If we thought we were tired then, we had reached a whole new mind-numbing level of tiredness by the time we left Delray.

A few days before closing I called Denise one last time to see if we really were going to close. “Nothing’s left, right Denise? Nothing’s left? We are really and truly closing? ‘Cause I don’t want to be in such a panic if it’s not really closing.” Not that I was cynical by then, oh no.

Denise reassured me that everything was fine, but she’d check with the title company. Within the hour I had an email from Ali, the title guy, letting me know that the buyer’s title company had unearthed a twenty-five-year-old building permit that was still open. They were requiring that it be settled before closing.
(more…)

Our two-and-half-year downsizing saga was a tough go, requiring a lot of stamina, determination, focus and discipline on our part. To make it work we needed to stay happy, or least appreciative of the way things were going.

Laughter was always a good thing.

The timing of Alex’s recent decision to begin his stand-up comedy career was perfect for us. Not only were we able to follow him through the opening stages of something that’s been in his plans for a long time, but attending the Improv nights and watching him perform was a welcome break from our tedium.

Alex begins his comedy career

In late September last year, while we were in the throes of downsizing, Alex wrote his first stand-up comedy set and arranged to appear at the open mike night at the West Palm Beach Improv, his first appearance on stage.

We loved it, and he got a great audience response.
(more…)

So much was happening in our lives during those weeks that our idea of long range planning was “what’s for dinner tonight?” It was exhausting just reading and tracking our to-do lists.

We gave up bike rides in order to get things done. We were living on five to six hours or less of sleep a night. We started having “sleep disturbances”. Night after night we weren’t able to fall sleep until two or three or four in the morning but we still had to wake up no later than eight and keep on going.

We did so many errands that our neighbor Ivar stopped asking us if we needed to borrow his van. Instead we fell into a shared custody arrangement.
(more…)

Starting in December the closing date for our short sale became a rapidly moving target.

First came the big news that everything was approved and we’d be closing right after Christmas. That was discouraging, as we still needed time to finish, and we hated to be on the streets, so to speak, right during the holidays. We’d been hoping for a closing nearer to March first.

Then we heard that we’d have to close December twenty-fourth. That was a truly dismal prospect. But before we had a chance to process leaving on Christmas Eve, we heard that the whole deal was in jeopardy.

Thus ensued weeks of steady, intensely focused, stressful rounds of meetings, strategies, phone calls, emails and paperwork, punctuated by long periods of silence. Questions and anxiety hung in the air. Would it work? Could we really pull it off after all this time? Would it really fall apart after three years in process?
(more…)

Our bird watching this year started out slowly, but we more than made up for the late start with the richness of our sightings. Not only do we have the daily viewing exposure of our bike rides, but our living room has a triple sliding glass door which opens out onto a large screened-in porch, which overlooks our pool and our backyard.

Directly across from the pool sits a ten-foot long, eight-foot high cluster of old thick bougainvillea bushes. Our couches inside look out over all this, so our binoculars and camera are always right at hand, ready for bird sightings.

Thinking for months that we’d be leaving “next month”, we put off weeding the bougainvillea for a month or two. It’s a nasty thankless job with all those thorns, but it does give a nice clean look to the yard.

After a month or so, Chelsea and I noticed a profusion of butterflies, all of them hovering around the weeds in the bougainvillea. We loved all the colors and flight patterns, and thought, well this is good! Then in November the unbelievable happened.
(more…)

As if the universe was sending us a pat on the back for learning the lesson from Attila the Hun, our sale of the sideboard, our very last piece, was the exact opposite experience. Though our nerves were still shaky, we had the resolve of steel to make sure this sale went smoothly. The good news is that we didn’t need the resolve.

It was one of those dream sales.
(more…)

Finally, after many months of effort, we were down to our last two pieces of antique furniture, a wardrobe and a sideboard from our time in the Czech Republic. As luck would have it, they were also the two biggest.

The prices we’d set were heartbreakingly low for us, but South Florida is not the place for the types of antiques we had, and the antique furniture market in general was way down, never mind how depressed the local economy has been.

We became resigned to keeping the two remaining pieces, and began looking at storage places big enough to accommodate them. Then came an email from our Craigslist posting about the wardrobe. The woman who wrote was another one of those now-you-see-me-now-you-don’t kinds of folks. She’d write and set a date, then not show. Then she’d call and set a time and not confirm.
(more…)

You may wonder what getting wisdom teeth extracted has to do with our extended bike trip, but if those wisdom teeth are flaring up into pain frequently, and we’re in difficult physical situations, suddenly getting them removed sounds like the deal of a lifetime.

Over the length of our bike trip Chelsea had been consistently mentioning the discomfort with her teeth but we didn’t have any straightforward solutions.

Then in September, out of the blue, Chelsea and Alex’s dad offered to pay for the extractions. It turns out Alex’s teeth had been bothering him quite a bit, so it was a win-win for both Chelsea and Alex. They were thrilled to accept their dad’s offer.
(more…)