Downsizing and house projects continue to take up most of our time. We are dangerously close to feeling like these projects are 12-headed hydras, always growing new heads when one is cut off.
What saves us is that we are finally beginning to see an end.
Downsizing
We’ve been through several very successful Craigslist rounds so far, with another well underway. We’ve sold a surprising amount of our listed items, with zero hassle from the buying side. Our buyers have been truly amazing – incredibly pleasant. Some of them we liked well enough that we gave them our card, and asked them to send us an email so we can stay in touch. In fact, we may go kayaking before we leave with the guy who bought our Yakima lock cores.
Late last week I posted our Adventure Cycling maps from our 2006 cross-country ride for sale on the crazyguyonabike website, and was delighted that we got so much interest so quickly. Three of the four sets I posted sold within five days. Not only was it fun to sell the maps, but we loved hearing what a few other touring cyclists are planning. Though we do this cycle touring for a living, so to speak, we know very few other touring cyclists.
Chelsea is finally posting our first round of FreeCycle items today or early tomorrow; and she’s finishing off some more Craigslist postings that are well underway – writing ads, taking photos, and posting them online. She’ll also have to take over managing the communications with buyers.
We’ve done some price and item comparisons between Craigslist and eBay, and we realized we may do better on eBay for some of our items. But now we have to evaluate the hassles of dealing with eBay (time, energy, posting fees) versus getting a greatly reduced price by selling it locally (for a lot less hassle).
The good news is that we can cross-post, so we’ll have a lot more exposure for the ads.
Since we’d really appreciate the extra income, and we’d love to physically move our things on to appreciative new homes, we probably will go with eBay. But that’s yet another little project to do…
Meanwhile we continue sorting the remaining goods into “garage sale” or “Craigslist” so Chelsea knows what to do with things. It’s been a good process because it’s given us a last chance to make sure we want to get rid of something. When we let it go, it’s gone. That’s enough to make us pause and think carefully.
We’ll most likely wait another week or so before having a garage sale.
More good news – we’re down to the last few boxes to pack. We have everything set out in our packing area, and we can knock through the job in about three hours. We’ll finish the packing when we have gone through absolutely everything – we have to see what should go in each box. We’re trying to eliminate as many last minute “oh no’s” as we can.
We keep whittling down the number of items still in the sorting and deciding stage. That’s when we’ll know we’ve won – when don’t find anything else to give away or pack. It’s either packed away for storage, or it’s going with Alex, and there’s nothing else left.
We remain amazed at how time consuming this business of downsizing is…
House projects
Our house projects are doing extremely well too.
Hot tub
The hot tub is completely done – emptied, scrubbed, filters cleaned, with every last scrap of decomposing lizard skin vanished. It’s clear and sparkling and fresh with its appropriate pool shock and chlorine treatments – we’ve used it three or four times already.
The last two mornings we set the alarm for 6:30 and managed to be out in the tub, complete with towels, cold water, and binoculars, well before the sun rose behind the huge pine tree down the street. We soaked in peaceful silence, enjoying the awakening birds, the food-gathering squirrels, our sleepy cats, and the indefinable magic of sunrise.
Pool
The pool has been its own major challenge. We have known absolutely nothing about pool maintenance except the most basic things, and we never wanted to know either. That has all changed. We are on a first name basis with our local discount pool supply place, and it looks to be staying that way for the near future.
After trying a number of times to clear the water, we are finally getting closer (don’t let the current color fool you). We now have all the solid materials out of the pool (the decomposing leaves and so on). We replaced the O-ring on the pool filter housing only to find out it needs two, and the other one is bad too. We replaced the filter itself, only to have the brand new one look like the old battered one within 24 hours.
We poured in the recommended amounts of acid, yellow out, and chlorine, and ran the filter for 24 hours each time. We clean the filter 4-7 times a week. We haven’t accomplished our goal, yet.
But, we have stockpiled enough cash so we can go one more round on the chemicals (using enough for the job this time), replace the last O-ring on the filter, and add stabilizer when the chlorine has done its job. We’ve learned a lot about pool maintenance along the way, and we could easily hire out as pool girls by now. We may add it to our resumes.
Sliding glass doors
The sliding glass doors were a far easier project, though it took three hours, a crowbar, screwdrivers, and three strong, clever and focused adults to finish the job.
Our living room has a set of three old and very heavy sliding glass doors overlooking the pool, the backyard, and the screened porch. Over the years the main door has gotten harder and harder to open. By the time we returned, it required a full body effort to open the door even a few inches. One hot morning, with our neighbor Ivar, we pried the heavy doors off, cleaned the tracks, checked and adjusted the sliders, and waxed the runners. Then we had to replace the doors back on the tracks.
It was one of those real feel days of 112 degrees before noon, but we persevered. The door now works beautifully, and requires minimal effort to open – we are delighted!
Other projects
But lest you think that all we do are major projects, we’ve done a number of smaller ones as well. We’ve replaced the drive belt on the vacuum and gotten several really stubborn clogs undone; we’ve cemented construction holes in the plaster in my room; we’ve replaced toilet seat bolts; and we’re prepared with a total repair kit for replacing the innards of the toilet in the hall bathroom.
I’m afraid that the toilet repair job may turn into a plumbing apprenticeship by the time we’re done, but we’re getting pretty experienced at figuring things out…
We did the last of the current tree trimming, and Chelsea is continuing to do lawn mowing. We’re making progress on weeding, but with all the rain we’ve had the weeds grow overnight, especially around the pool deck, it seems.
A final project will be replacing the jalousie windows on my outside bedroom door. I’ve always liked them, despite their horrible energy efficiency, but the aluminum has now disintegrated, and we are losing panes of glass fairly rapidly. An interim solution has been duct tape and cardboard, but we need to find a glazier and get new solid panes of glass.
Weather
On arriving home, we had the same super-hot weather we’d been having in Texas, with real feel day temperatures hovering between 105-115 degree and 88-91 degrees at night. That’s continued except for a week of tantalizing hints at cooler weather, but now again we are breaking heat records the last two weeks.
The big difference is that here we have quiet, unobtrusive air conditioning, gently keeping the air at whatever temperature we desire. After what we’ve been through, mowing the lawn in 112 degree heat is no big deal when you know that a cool house and plenty of cool water are mere steps away.
That being said, we do plan our days around the mid-day heat. Perhaps the worst is when we realize we can’t get away from doing bicycle errands in the high heat of the day, but even then it’s not so bad, knowing we’re coming home to a/c. We continue to be incredibly appreciative of our awesome air conditioning system!
We’re getting a break in the weather at last this weekend. A “cold snap” is finally coming in, so we’ll have highs in the mid 80s and lows in the low 70s. We can’t wait. There are few places in the world with weather as beautiful as South Florida in the winter.
Living by bicycle in an urban jungle
We haven’t seen much of Alex since we’ve been back. He’s either at work or at his girlfriend’s house or out doing whatever he does, so we don’t have access to a car unless we arrange it ahead of time.
That means we’ve been doing most of our errands by bicycle. It’s certainly been easier here in some ways, if you don’t mind high heat, high traffic, and drivers completely unused to anything except other cars.
Certainly there’s greater access to shopping and services than we ever had on the trip. Our post office is across from the bank and up a bit, about a mile away to the north; several major grocery stores are within a mile radius or less; and we have an older Wal-Mart now being retrofitted as a Super Wal-Mart about a mile to the south of us.
It’s been a very strange experience doing our bank deposits, food shopping, and post office errands in a society where bicycles are a total oddity on the road. The good news is that people are very kind to us. They are very interested in watching us find a place to lock the bicycles and watching us pack our purchases into our trusty yellow backpack.
The bad news is that the area is not set up for bicycles. Riding on the shoulder is a scary experience. There is such a narrow space between us and the cars, and we have the feeling that the drivers may not even register that we are there. If they do see us, they are clueless about what the road rules are for bicycles, and we have a disproportionate number of very, very old drivers.
The sidewalks are wide which is good, but drivers aren’t expecting to see a bicycle shoot off the sidewalk into the driveway of the parking lot, so we have to use extra caution at every intersection and every driveway (and there are many).
The crossing lights are awful at some intersections. The button is set back off the sidewalk and street, designed without cyclists in mind. By the time we maneuver the bikes over to the awkward placement of the button, the light has frequently changed, and we have to maneuver the bikes back around to get across the street before the light changes against us. It’s not a relaxing proposition.
We feel brave, like pioneers taming the urban jungle.
Dyeing my Ex Officio shirt
An unexpected bonus to us being home is that I got my beloved yellow Ex Officio shirt dyed yellow again. Over time it had gradually faded significantly; the final indignity was being washed with a cheap grocery store dress that bled blue color. I love the fit of the shirt, but it was sure looking un-pretty.
Back in Port Lavaca, in Texas, I finally bought yellow RIT dye and dye remover, but I was never in a situation with stainless steel pans big enough to do the job.
At home I found our huge stainless pan while unpacking a box, and immediately decided to do the dye job before packing the pan again.
Though a tedious job, we had a wonderful time. I got the color evened out on my shirt first, then put it in the dye bath. Chelsea was so tickled that she ran for a white cotton tank top she’d just received, and threw that into the dye after my shirt came out. Then I got inspired and took two other white cotton shirts of mine and threw them in after Chelsea’s.
The results were excellent. My shirt came out beautifully, though it’s much darker than I’d envisioned. Chelsea’s shirt is perfect, and my two other shirts are a bit lighter than I wanted. We had a great time doing it, we learned a lot about dyeing clothes, and we’ve got a refreshing new look to our travel wardrobe.
Organizing for the trip
Throughout all the other work and distractions, we haven’t lost sight of organizing further for our trip. I’ve already gone through all the boxes of things we either sent home or left behind, thinking that someday we’d need them, and I’ve made current decisions on everything.
I’ve refreshed our spares and replacements; updated our medicine kit with rubbing alcohol, droppers, and additional band aids; and swapped out DVD cases since we’re carrying more than we originally planned.
We added our spare trailer hitches to the mix, and we’ve got our old cargo struts in case we want to use them to make a kickstand. In one fortuitous eBay session I found Keen Presidio shoes for Chelsea, and after talking it over, we decided to bid on them. We got a $90 pair of shoes for $23.99 plus shipping.
We’ve been talking about a new trailer set-up for over a year now, and we are getting very close to taking action. We looked at Carry Freedom trailers; we’ve checked out new Burley touring trailers; and I’m going to write to Marcel, our Craigslist rideshare from Orlando, and get serious with him about building us a prototype according to our wish list.
We’re even tackling our music project – Sony stopped supporting their media player a year or two after I bought a Sony MP3 player, so I’ve been stranded about being able to play my music. When I imported all my albums to my laptop (many, many albums), the Sony system put digital rights management (DRM) codes on each song, so now I can’t play my music on anything except what they support, and they aren’t supporting anything.
I’ve been looking at solutions for a long time, and now that we are home again, we are re-importing all our music onto the laptop as straight MP3 files. I will have to look for a way of removing the DRM codes from the music I collected on the trip; I’m hoping things in that particular technology scene will have greatly simplified by the time I’m ready to do it.
Signing off
I’ve been writing for quite a while now, and haven’t eaten dinner, even though it’s now time for bed. I’ll finish up tomorrow; we still have lots to tell you. It feels wonderful to get something posted tonight, and I’ll get the photos culled and captioned, though I can’t promise it for tomorrow.