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Television, computers, data, and monitor challenges

When we left in 2007, Chelsea and I cleaned off our hard drives (mostly) and put the data on two 40GB external drives (they weren’t big enough). We came back in 2008 for a few months and started using our computers again, rather than use my laptop. In the wildness of those days – packing frantically and getting ready to leave again, we left some data on each of our hard drives, mostly music and photos.

In our absence Alex’s computer died so he started using Chelsea’s. Then hers died so he used mine, but mine died immediately. He was forced to head back to Computers Direct and get his cleaned up.

When we returned for this break, Chelsea’s and my two computers were dead, and both our monitors were gone – Alex had gone through his monitor and one of ours, and had appropriated the last remaining monitor for his own use. To make matters worse, his computer died within weeks of our return.
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We were on such a roll after our efforts to get ready for Tyler that we kept on going. Everything needed to get done anyway, so why not do it all now, we figured. Of course, we’re paying the price these days because we’re totally wiped out, but at least we feel fantastic about all we got done.

Window cleaning

How often do you clean all your windows, inside and out? Most folks I know cringe at the thought. I’ve even had cleaning ladies who won’t do windows. We have a lot of windows, too, so it’s not a small job. But I felt so good seeing Tyler’s windows clean that I spent a few days in mid February, during gorgeous cool weather, cleaning all the windows myself; yes, inside and out.

It’s not in memory when they were last cleaned, and the dust and grime had slowly accumulated, so the amount of light in our rooms increased by a dramatic factor when they were finally clean and sparkling. We’re still enjoying it.
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Stained glass project

Twenty-five years. That’s how long I have dragged around seven boxes of gorgeous glass pieces, all sizes, with equipment to create the stained glass projects. When Chelsea was born I was making stained glass windows, and was in the middle of a particularly beautiful piece for my dad when he died suddenly.

A few days after he died, I tried to finish his piece, but couldn’t see the glass through the tears in my eyes. I put the piece away. Some months later we moved, but our new house didn’t have a place to work on the stained glass, then Alex came along, and my life took another path.

All these years, the boxes of glass have been in storage or have been in the shed, collecting dust and bugs. Two years ago, on our break from the first part of our trip, Chelsea painstakingly washed every piece of glass and packed them in boxes. However, we knew when we packed the glass that it wouldn’t survive being transported by anyone other than us.
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Before Thanksgiving we met Tyler, a friend of Alex’s who was down from Boston visiting. He’d been living here for a few years but had chosen to move back home for several personal reasons. In late January he got in touch with Alex to see if Alex would be willing to have him as a roommate – Tyler wanted to move back to Florida to work and finish his schooling.

After talking it over, we decided to say yes. Tyler needed a place to live; the rent money would be great for the budget; we’d all adjust somehow.

We didn’t know until late in the game that Tyler came with a Min-Pin/Pekingese, year-old dog; so we got two roommates in the deal. (A min-pin is a miniature Pinscher.)

The room Tyler would have was Chelsea’s old room, but Alex had painted it in creative and wondrous ways (probably not what Tyler would choose for a décor), and we had loaded the room with all our boxes and some of our furniture we gotten from storage. The room, in short, was a disaster area.
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Will it never end? Chelsea and I asked ourselves that question daily during January and February – in fact, right through the middle of March. Every time we finished a box, two or three more stepped up to take its place. At times we suspected they multiplied overnight.

It’s not been a matter of disorganization; rather it’s been a testament to our deeply-held desire to get our lives as streamlined as possible, getting ready for seven or more years out of the country. We know that we have no idea what we will be like when we return, much less what kind of lifestyle we’ll want.

Will we continue on doing more cycling adventures? Will we move to some awesome spot we discovered on our trip? One thing’s for sure – our lives will never look like this again. That bit of awareness has been driving all our decisions to keep or move things on, and the longer we are doing this, the more we are choosing to move things on.
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Crazy busy. Just plain crazy busy. That’s the only reason I have for not writing in over three months. From continuing our downsizing to getting a new roommate, to rehabbing our house, to major projects on the website and planning our Mexico routes, to researching and buying new pieces of equipment for the trip, and more, more, more, we’ve been putting in long days for quite awhile now. It’s been good, very good. And we’re gradually winding things down to the point where the writing can begin.

After Chelsea and I raked up eighteen yard-bags of leaves and oak tree pollen today, Chelsea is out mowing the lawn while I settle at the computer to write at least one blog. I’ve got my music playing (that’s a story in itself), my bottle of water is at hand, and I’m finally alone, without interruptions.

The best place to start is where I left off, back in mid January, right before the Adventure Cycling meetings. For those who don’t know, the Adventure Cycling Association (ACA) is a group near and dear to our hearts.
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Books and movies

We’ve continued to enjoy our abundance of books and movies from the library, and Alex completed my Sue Grafton collection with a gift of her latest book. We found a set of four Humphrey Bogart movies at Costco, and for sixteen dollars we couldn’t pass it up. We’ve loved watching them – we got “Key Largo”, “To Have or Have Not”, “Dark Passage”, and The Big Sleep”.

Alex also brought home seasons three and four of House, so Chelsea and I have stayed up too late a few nights now getting caught up on those. We’ve already told Alex he’s going to need to get season five before we leave.

We’re going to very much miss easy access to English language books and movies when we cross the border, so we are taking maximum advantage of our opportunity now.
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The week between New Years and Christmas was spectacular weather-wise. It was hard to get motivated to do anything, so we just puttered slowly and steadily.

New Year’s was very fun – Alex and Amanda took us out to a late lunch at Boston’s at the Beach in downtown Delray Beach. We sat on the second floor balcony overlooking A1A and the gorgeous beach, feeling very elegant. The food was a feast – we shared appetizers, we each had an exotic drink (Chelsea had an espresso martini, and I had a blackberry mojito martini), and we each had a main course.

The food was really, really good and the view was unbeatable. Alex and Amanda work a lot, so we see very little of them; this was a rare chance to just hang out peacefully.
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Record-breaking heat. Record-breaking rain. Record-breaking cold. We’ve had quite a last six weeks here in South Florida with our weather.

First we had record-breaking heat through the first two weeks of December, with an occasional chilly day. The heat wasn’t too bad (reaching about 90 degrees), especially compared to summer, but the humidity was obnoxious, and for about a week there we felt we would never escape from the heat and humidity combination that has chased us throughout our trip.

Doing errands was nearly like being in summer (think hot and sweaty), and we had the air conditioning kicking on at home in the middle of the night. For us that’s extreme, as we keep the air at 79-80 degrees.
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Lights and tree

After our long afternoon project of getting our lights up on the house in early December it took a few days to get the enthusiasm together to add more lights. Chelsea was the project leader on the lights, and by the time we were finished we had lights in every room in the house, and had added net lights in front and rope lights around the pool.

Our next step was getting a tree. Before Alex headed off to New York with his girlfriend Amanda, to meet Amanda’s mom, he’d left us a small bit of cash. We decided to get a tree of some kind. Having seen a tree lot up in West Palm Beach advertising “a dozen free donuts at Dunkin’ donuts with the purchase of a $25 six-foot tree”, we thought $25 was an average price.

When time came to get the tree, we looked at the Home Depot lot, saw the minimum price was $35, so we turned and left. We headed down to a private lot near our local Publix. The trees were gorgeous, the lot was empty except for the family that runs it –we had our run of the place. I looked at the first tree on the edge of the lot and had a small heart attack – it was $47! Clearly out of our price range. I went deeper into the trees, but the next one was $75!
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