It’s getting more real now

This is a ‘catch up’ post in our adventure of downsizing and embracing a nomadic lifestyle since I’ve been a bit distracted of late. We’re at day one of the ‘nomadic’ part of the adventure (still in Central Oregon for now) so I’ll add my thoughts on that this evening.

(11 April 2023) The past couple of weeks have seen a flurry of activity towards the sale of the house. There were several projects that had been on hold due to design questions (the railings on the deck) or motivation (a 75’ trench to properly bury an electrical cable to the hay shed) or weather (finishing up staining the skirting on the deck and refinishing the deck on the old house). 

Scheduling a real estate photographer to take listing photos and having a published ‘go live’ date for the listing put the pressure on to get those things sorted. Getting organized enough to have a professional come in and do an estate sale so we don’t have to waste hours and hours of our time as well as stressing out about pricing things we’ve become somewhat attached to. That’s a bigger burden for me than her, emotionally, but I came to a place of peace last week – basically, I said to myself “If you lost everything in a fire, what would you actually miss enough to replace?” If it ain’t on THAT list it’s going away in the sale.

We had been trying to get a load of gravel delivered and they kept blowing us off; finally on Thursday we got 10 yards of gravel. Photographer was scheduled for 10 a.m. on Monday so, no pressure, LOL. A combination of crap weather and a hydraulics problem with our tractor meant we wound up relying on our neighbor to come over with his skid steer to finish spreading it. Which was fine except he couldn’t do it until Monday morning and finished about 20 minutes before the photographer showed up.

Then on Tuesday we got a full-price offer. Which is ‘yay’ but also ‘Dude, we literally just spent $500 for photos YESTERDAY which I might as well have set on fire, LOL’

Presuming this goes forward – and I have no reason to think it won’t at this point – now we have a real deadline to not only get rid of 40 years’ accumulation of random stuff but also find someplace to live. Based on the way the offer was written, they are understanding of the fact that we need a little flexibility with the closing and moving dates so, that’s a positive. Realistically we have 6 weeks, maybe 8 at most, to find someplace to live for some number of months until we hit the road. The timeline for going nomadic is still flexible; our only ‘commitment’ is that I booked us a place to stay in Panama City in mid-November and told my friend that lives down there we’d be coming out to his area of the country after Thanksgiving weekend. Truly though, we could leave as soon as the sale of the house closes if we decided to. It would only require that we make that the plan and divest of the last of our stuff a bit sooner. 

I’ve reminded both organizations where I am a board member that my time is running down; our local road district is the shortest notice because once we move out of the neighborhood I’m no longer eligible to be on the board. 

In the process of getting ready to move we have sooo many small things to take care of. Particularly, in my case, since I have several cars in the project stage that need some level of work done in order to sell them for actual money. Our extended crummy weather is to blame, in a typical year we would have already had quite a few days of decent weather (above 50 and dry) so I would have been comfortable working outside. Since I am not at all okay with working outside when it’s below 45 and/or raining/snowing there are a lot of projects that got pushed back so now I’ll have to crunch.

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We had a bunch of showings when the house went ‘live’ but the initial offer stayed in play and we are now under contract. We’re actively trying to find a rental now since we will need to be out of here absolutely no later than June 1st. Lots of stuff to take care of in the next few weeks, too. 

Since we are reducing our lives to ‘a suitcase and a backpack each’ we need to deal with 40 years accumulation of random possessions. The boys have been over and picked up stuff they want and we hired an estate sale company to come in next weekend and handle the majority of it. 

There are a few things of special sentimental value we’ll be hanging onto so we picked up a couple of 27 gallon totes yesterday. Number one son already agreed to store them for us until we eventually settle somewhere. With full understanding that it could be 2 years or 10 before that happens. 

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So. Much. Stuff.

Over 40 years of traveling I have spent literal thousands of dollars on mementos and reminders that appear to have never actually meant anything or reminded me of anything because it was stored away in boxes. Now we have to deal with it. I have never owned a Harley but I had collected 26 HD shotglasses from dealerships around the country (not a thing they do internationally, it seems. I always look but I’ve only found t-shirts. That’s another troubling collection). Most of those shotglasses were in a box and wrapped in newspaper from Aug 2006. I think if I haven’t even seen a thing in almost 17 years it must not have been that important to me. 

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We had the estate sale over the weekend. We hired a company to do it and their normal mode of operation is to open the sale Thursday and Friday from 10:30 to 5 and then on Saturday everything is 50% off. They called a couple days ahead and announced that they didn’t think we had enough stuff to justify all 3 days so we told them that was fine but they weren’t getting a half price day and to go ahead and advertise it for three days anyway. 

We spent Saturday with the hardcore bargain hunters who love the final day of a sale. The good news is that we actually moved a lot of stuff to neighbors. The hard part was that since we just really want the stuff gone we were making some crazy deals. Next door got a 22’ extension ladder, an 8’ step ladder and a bunch of other stuff for $100.

What I found most interesting but probably shouldn’t have surprised me was the number of people who wouldn’t bite on ‘I don’t know, make me an offer’ so there were a few things that sold higher than I expected because people can’t or won’t negotiate. Someone had built a pile of stuff and wouldn’t make an offer so I’d say “I don’t know. Is that worth $100?’ and they’d agree to pay $100. I would have been happy with half that because I really want the stuff gone.

Also, it’s kind of fun to haggle a little bit. I had a router table marked at $75 and this guy asked if I would take $30. I said ‘Dude, there’s a router attached to it’ he replied ‘Yeah but it’s a Ryobi’ ‘Still, either item by itself would be over $100 new.’  We settled at $40 and it was fine. 

I had a couple of ‘what’s the least you’d take for <X>?’ to which I always – ALWAYS – reply “What’s’ the most you’d pay for it?” and it locks people up. That response is somehow super hard to deal with

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This week has been all about water. We lost water on Monday. Not the first time it’s happened over the 7 years we’ve been here, we had an issue when we first moved in with the cistern pumps – we share our well with our neighbor and apparently his pump sat (past tense, LOL) lower than ours in the cistern. He left a high pressure hose running all night and our pump was uncovered, which led to it burning up because they’re poorly designed. Seriously, who designs a $1,500 pump with no thermal protection? It’s water-cooled and if the pump runs dry it just continues to run until it burns up? 

This time we both lost water because the well pump stopped running and we had to have the professionals come out. They did all their basic testing and decided that either A) the well pump failed or B) we ran the well dry. So, best case scenario (replace the pump) is like $8,000 and worst case scenario (drill a new well) is closer to $100,000 (we’re already over 700’ deep) with a small but non-zero possibility of an in-between solution where the well might be able to be drilled deeper.

As it turned out, the water level was okay and the pump had failed. Phew. They went through all the data with us and we were able to work out that the level in the well had dropped by like 25 feet since 1979 and at the current level we had 13 feet of water. But the well was also drilled deeper than the pump was set so we opted to spend an extra few hundred bucks to have them drop the new pump another 10 feet. So if the trend holds steady it will be okay for 30 or more years. I mean, I truly only care about the next 6 weeks or so, but it was the right thing to do. 

With all that said and done we got the full damages this morning for replacing the pump and going deeper – Just a fast food meal under the $9,000 mark which is super irritating but not debilitating.

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(2 May 2023) We have business cards now. Oooooh, FANcy, LOL. They’re very cool and include some blank space on the back for notes which is a thing I would have hoped for but probably not thought of. 

In other news, Sandra has set up a Google map specifically for our travels so if you want to follow along you’ll be able to get a lot of info in a single place – The map will include layers for specific categories like countries, cities, restaurants, museums/galleries, attractions and then the pins will be color-coded to indicate the ‘trip status’ of that place. Orange for places we plan to visit, for example and then for restaurant/activity places once we DO visit they will be color-coded to indicate whether we think it’s a ‘must do’, a ‘cool if you aren’t pressed for time’ or “don’t bother, we weren’t impressed’. So you could pull up the map, display just the restaurant layer and see where we ate and whether we enjoyed or recommend it. There is room for notes on the pin so when you select a specific pin you’ll see our comments or a link to the corresponding blog post. I’m frequently amazed at the way she can make the technology sing and dance.

I’m super excited to get going; have I mentioned that yet? We’re 3 weeks from moving out of this house and into a tiny little studio in Redmond and about 6 months from getting on a plane. Like, a couple weeks away from actually buying tickets. 

I also got more serious about mapping out the travel schedule to get a better grip on the search for accommodations. Aside from the first stop in Panama City, everything is a placeholder. We won’t be traveling on the 1st of every month and we won’t be staying a calendar month in each location but it will be closer to that than not

Nov 15, 2023	Nov 28th	Panama City	Panama
Nov 29th	Dec 28th	Coronado	Panama
Dec 29th	Jan 25th	Boquete	Panama
Jan 26th, 2024	Feb 28th	David	Panama
Mar 1	Mar 30		Costa Rica
Apr 1	Apr 30	Hopkins	Belize
May 1	May 30	Dubrovnik	Croatia
Jun 1	Jun 30	Tuscany	Italy
Jul 1	Jul 31	Lisbon	Portugal
Aug 1	Aug 31		Scotland
Sep 1	Sep 30		England
Oct 1	Oct 15	Portland	USA
Oct 16	Nov 30		Panama

(18 May 2023)

The schedule above is probably super inaccurate now, LOL. Looks like we will be able to find pet and house sitting gigs; she’s already applied for two in England in April/May next year. That would be very awesome especially since they are near the Weymouth area so we’ll be able to do some of the genealogy research either right before or right after.

We signed all the paperwork for the sale of the house; that was a bit of a goat rope and we’ll be closing late but at least not as late as their mortgage broker was trying to get us to sign off on.