riverECHO

We heard some sad news yesterday. One of Jean’s puppies, 14 year old Barkley (on the right in the photo), was being put down. Barkley was one of the many critters that Jean so lovingly took home from a kill shelter. She lost Sundance, another retriever, just under a year ago. Needless to say it has been a tough year for her. But she still has two little guys at home, Salsa-the-crazy-black-cat and Scooter-the-crazy-terrier. Barkley played the middle man between the two before and although his best friend was Scooter, he had befriended (or tolerated) Salsa as well. Now it’s up to Salsa and Scooter to hash it out and start snuggling. Jean, we are thinking about you and very sorry about your loss. We know how much Barkley meant to you.

BJ woke up at 4am yesterday (8am in Jackson, Wyoming) to meet over Skype with Vertical Media. When I finally zombied out of bed he was already half way through his work day. His meetings went great and the solid internet connection that we have make us more optimistic about being able to work from just about anywhere. We spent the late afternoon watching people kite surf on the beach and then reading, eating fine cheese, drinking German beer, and listening to the birds sing on our deck next to our koi fish pond.

We’ve cooked the last two meals at “home” and it has been a nice surprise to go into the local grocery store and find much more than just meat pies, kebab, and vegemite (what BJ feared would consume our diets down under). After dinner we took a walk around the neighborhood. We stopped and smelled roses, honeysuckle, and lilies in front of a few different houses and tried to remember the last time we had “stopped and smelled the flowers.”

We find ourselves in a unique situation. We actually have the chance to test out a few places and decide if and where we want to stay during our 6 months in New Zealand. We like Nelson, but what if we like Wanaka or Queenstown or Dunedin more? For this week, at least, we are calling Nelson home and looking forward to enjoying the artsy and active community that lives here.

I have a feeling that we may be asking ourselves that a few times as we head on out on this little exploration.  But, honestly, I’m not 100% sure how it snuck up on us.  Today, we left our home, our friends and my family to head out into the larger world for an indefinite period of time.  I feel good…I feel sad…and I’m extremely excited.  The dream I’ve had swirling in the back of my head – is morphing into reality!

We have had this planned for over a year now.  And, although we have been preparing and organizing every bit of our lives over the past few months, we still ran out of time.

Now, we didn’t run out of time in getting ourselves in order.  We starting with purging all of the excess in our lives…we sold it all…and a few of you out there got some screaming deals!  We then started to acquire new minimized items that would fit the lifestyle we will be living – and also fit into a single backpack each (yes, that includes my office).  It was then on to finances and insurance. Its amazing the amount of research you can put into somethine like this.  From best international rates on credit cards, to atm fees, to health insurance options and on and on.

In fact, we ended up tackling items that weren’t even on the radar a few months ago.  Refinance the house – sure, we had a few weeks left, why not?  Hire a new employee to work alongside myself at Vertical Media – that’ll be quick and easy, right?  In any case, it all came together after some long hours and some amazing “get ‘er done” skills from Lisa.  We wouldn’t be ready if it wasn’t for her!

However, we still ran out of time to take in what we both wanted to before we left…Family and Friends.  Although we were able to “see” almost everyone, each and every one of our visits was way too short and I can’t help but feel slightly empty on our departure.  Yes, one of the greatest things we will miss is the little creature that has joined our lives for the past two years as he has no way to visit us…Good-bye Salsa.  And although we have been living with my mom for the past 6 months, I don’t even feel like we actually said good-bye (but we will see you in March to celebrate your birthday!).

It is likely that I’m feeling this a bit more than Lisa tonight as we are currently headed to Phoenix (on the plane now with complimentary beers!) to spend the next two nights with her Grandparents.  It is then off to San Francisco on Sunday night where we will stay with Lisa’s mother and step-father until Thursday with a going away bbq on Tuesday.  Again though, it will be short, and we will be on that plane in only 6 short days!

The world awaits and my emotions are currently like the sea we are soon to cross.  Troughs of sadness for those we just left, a building anticipation for what is over the next horizon, and pure excitement for every moment we are about to create.

BJ, Jean, her two dogs Barkley and Scooter, and I loaded the car and began our drive to Taos, NM at 5:30am on Saturday morning. We had over 14 hours to drive and we wanted to arrive to our rental Airstream Trailer (more on that later) with enough time to enjoy a good soak in the hot tub. But just south of Jackson as the sun began to rise behind the cloudy skies, it began to snow and the number of cars that were already off the road started to increase as we headed further south. We quickly realized that our 14 hour drive may take longer than expected. BJ and I took turns fighting the wind and rain that was at our back for the entire drive until we hit a monsoon and lightning in El Raton in northern New Mexico at around 8pm and decided to get a hotel room for the night. We didn’t realize we had turned off at the Taos exit because all the highway signs had been blown down and as Jean put it, “those are bad signs,” no pun intended. So we called it a night and found a clean hotel room in Raton for the night.

After our fix of cable tv, continental breakfast, and weak coffee, we loaded the doggies and pointed the car west to Taos, just a short 2 hour drive. Taos greeted us with cloudy but warm skies, more galleries than we could count, and many small pot-holed side streets that made us feel like we were truely in Mexico. We followed our directions out of town and down a long dirt road to arrive at, by far, the quaintest accommodation in Taos–our very own Airstream trailer, complete with patio, grill, hot tub, and of course, the World Wide Web. It’s cozy with the 5 of us, but we’re excited to call it home for the week. We lunched in town at an Italian restaurant (I know, I know, we were looking for chile rellenos), and then quickly came back home to relax and read our stack of New Mexico travel guides. We have a small list of must-sees this week like the Taos Pueblo, the High Road to Santa Fe, eating lots of chile rellenos, and, most importantly, RELAXING at our house in Taos.

Last night we pointed our 4Runner North around 6:30pm and headed for my mom’s place in Ashton, Idaho. Ashton is a small, sleepy town about 40 miles away from our home in Victor. However, the road has been closed a good portion of this winter due to the incredible amounts of snow and wind that rip across the potato fields between here and there. It took a little while to get up there as we were going a bit slower than usual…but, when we arrived, a roasted chicken awaited us!

We fell asleep pretty early that night as I think we were all exhausted, both physically and emotionally. The next morning, we headed “downtown” after some eggs and bacon! This was the first time that I have actually seen living, breathing, moving people in town. There were probably about 300-400 folks down there and about 150 sled dogs. This was the 91st running of the annual event and it brought out a pretty good crowd.

We spent our time meandering through the crowd, with my mother introducing us to all of the “locs”. Let me tell you, there are quite some characters up there in little old Ashton…and this was an event to get out to for all of them! We then found ourselves down by the first turn after the start and ran into a TV Reporter who cornered my mom and had her deliver an interview for the weekend news.

We then headed back to her cabin and spent a few hours planning a trip that we hope to take this Fall to the Yucatan Peninsula of Mexico. My mother is booking her flights for October 2 into Cancun, of which we hope to get straight out of and into the historic Mayan peninsula. With all three of us diligently “googling” the region, we found some great little areas that we are excited to visit and spend some time in when we get down there.

We had then planned to head over to Grand Targhee in the early afternoon for a bit of skiing. Yet, it was simply too comfortable and we ended up lounging around all day long. After multiple re-runs of Sex in the City and Seinfeld…dinner was ready…What! Whoa, how the time flies by. So, after sitting down and enjoying some homemade chicken noodles and rolls, we loaded up the rig and pointed South…back to Victor. Time to rest up for another day at Jackson Hole Mountain Resort tomorrow.