Almost there....

One day and counting!  Yesterday was lease signing and key collecting and the start of celebrating.

We three: cottage, car and me

A friend went with me and we had a celebratory lunch on the beach.  Since some of you have been asking, here are some preliminary shots. Some are of the house as it is and others of the area.  More to come... but here we are.  

The first is the view from the street: the three of us: me, the car, the house.  Shake shingle, fun little front yard with lots of Rhododendren and other plants I know yet.  Quiet little residential street a couple of blocks to town in one direction and a block and a half from the beach in anotheron

     

Walking out the front door, turning left and crossing the street that runs through town, then following a path puts one on the beach just in front of Haystack Rock.  A couple of miles through town or down the beach gets you to Ecola State Park.   From that overlook with Brett a couple of months ago before, I had only dreamed of finding a place on this beach.  There's a lot to be said for "dreaming!"

And now for the house...  In the back is a nice sized deck and a small storage building which I may need to put to use, but I sense another round of purging coming up.  My goal is to simplify, keeping only those things that have real value (emotional or practical) and letting someone else make use of the rest.  Glad there are so many Goodwill outlets in the area!

 And here we are inside. Remember, I haven't moved in and what you see is the "furnished" part.  My stuff will be added shortly but there's a small living room with the basics, a bedroom to the right, kitchen, etc. Although the owners were lamenting the eccentricities of the dishwasher, washer and dryer, given my time in Uganda I'm thrilled with even the presence of such things. No more rushing home to get laundry off the line before it gets rained on, stolen or eaten by termites; No more hoping there's water for washing dishes.  Perspective is a wonderful thing.
 

Left is the attic a.k.a. future meditation room, weaving studio and guest room!   The two beds are included as furnishings.

As we surveyed the space, walked along the beach and then had lunch at the little place below, I was periodically amazed by the realization that this is the little place, the beach and the community I've been visualizing and creating in my mind for so many years - right down to the shake-shingles on the cottage.  

Now to actually move in a start creating the rest of the scene!

Thanks Merrily for going with me and making it a fun day, the celebratory lunch and for your pictures!  The beach in the background is what I'll be walking every day rain or shine, warm or cold! Too bad I left those rain bots in Uganda....

Hurry-up and Wait!

Hurry up and wait....  So that's what I did - hurried and hurried and hurried and now I am waiting!   Karla and I hurried all up and down the coast of Oregon looking for a place for me to live, to unload my stuff, etc.  Karla drove, Garmina navigated and I hoped...   It was Labor Day weekend and no one answered phones or e-mails or returned calls... It's the last big hurrah on the Oregon coast.  So I unloaded by stuff - again - but you know that part.

After three years of being transient and rootless (Peace Corps plus Mexico) the need to put down roots has become almost an obsession, so this part of the waiting has become a challenge. Waiting for Peace Corps to make up its mind was practice for this part.

Haystack Rock

I finally got a call from the only place that looked promising (a cottage Karla found on craigslist) - having looked at a whole slew of places that were really depressing.   On the 15th I drove the 2.5 hours to the coast and had four places lined up to view.    The first was the little cottage, just what I visualized - with four other people in line after me to see the place.  No choice but the wait and see who the owners would choose... with so many people looking and so few places available, it's a landlord's choice.  The remaining three places were like closets - no room even for my thinned down collection of belongings.  The waiting was excruciating because the cottage was in cannon beach, my town of choice, famous for it's beached, Haystack Rock and Ecola State Park near by.

Ecola State Park

My stars must have been in alignment because I got the cottage.   Again - waiting - till October 1st to move in.  It's a precious shake-shingle one bedroom with converted loft, a block and a half from the beach, a block and a half from the middle of the town of Cannon Beach and partially furnished so I don't have to run out immediately and buy any big pieces like a mattress set, couch, TV...

In another step toward "normal," I now have a car - 2011 Honda Fit!  The freedom is intoxicating, but I have also discovered it's a little strange...  almost like driving in another country: 

• $500 for driving with a hand-held telephone (your's truly opting for simplicity doesn't have hand's free)
• B-I-G tickets for accidentally drifting into the bike lane or turning across it outside the dotted lines...
• Randomly placed flashing (tiny lights) pedestrian walks: when flashing mean S-T-O-P  
• Against the law to pump you own gas - fines for that too! ($200)
• Fine's double in "safety corridors," - never mind school zones!

Note: Oregon has no sales tax, so it makes up the revenue with traffic fines.  At least the still drive on the right side of the road.

It's cool and lovely, though I have discovered that November through February at lease, the coast gets about 12" of rain per month.  Too bad I gave a way my big rubber gum-boots (rain boots) in Uganda.  Whodathunk I would need them here?     Well I am ready for for cooler, wetter and seasons that go beyond Uganda's rainy or dry and Texas' hot and hotter.  Loking forward to finding out how Oregon feels over the long haul and discovering whale watching, crabbing and storm watching, to mention a few new "seasons." 

Another Returned Peace Corps friend of mine (not Africa) recently sent me quote from Henri Matisse

 that relates well to life or at least the life of "a traveler." It goes like this:

“Each picture, as I finish it, seems like the best thing I have ever done... and yet after a while I am not so sure. It is like taking a train to Marseille. One knows where one wants to go. Each painting completed is like a station— just so much nearer the goal. The time comes when the painter is apt to feel he has at last arrived. Then, if he is honest, he realizes one of two things — either that he has not arrived after all or that Marseille... is not where he wanted to go anyway, and he must push further on.” Henri Matisse

I don't know if Cannon beach will be my Marseille, or another stop along the way, but I plan to immerse myself fully, discover what we have to offer each other and enjoy the process of continued discovery.  I do know, that - like a painting - I've been mentally painting in the details of ach room as I wait to move in.  And there are certain pieces of personality that endure where ever one goes, and other aspects that emerge only when offered an opportunity that's new enough to bring out latent talents, the shadow, or pieces of coal that needed pressure and time to become diamonds.

We'll see what pops up and what falls away...    What I do know is that I am being very selective about what I add back in to this phase of life, starting essentially with a blank canvas.  Choosing a simpler way of living,  closer to nature and as "off the grid" and still being able to do the consulting I love.   Sometimes that's more complicated that it should be - in the "first world."

Setteling down for a while....

I have finally reached a point where I can stand still.....  Karla - my navigator, co-conspirator and friend has flown back to her real life and things here are quiet - if you don't count the vibrating base coming from the downstairs apartment. 

Since arriving it's been an interesting quest and a strange stage of life.  On one hand this feels like just another trip - a place I will be for a while to explore.  Then again I've never driven a thirty foot truck full of my life to get to "just another place."  Periodically, when I have a moment that's not dedicated to figuring out which lane to be in, I shift into another state of awareness that remembers I'm moving my life half way across the country.  And while I have planned this, looked forward to this and am excited - I am also periodically enveloped in a cloud of angst and uncertainty about what comes next.

One thing I have not been is BORED.  I think you have to go through Boring to get to Bored...  I've been near, but not there yet... Here's the sign.  

As we were leaving Austin and waiting for the light to change at the intersection of Hwy 183 and Loop 360 a beautiful white haired black homeless man sitting on the median locked eyes with us and gave us the most beatific smile and the thumbs up. We exchanged smiles and from that point on the trip felt blessed.  I am holding on to that sense of blessing and exchange of goodwill and remind myself of the joy exchanged in that moment as a harbinger of good things to come. And thus far this journey has felt very synchronistic:  every time there has been a question or a need, the answer, place or person has appeared.  I like that. 

In some ways, this is feeling more like another country than another state.  This  one has mountains, big green trees, fog, cooler air, lots of water and lots of bike lanes and new traffic rules.  There are strange signs:  "drag chains required..." and we were stopped in Seaside for our wheel going over the 8" white line separating a bike lane from traffic. Not that I'm unfamiliar with bike-lanes and the need to stay out of them, but there seems to be a difference in the way one handles an 8" line and a 4" line.  I feel a new vocabulary coming on.   And there is a strange white substance that falls from the sky - not yet - but warnings appear everywhere.  I think this is going to require a different wardrobe.

When I started out, I was confounded as to how I was going to handle the logistics of finding a place, unloading the truck, turning in the truck, renting a car, seeing Brett off on his great cross country adventure, getting Brett's car, returning the rental car and getting Karla to the airport - all of which had to be done in three days.  All of it was impossible to plan, because there were too many missing pieces.  Ultimately. I had to just allow things to develop in their own time and all of it fell into place in a sequence I couldn't have predicted.

The day spent at the Japanese gardens was a needed escape, especially since the day spent investigating the coast and all days thereafter produced nothing in terms of lodging. It did, however, give me information about where I really want to be and that's Seaside or - preferably - Cannon Beach.  Since each of these little communities has a very specific personality it was time to spend some actually time on the beach and literally get the feel of the place.  We ate great seafood, watched a fabulous sunset and found a fun little motel near the beach, everything having cleared out of holiday revelers except a large contingent of young Russians.

Jeff and Bernard at the finish!

We headed back to Hillsboro and wandered into the old historic district for dinner and to our great surprise, discovered the Tuesday Night Art Crawl with free food. By the next morning it was time to get the truck back and that mean unloading.  No place to move meant unloading into a storage unit in time to get the truck returned and I dreaded the idea of driving it through Portland again to get to Mt. Hood area to return it where I'd originally planned.  Once again, a better option presented itself and I was able to unload two blocks down the road and return the truck to the same place.   Since we rented a car  under Karla's name (hard/ expensive  to rent a car with no car insurance) we now had wheels that were not attached to a 30-foot truck.  A  snappy little red Hundai, it was soon dubbed Hot Little Number.

Lucky gals that we are, we found these cute guys to unload Guadalupe into the last 10x10 unit available!   Wow - what a feeling to be free of the truck and have my "life" safely installed in a free-for-thirty-days-climate-controlled unit!  Three of the big things had resolved themselves.

The next day, was the first day of Brett's great adventure - a cross country trip on his new Kawasaki 650 motorcycle from Port Flattery, WA to Key West, FL. And in another stroke of luck, we were able to meet and I got to give him

and hug and see him on his way.  Funny that the place most convenient was a Krispy Kreme Donuts!  I didn't even know they had them in Oregon - it was  my secret guilty pleasure in Austin!  All sugared up, Brett left on his journey and we headed in the opposite direction toward his apartment in Welches to pick up his car, return the rental and hold up in the midst of tall green trees with hiking trails nearby. The last three pieces fell into place!

Somewhere in the confusion of vehicles and moving here and there I got a response from a craigslist advertisement for a "Cannon Beach Cottage!  So I'm hopeful.  Can't look at it until September 14, but am at least in contact with the owners.  It looks cute so far - furnished with basic neutral things so I can move my few accent pieces in not have to buy bigger pieces yet.  So hold good thoughts for me while I wait.

Thanks to Garmina, I found the Portland airport and dropped Karla off for her flight back to normalcy.  Now to find a car...

Trucker chics...

The last week has been quite the adventure starting last Sunday with loading the truck.  What started as a plan to drive a small U-Haul (thinking a baby 10-foot truck) grew and grew.   While I did purge about 75% of my life and belongings before Peace Corps, I still managed to fill and 8X10 storage, with mostly boxes and a few pieces of sentimental furniture including granddaddy's haunted deacon's chair, the impossibly heavy 1800's table around which I heard my first tales of family clairvoyance and hands-on-healing, the first piece of furniture I bought post-divorce, a childhood table and tons of artwork and odds-and-ends of memorabilia from around the world - plus - you know - regular paraphernalia required for conducting life.  That amounts to about 650 cubic feet of STUFF, translating to a 14 foot truck expertly loaded.  That turned into a 17-foot truck to accommodate the possibility of not-so-expert loading and THAT morphed into a 20-foot truck by pick-up date because they didn't have a 17-foot one.    With each additional foot in length, my anxiety level ratcheted up by an order of magnitude.     What is life for if not to worry....    but my friend Lizzy kept telling me I was making too big of a deal out of it and so I took a deep breath and hoped for a Xanax.And - just for the record a 20-foot U-Haul is NOT 20-feet long ... It's 30 feet - or so.

Forget the big-girl-panties.....  I went for the jock-strap and channeled my "inner-trucker."  It seems to have worked.  My good friend Karla from Peace Corps has achieved sainthood status because she flew over to make the trip with me.  Not sure what I did to deserve this generosity, but I picked her up on Saturday and now, here we are in Oregon.  How will I ever thank her!

Driving the truck back on Sunday after loading was a little like it must feel taking your first step on a tight-rope while holding an elephant by the tail.   I was scared to even attempt the steep hill going to Lizzie's house, but the only other option was to drive half way around Austin to avoid it.  I was relieved to discover it did not in fact stall half way up as I had imagined....

Karland and I with our weapon of choice

And  I'm sure you all will be glad to know we heeded suggestions that we take a weapon for self-defense. Refusing recommendations of a gun, pepper spray or wasp/bear spray we opted for a fierce hand-rake that presented itself during loading.    Soon every car will be equipped with one. 

From that inauspiciously fearful beginning, we have now accomplished a 45 hour drive of  roughly 2400 miles,  transiting Texas, New Mexico, a corner of Colorado, Utah, Idaho and Oregon in a truck with a gasoline addiction resulting in the consumption of 350 gallons of gas (8 mpg). We accomplished the entire trip in what seemed to be a state of grace. Karla's navigating saved the day and made it possible without total madness and the purchase of a female-voiced Garmin navigator we named Garmina has made me fall in love with technology.  Interesting sights along the way kept us totally engaged and entertained.

Driving through the desolate no-man's-land of West Texas we crested a hill and had to immediately dodge the debris of a blown-out tire. While still wondering what vehicle had survived that blow-out, the other side of the hill offered up a scene right out of a fifties' movie:  two ancient white school buses snugged up to each other facing opposite directions and surrounded by six grim looking armed guards  policing the transfer of prisoners.   We didn't think it wise to stop for pictures.

We continued on for a total of thirteen hours that day and settled into a routine. On every trip concessions must be made to accommodate space and time limitations.  On this trip, there was no CD player for books on tape or music.  But with Karla - for whom every site triggers a song,  there was always music.  For me, it's stories, so between songs and tall-tales, we managed to keep each other entertained, if not a little crazed.  One of those concessions was not about to be good coffee, so at each unloading of more bags than a traveling circus, the one with coffee, french press and fixin's plus an ice box with the half-and-half had highest priority.  Waking up at 5:30 each morning - usually with a headache brought on by driving 10 hours the day before - yours truly (that would be me) greeted the day with a primal scream for coffee and started the ritual of figuring out how to make said coffee using the various contraptions available on site.  Some mornings required a heating element purchased in Mexico, some resulted in messes that could only be described as volcanic, and others employed various contraptions mimicking a stone-age Starbucks. All required the focus of a chemist.   But in the end - there was C-O-F-F-E-E to jump start the process of cognition sufficient to transit another 500 miles.

There were bizarre moments of mental lapses so aberrant that - had I been elsewhere - might have resulted in a scene out of One Flew Over the Cookoo's Nest.   Consumed in an examination of a lever I'd already used for a day, but which boasted a sign for a device  about which I know nothing - I asked in the most earnest of voices "what do you think this lever is for... it looks like it has a purpose"  Karla, looking incredulous and more than a little spooked at the prospect of continuing another 2000 miles with this mad woman, suggested it might be for shifting gears, at which point a deafening silence ensued. The incapacitating laughter that erupted when I came out of the time warp returns unbidden every time we think about it.  Some things are simply inexplicable.   Maybe we were just preparing for Roswell of alien fame.  We hadn't originally planned that stop, but as the route unfolded,  Jeannie's directions brought us right through Roswell and its ubiquitous supply of "little green men." This one was the greeter at the Motel 6. 

Jeannie, Me and most of Karla

After a night in a dank and smoke infested Roswell Motel 6 (the alien was of no help) we managed to  arrive in Albuquerque to meet up with another Peace Corp friend, Jeannie and had a great visit.  Wish we had a friend like Jeannie at every stop along the way as she really made us feel so welcome and well cared for.  Professional truckers that we are and each of us taking care of different things, not always checking in with the other - we drove out of Albuquerque on Day 2 to the sound of a small horn beeping behind us only to discover that Jeannie was not just giving us a a grand send- off, but warning us that we'd left the back of the truck open!  How the mighty truckers had fallen and been reduced once again to the realm of mere mortals.   So grateful were we that our stupidity was discovered before we got on the highway, that we almost forgot to be embarrassed.  Thanks to Jeannie we were spared the abject humiliation of it happening it 8 o'clock Albuquerque traffic.

Shortly after that fiasco - laughing all the way - Jeannie's improved routing took us past a resort where eight hot-air balloons were readying for lift off against the morning sky.  Spectacular.  The scenery that took us up to Colorado gave truth to New Mexico's title as the Land of Enchantment.  

Colorado was surprising in that we went across the southwest corner that looks like a moonscape with desolate buff-gray rounded land forms that gave way to Utah and its jaw-dropping surreal landscapes of red rock sculptures, arches and canyons.  Just as we thought it couldn't get any more spectacular,  dramatic dark cloud formations dumping swaths of rain danced across the horizon occasionally gracing us with a shower to clean off the dust collected along the way.

Getting through Provo and Boise, Idaho kept us on our toes as we kept the U-Haul, newly christened Guadalupe after Our of Guadalupe (you can't drive something 2400 miles without giving it a name) moving forward as Garmina would periodically remind us to "stay on road."    Who would have guessed she had a sense of humor?    I wish her expertise extended to motels, because the next night we landed at a new and improved version of Motel 6 where the AC abandoned us.  That made us determined to find another option,  so we  reserved a room at the lovely looking Dunes Motel in Hillsboro (the coast having NO VACANCIES because of the holiday) and arrived to discover it surrounded by yellow hazard tape and absent siding.  Photo-shop is a grand invention.  

Road signs and place markers did their part to keep us entertained and wondering about the fate they suggested: Dismal Nitch, Dead Horse Canyon, Starvation Road, Poverty Lane, Hells Bend and Humbug Cove.

And Guadalupe never met a gas pump she didn't love.  We spent a lot of time nurturing her addiction. Gas prices got worse as we went west and we spent about $1200 feeding our trusty transport.  But otherwise, she treated us well and was surprisingly comfortable, if you don't count needing back support for the driver. At the last minute, Liz donated a bath mat that served that purpose.  Improvisation turned out to be a valuable skill on this trip.

Coming into Oregon from the south east was shocking as we saw a part of the state that echoed the moon-scape feel of parts of Colorado, Texas and Utah, punctuated by hundreds of towering white wind turbines turning against the back drop of a bluebird sky.




 
 Driving under the Welcome to Oregon arch gave me chill-bumps as I realized how long I have planned for and thought about this move.  When the Columbia River and Mount Hood came into view it was nothing short of a spiritual experience.

We abandoned Garmina's logical best-route commands when I decided to turn off and take the back way into Portland via Mt. Hood and Timberline to visit Brett.  I couldn't possibly be that close and opt for logic over heart and miss the opportunity to hug Brett in celebration of arrival.  Approaching 11,000 feet,  Guadalupe gasped a little, but pulled her weight and made it up the winding roads without a glitch.  Getting to the top caused some angst when I realized I would have to get her down 6% slopes without riding the brakes.  We managed to piss-off a few drivers behind us, but put her in  low gear and snaked our way down.

No U-Haul trip would be complete without navigating and taking a wrong turn in a city during rush-hour the Friday before a holiday.   We obliged and thought we might implode from hysterical stress-induced laughing as we squeezed across a two land winding bridge tailgated by a schoolbus full of football players.  The driver had the good sense not to pass us, knowing no doubt that the drivers didn't know what they were doing - a generalized assumption about U-Haul drivers that is probably well deserved. 

It's not an exaggeration to say that the trip thus far has felt truly blessed.  At every juncture, it has been easier than expected.  When there was threatening weather all around us,  the road through it seemed to open up.  Guadalupe has been comfortable and accommodating, despite her guzzling addition to gasoline.  The loading was so well organized that nothing appears to have shifted and there have only been two  glitches in routing over the entire route.  We've laughed more than I thought possible, eaten some truly awful combinations of food (fried chicken, corn dogs, Cheetos, road food) .....   OK - so the food has not been so blessed.  But otherwise it has been a remarkable journey and the rest of it is just beginning.

We have checked out Astoria, a major seaport at the mouth of the Columbia River, Seaside and Cannon Beach for rental possibilities, but of course everything is closed for Labor Day weekend and no one has returned calls since property management companies are closed.  Flexibility being the byword here,  we spent the day at the Japanese Garden and Rose Garden in Portland.   Tomorrow we'll explore Lincoln City and on Tuesday hopefully there will be some movement!