The Road Less Traveled

In my recent post, I alluded to the desire to “relax” after our year in New Zealand and move to Gig Harbor. Our one big trip though was going to be a Disney Cruise, as my gift to Cindy for her 50th birthday (40th actually, since we decided to count backwards after 45…!). And of course a long July 4th holiday weekend at Cannon Beach, Oregon, our favorite place on the coast. Oh yes, then we’re hosting a friend from New Zealand in August (sort of a reverse-trip). Then the two unexpected ones that have come up, followed by the idea of going back to New Zealand in 2009 to keep our visas active - but that would fall in a different year, so it doesn’t count right now!

The first unexpected trip arose from Sarah having six weeks on her own between her semester studying abroad in Greece and a design program in Italy. I had (naively) assumed there would be groups of students getting together to travel around Europe after the program was over, it being summer and all. But apparently many were heading straight home, or just weren’t what Sarah was looking for in travel companions - sounded like many were more interested in the best places to party rather than roaming the back-roads and by-ways and examining the architecture as Sarah is wont to do. (Wonder where she inherited that trait…! ) We had certainly considered the idea of using Sarah being in Greece and Italy as an excuse to visit, but the timing was wrong for us - besides not wanting to travel much for awhile, there is the expense (especially with the U.S. dollar in the toilet), and it would also be in the high season. We would much rather go in September, for example, now that Sarah and Max are off to college.

But after hearing “I think traveling alone for a month will make me go
crazy, for want of companionship and support when things go wrong” and reading “That’s it, I can’t travel alone. It’s all well and good when things go smoothly, but when the going gets tough, the stressed out Sarah-bean becomes completely miserable”, we began to change our mind. How many more chances will we get to spend time alone with our daughter? And after having two lack-luster summer breaks (the first in New Zealand with us, away from friends, in winter, the second alone in Portland commuting by bus every day to a summer class at Portland State), we hated the idea of her going through a third one. (Yes, it builds character, but Sarah has had plenty of character-building experiences by this point!)

So, we made the decision to go, and started trying to decide what to do. None of us wanted to be running all over seeing sights, and would prefer a small town where we could experience “living”, with lots of walking opportunities, preferably along a beach! Also, being fairly settled, I could put in some work hours both to defray the cost and the impact of being out of the office for a month. As luck would have it, through the miracle of family connections, we were able to book Dr. Osborne and Julianne’s place in Altea, Spain. Clearly this was well-received by Sarah - “But life is truly good. In my bout of loneliness after Corfu, I asked my parents to help me — there was no way I was going to get through a month traveling through Italy with my sanity unscathed. So they did the best thing ever, and booked an apartment in Spain (thank you Julianne and Dr. Osborne!).” Music to a parent’s ear! We grabbed some round-trip tickets to Paris that showed up on special one day, deciding to add a few days on the end in Paris as part of our 25th wedding anniversary year. Then we arranged flights to meet Sarah in Barcelona, and spend a few days there before heading down the coast to Altea.

The other unexpected trip still in the draft stage is taking Sarah to Hawaii to meet a retired NASA engineer who is looking to tutor someone in the art of inventing. Probably sometime this fall, to see if the two of them “click”, and it becomes an opportunity for Sarah to pursue after graduation next year. A mutual friend who introduced us to the idea thinks Sarah is a perfect fit, and Sarah is excited to pursue the possibility.

And what about Max during all these escapades? He has just wrapped-up his first year at college, plans to continue his summer career in an architecture office on Bainbridge Island, and spend his money thus earned to fly down to Los Angeles to visit a friend. And hopefully he will pick a suitable place to study abroad in a couple years so we have an excuse for Travelmania 2010!

Well, it’s been almost a year-and-a-half since I wrote in my blog - I keep meaning to “get caught up”, but of course that never seems to actually happen. I will have to find a way to back-date all the draft posts I have from New Zealand.

I can’t believe that the last time I wrote I was still in New Zealand! So, what new roads have there been for me/us since then?

(Now, this blog is about my “Roads Less Traveled”, meaning the meanderings and branches in my road through life. Not necessarily roads less travelled in the real world - for that, go read something like Dervla Murphy’s “Full Tilt: Ireland to India With a Bicycle” or “Where the Indus is Young: A Winter in Baltistan”. Crazy Irishwoman!)

We came back from our year with the intent of moving closer to Cindy’s family, and then staying put and relaxing for a bit. Not doing any travel, working in the yard… And what do we end up with? Possibly one of the busiest travel years! But that’s fodder for a future post! (Hopefully not a year-and-a-half from now!)

Yes, it’s November, but that makes it springtime in New Zealand! It was a beautiful day outside today, and I just had to get out for a walk after work. (And Cindy said it was below freezing back home - down in the 20’s and 30’s, Farenheit) Walking down into Takapuna, you could just smell springtime in the air. Got a burger at Burger Fuel, sat in the park and read for awhile, then walked the length of Takapuna beach and back (to work off that burger!). The moon was rising above Rangitoto Island, a ship caught in the evening light heading out from Auckland, waves lapping on the shore - the usual perfect evening. Except that Cindy wasn’t with me - I do look forward to getting home a week from Saturday to be together again.

So what have I been doing? Obviously not writing my blog much, though I have so much I want to write about. (I guess I’ll have to back-date the posts when I actually get them written!) Well, obviously from the last post, returning to the States to get Max back for the beginning of the school year. We had a relaxing and busy month (which I’ll write about Real Soon Now), then I had to return to New Zealand to finish up my year commitment to Navman (and meet the IRS requirements to be out of the country for a year to qualify for foreign income exclusion!).

And instead of a relaxing six weeks of wrapping-up work, walking on the beach and writing blog entries, it has taken an amazing amount of time to sort, pack, sell, and ship my remaining stuff. (That’s a blog entry in itself!) I’ve certainly done a couple excursions (yes, yes, I will be writing about those as well), but shutting-down and transitioning a household is a heckuva lot of work. Oh yes, and we’ve also been buying a house in Gig Harbor as well - dealing with my half of that project remotely has also been somewhat time-consuming!

Okay, so I have a huge backlog of things to write about - maybe after I get back I’ll have time to just walk on the beach with Cindy and write…

I can’t believe it’s been a month since I’ve written! I keep meaning too, but keep finding other things that need to be done, or not in the mood, or stressed out about plans and changes. So what’s been going on? We were hoping for a move to a rental in Takapuna closer to the beach, but we had to find a renter for our place first, since we had a lease until October. The rental market is dead at the moment though, and we’ve had no bites. Plus the whole move has been overshadowed by other decisions. Sarah’s been here, which has been fun. We’ve done a couple caving trips, which I’ll write about next. I spent a number of evenings sorting through some old work files (which I also want to write about), we spent time planning a road trip for when Cindy’s sister visits, but the most stressful has been coming to terms with our decision to return to the States.

We told friends and family that we were planning to spend “a year or two” down here, one year so as not to upset family too much, two years allowing Max to finish High School down here without disrupting his schooling again. Cindy has been missing her family a lot, as well as the holiday seasons - Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas in the winter instead of in summer. Max has been doing fine academically in school, but has not been happy with the different school environment and classroom approaches, and has not really made any friends.

The decision to return could be easy, except that I really like it here, I was in no hurry to return to the same-old-same-old, and we put a lot of effort into coming down here in terms of time, money, stress, paperwork, moving, job change, etc., etc. Also, I have a year commitment to Navman (or repay moving expenses), and a year commitment to avoid paying double-taxes (have to be resident outside the US for a year to qualify for foreign tax credit).

So, we have struggled through many options, but have come up with a plan for the shorter term and the longer term. Coming here was to grab an opportunity to live and work abroad rather than just travel through a place on vacation, and an opportunity to get away from friends, family, Bainbridge, and America to gain perspective on it all, and clarify our thoughts and goals.

For years we’ve been planning our dream cottage, but didn’t know where to build it. Unhappy with the growth and changes on Bainbridge, but unwilling to move the kids out of school - it was almost easier to move 10,000 miles away rather than 10. One clarification we’ve achieved in coming here was where to go next, and that is Gig Harbor to be closer to Cindy’s family.

But we were going to focus on the experience here for the two years, so as not to disrupt Max’s schooling again. However, with his growing unhappiness and discontent, it seems the best option is to return to let him attend his Senior year back at Bainbridge High School.

This all came to a head over the past couple weeks, and our two year timetable became one year, with only a couple months left. Beyond the stress of coming to terms with this, there is suddenly a huge logistical load - figuring out transferring of school credits (since the school years don’t line up), moving, work, and a million little things like mail, phones, banks, insurance, cars, etc., etc.

The short term plan currently is to fly back up in the first week of September, which will allow Max to finish the classroom work for the year here, and complete his internal exams. We’d love to come a week earlier, both for Max to have a few days to settle in before starting school, and to do some activities over the Labor Day weekend, but to ensure transfer of credit he really needs to complete at least the internal exams. (The fourth term of school here for the upper level students is essentially study time for the external exams at the end of the year.) So this means Max will miss the first couple days of school, but so be it.

I will spend a month to get Cindy and Max get settled, to visit family and friends, and then return to New Zealand to finish out my year commitment. As the weather will be getting nicer at that point, I hope to do some type of South Island trek before heading back to what will then be winter in the Northern Hemisphere.

Longer term plan will be to buy or build a place in Gig Harbor, once Max is out of school. This gives us the school year to figure out if we keep the Bainbridge house as a rental or sell it, fix it up accordingly, and scope out options in Gig Harbor.

Tomorrow I buy plane tickets.

After my last post on the Coastbusters Sea Kayaking Symposium, Kathryn wrote saying that it sounded like I was “having a really stimulating time down in NZ what with the kayaking and the caving”. Sounds like I’ve been out on an adventure every weekend, but really it’s only been one caving trip and one kayaking trip in the six months we’ve been here.

My reality isn’t really much different from most other people - work five days a week, balancing work time, family time, chores, and occasional personal time. It just so happens that I’ve only written about the good stuff so far!

Why, I’ve enjoyed spending the last couple weekends before Easter looking into the joys of US taxes - New for this year: moving expenses, foreign income, college expenses, rental income! Then I get to do it all again for New Zealand taxes!

And to add to the joy, in just a two day period I managed to kill the car battery by leaving the lights on, scrape the car backing into the garage, and smash my foot along the pavement.

See? It’s not all fun and games…

Another birthday gone by last week, but that’s ok, because Cindy and I decided to start going backwards after 45, so now I’m down to 42! Cindy hid a card in my bike bag to discover at work, and put up streamers and “Happy Birthday” sign to surprise me when I got home, then Cindy and Max took me out to dinner, and gave me a couple fun gifts - perfect!

I’ve started putting photos on my Flickr site - just a few now, but more coming soon.

I got a chance to go out on the company boat to do some testing last week - photos here. It was neat to see boats stacked up at Orams Marine. And we also got to see the awesome Earthrace boat as well.

Sarah writes about an upcoming game called Spore from the people who came up with the Sim games - the video demo here shows how cool it is, basically “Sim Everything”, allowing you to build creatures, towns, worlds, even travel to other worlds. I guess I know what will be on hers and Maxs Christmas lists next year!

Our favorite cute New Zealand commercial can be seen here. Let me know if you like it!

We are of course fans of Lord of the Rings. I’ve had a poster since high school with a favorite poem, which isn’t part of the books. I recently thought to look it up, and thought I’d share it with you:

Bilbo’s Last Song (At the Grey Havens)

Day is ended, dim my eyes,
But journey long before me lies.
Farewell, friends! I hear the call.
The ship’s beside the stony wall.
Foam is white and waves are grey;
beyond the sunset leads my way.
Foam is salt, the wind is free;
I hear the rising of the sea.

Farewell, friends! The sails are set,
the wind is east, the moorings fret.
Shadows long before me lie,
beneath the ever-bending sky,
but islands lie behind the Sun
that i shall raise ere all is done;
lands there are to west of West,
where night is quiet and sleep is rest.

Guided by the Lonely Star,
beyond the utmost harbour-bar,
I’ll find the heavens fair and free,
and beaches of the Starlit Sea.
Ship my ship! I seek the West,
and fields and mountains ever blest.
Farewell to Middle-earth at last.
I see the star above my mast!

JRR Tolkien

So, why “The Road Less Traveled”? It comes from my favroite poem, The Road Not Taken, by Robert Frost. It is meant to serve both as a theme as I write about what I’m doing now and what I’ve done in the past, but also as a constant reminder to myself to make time for what’s important, working towards my goals, trying new things. I certainly don’t lead a radical life, but want to remember that I have done some interesting things in the past, and want to continue doing them in the future.

The Road Not Taken, by Robert Frost:

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.