“Leaving New York”

Many people have asked us “So where is you first stop”? As it turns out the first stop is a few nights in New Jersey….. I guess the trip has officially started. I think we would be more excited if our first stop was somewhere exotic like Thailand or Ghana but flying home for a month in England, feels like an extension of our normal American life. It does offer us an opportunity to tie up all the essential American loose ends (like utility bills) before we start on our journey for real.

Today was my Birthday and I’m still not sure if this is a Birthday to remember or one that I will forget, as the day was spent watching the movers move our house into a large van, piece by piece and then unload it into storage. We underestimated our storage space by a “whopping” five cubic feet that sadly added an extra $70 per month to our already sizeable storage bill.

The other piece of great news is that we got Dweezil the Diesel back from the garage with a free valet and a complementary tank full of the “correct” fuel and we sold him today for cold hard cash (half of which went to pay the movers). I am amazed however that the cars’ buyer agreed to drive from Connecticut, to meet a stranger in an empty house and hand over a sizeable amount of cash in $100 bills. He is a braver man than I.

As day #2  of moving progressed, the family was losing the will to live as we waited outside the storage facility in Ho-Ho-Kus and watched the unloading of our earthly possessions.  We were miraculously saved by Gwendolyn Jones who not only injected a shot of actress energy into our flagging spirits but also joined us for an amazing Lebanese birthday supper at the glorious Tabboule in Ridgewood www.tabboule.com

Ms Gwendolyn Jones - our little ray of sunshine

Lura and I are absolutely exhausted but the good news is that the hard physical labor is now over and tomorrow can be spent at the hotel swimming pool. The girls are getting “mani/pedi’s” in the morning and the boys are heading to Ridgewood to see Green Lantern 3D.

 

“Boy, you’re going to carry that weight. Carry that weight a long time.”

 

So is this really what a family of four needs to carrying around for a year on the road?  The demands of documenting this trip and educating the kids online seem to dictate so.

 

Now we just have to learn how to use it all

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

“Roam (if you want to)”

Only one week to go and we managed to sell the big ticket items like the house and the cars. We will miss our dear VW TDI Golf aka “Dweezil” who is being picked up by a lucky eBay buyer this Sunday.

"The Dweez" - we will miss you

Update: A few hours after posting this I took Dweezil to our local garage to pump up the tires and put some fuel in him. I parked right next to the diesel pump and told the attendant that I wanted “…ten bucks of diesel” (for those that don’t know, you are not allowed to pump your own fuel in New Jersey otherwise I would have served myself). At $9.15 I looked up to see that he had stretched the hose from a regular gas pump to the car so I now had a diesel/gas mix in my tank, which he assured me wouldn’t be a problem. 500 yards down the road I found this to be a lie.

I had to have Dweezil towed back to the garage by AAA and the garage owners will fix him for free on Monday.  The whole reason I went to put gas in was because we had four premium Peter Gabriel tickets for that night, and by the time we were done with all the waiting and the towing there wasn’t enough time to get to the venue for the start of the gig. Plus I had to postpone the buyer until after the weekend.

 

 

“Misty Mountain Hop”

As we get closer to the leaving date time is stretching and compressing in strange ways. It feels that we have so much to do with so little time to do it and it is hard to know where to begin: cameras, computers, taxes, homes for the cats and Charlie the lizard, yard sales, selling the cars and finding a reliable/affordable camper van in Europe to name but a few. Having said that, for some reason our departure date still seems a long way away, and we have dealt with the big things like selling the house!

This will be a good lesson in “letting it go and letting it happen.”

The farewell ascent of Mt. Monadnock

We took a break from NYC and went up to New Hampshire for Memorial Day weekend where Jule, myself and Lura had the opportunity for one last climb of Mt. Monadnock (3,165 feet/965 m) via the 2.1 mile Dublin Trail . Lela opted to stay and have a chocolate chip pancake breakfast with her friend Alex instead of joining us (who can blame her). Once we reached the peak, snacks were had and then we made offerings to the mountain for a safe upcoming trip.

We first climbed Mt Monadnock when we arrived in N.H. so climbing it again ten years later seemed like a natural close to our love affair with this special part of the U.S.