Not yet at walking speed...

Things are still happening very fast around here.

Although we ~still~ have yet to receive a firm departure date that might be earlier than the initial January 4th agreement, Robin and I are still working under the assumption that we will be leaving Longmont sometime around the end of October. This serves a couple of ends for us; if we end up not departing until the first of the year (2009) we will be well ahead of the preparations game and when we find we have nothing to do it'll be a welcome breather, and conversely, if we get notified that we need to pack up and hit the road as soon as possible we've at least made the strides we have made toward that departure. Everything we can get done now is one less stressor should we be suddenly put on a short deadline.
I'm glad things are going along the way they are, I just could use a few days off :)
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Last week I traveled to the great northwest. The truck and trailer were loaded to the hilt with motorcycles, furniture, computers, musical instruments and assorted housewares to accomplish all the goals of this trip. Along with visiting my ailing ex-mother-in-law, (in case you need reminding, she is a dear, sweet lady who is battling cancer of multiple fronts) I had the great priviledge of visiting with my elder daugher and her family in Coeur D'Alene, ID and dropping off some cool hand-me-down goodies for them to use. I then traveled to Spokane and spent time with my side fo the family (brothers, uncle and aunt and cousins and, of course, my mom!) I dropped off a motorcycle there for my nephew and he just went bonkers, hoppig on to it and riding away within seconds of the bike hitting the ground off the loading ramp. Ride well, Jason!

After a great evening get-together, I got a nap and headed out to Tacome to see my younger daughter and drop off some furniture. We are very glad she likes it and hope she'll hand it down to the next generation someday.
All went well on this big trip. I had stuff to deliver to 4 folks, I traveled over 1,300 miles and safely delivered stuff to four stops. I did hurt my back pushing that big ole furniture around, and it still is sore, but it'll get better in just a few more days.
I can tell, however, that I have aged just a bit since the 'old days' :)

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We've been working on establishing residency in Florida over the last few days. The idea came to me when I found out how much it's going to cost to register the truck here in Colorado. I just can't see bucking out nearly a grand for only two or three months of licensing priveledges and then turning around and doing it again in only 3 or 4 more months when we arrive in Florida.
So.. we're filling out tons of paperwork and trying to establish an address and get registered to vote, set up a P. O. box, get the title and registration for both the truck and RV set up for Florida and see if we can juggle all the other stuff that's happening. Hopefully we can accomplish a lot with Notary Publics, Postal officials, and the U.S. mail service, but if we end up having to go there and take care of some of this personally, I guess that wouldn't hurt too awful badl :)

Travel Time

The game is afoot!.
It's time to put some more of our plans into effect. This time it will involve the real McCoy of downsizing, and we're going to be left looking at a much leaner living environment after this upcoming week.
I'll be loading a U-Haul trailer and heading to Idaho and Washington this next week with a load of motorcycles, tool, and furniture to deliver to daughters, brothers, and friends. It was a long, fretful planning event trying to figure out how to get this stuff all moved across country to get it to the people we wanted to see have it, and it was looking like it wasn't even a reasonable proposition financially, but God provided a way (He's good about that sometimes) and now it's going to happen relatively painlessly for us.
Renting a U-Haul truck was going to be a $1,500 proposition, plus airfare home... Hauling a trailer with my own truck was going to be .. umm about a $1,500 proposition, and involve well over 2,500 driving miles (diesel being upwards of $4.75 a gallon out on the highway now).
So while I was whining about ..ermm .. I mean discussing the situation with some of my co-workers, a fellow controller named Matt told me that he had a real need to get his motorcycle and his own truck moved up to Seattle and it'd be perfect if I drove his truck and left it up there for him. He then offered to pay the fuel for the trip in return for my time at the wheel. So, problem solved! I'll drive his truck, pull a trailer, and haul all of our stuff to Couer D'Alene, then Spokane, and finally Tacoma and Seattle for drop-off. Quite the delivery run! I'm looking forward to hooking back up with family and meeting some new friends in the process.

On a sad note, my ex-mother-in-law (Mary Anne) is another primary reason for this trip's timing. She was recently diagnosed with aggressve and widespread cancer and is undergoing tough treatment but they are not planning on letting her come home from the hospital very soon. So, I'll ask for your prayers and support for a dear, dear lady and hope that it's OK for me to soap-box one time about the very real prospect that cigarettes cause this kind of ugly and painful mess. Please quit if you're smoking.

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Stuff is stillf or sale on the website, and Iseem to be finding more and more stuff which can end up there. Pretty soon I'll have my own private 'Gary's List" going (grin).
We'll be thinned out pretty radically here in just a couple of weeks. The plan is still to 'evict' the renters at my old house, move in over there and get to painting and prepping to put it on the market asap. This house here has had several lookers, but no offers yet. I can only imagine that in this tough market, patience is gong to be paramount.

On Sale Now ...

Hey, I got a web page put up with the beginnings of the stuff that will be sold off down here. Go to our home page and click on the little "For Sale" sign.
I will do my best to keep it updated. Email or call if there's anything you find interesting and simply must have.
I'll be running some of this on eBay as well, so who knows how it'll all fall out.

It just won't all fit in the RV .. or on the boat :)

Webcam is back.

I was fooling around on the mid-shift last night (it's amazing the things you think of to do when it's 3:20 in the morning :) ) and I decided to see if I could resurrect the webcam from back at the wedding. Maybe it'll be fun to point it out the back window of the Fifth Wheel when we get the RV parked somewhere with a view. Maybe it'll be kind of cool to spy on someone if they come to take a tour of the house with a realtor (grin). Maybe I'll will just point it out a window and watch the neighbor dog from time to time... who knows... There's no real point to it, only the idea that it might be fun, and that since we have the capability why not keep it availabe every now and then.
So last night I fired up the laptop and re-intalled the program and made the corrections to the web pages. So ... tadah!! .. it's back.
I'm predicting that'll it'll be running off and on for the next few months, if only becuase I'll try to keep it running for the next few months. But for now .. it's running ...

Move along now, ... nothing to see here ... just yet :)

Our World ... for sale

This week marked the full settling back in after the vacation that was too short but nonetheless absolutely wonderful. The projects are still aplenty, but right at the ,o,emt we are relaxing just a bit because .. umm .. well, because we can. No one has made an offer or even a nibble on the house yet and we have until the 13th of July before we met with the other renters to finalize their move out of house number two across town. When that happens then we’ll take occupancy whilst we completely empty house one and start making house two ready for sale. It’s our hope to have the second house on the market by early August.
Meanwhile, back in New York, house three still sits vacant awaiting a couple of finishing touches on the property (final paint, outside clean-up, and a few odds-and-ends of maintenance. Then it’ll hit the market and we will be faced with figuring out the exact terms of the sale to accommodate brother Andy’s needs for deeded access and keeping the snowmobile trail open that runs across the field there. Ahhh.. the tangled web of family owned properties.

So … right now I’m busily scanning photos (over the four-thousand mark now) and am putting together a “for sale” list of furnishings, vehicles and electronics stuff that will all have to go before we pull the plug and cast off for Miami. I’ll be setting up a website page in the next few days entitled the “This-won’t-fit-on-the-boat sale” and will have pictures and descriptions and asking prices for all the stuff we’re going to liquidate. It’s another project, but at least I can do this a little chunk at a time and it’ll hopefully mean some free cash to help pay for the moving expenses.

I’m still adjusting to the sticker shock of buying diesel fuel and have been as reasonable careful about starting the truck’s engine as I can. It is a pricey beast to operate, and we are anxiously awaiting the delivery of the Fifth-Wheel in order to justify needing it. It’s a fun vehicle to drive, a well-mannered monster on the city streets and a way cool ride on the highway. I am very, very pleased with the Ford F-350 (this is not a paid endorsement ;) . Sticker shock at the pump notwithstanding, I’m certainly looking forward to our first road trip!

Ohhh Mexico ...

We were here :
What a wonderful week of escape and relaxation!
We did a lot of the stuff you'd expect on a resort getaway .. read a few good books (The Kite Runner was one of them) spent some time on the beach, spent some time at the pool, spent some time eating and had our fair share of Corona :)
The sun simply wouldn't make a big showing for us ... for 5 days it remained mostly overcast and even 'cool' by pervious standards (mid 80's) so we spent a little less time worrying about frying ourselves to a crisp and got to a lit of non-activities albeit we did manage to get to the gym once for a good workout and spent two days hiking around the area and even up to the old lighthouse. We came up with four Geocaches on our journeys and got a better feel for where the locals might hang out once we got off the tourist path.
The airplane flights were all nominal with the exception of the return connection through PHX. The layover was just a smidge over an hour, which is kind of tight for international connections anyway but made tighter by a late departure from Mazatlan (it was just a backup computer). At any rate, we did make our connection thanks to a departure delay at PHX as well and got home weary and with a small load of dirty clothes, but oh .. it was nice to shed the demands of our projects and work for a week.
I shall post pictures and videos on Webshots (look for Sunshineduo) in the next coouple of days.

It's For Sale

OK, all that we were working for came to a head sort of when the Far Sale sign got stuck in the lawn this afternoon. We still have tons of behind-the-scenes stuff to do before we could conceive of actually moving out, but if you come visit the place it looks pretty darn good if I do say so myself.

Here's the Listing .... Tell all your friends :)

Robin and I are taking a week off now ... well deserved and very much needed.