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entry 2: Shedding the old life : 09/15/05

Once we realized that we wanted to do this adventure, we also realized that it was going to take selling our home of nine years to finance it. When we purchased the home in 1996 all of the rooms were white except for the kitchen. After eight and a half years we had managed to re-paint the kitchen, pantry, back stair case and main floor bath. I figured at that rate it would take us about thirty-six years to get the house ready to sell. Needless to say the deadline of starting the trip by September 15 required a little more dedication to the task of fix and repair then had been shown in the past.

Lots of bittersweet farewells - this one prepared us for the Pacific Northwest.

After three months and three garage sales we put the house on the market Memorial Day weekend. We figured it would take several months to sell…it sold in three days! This required us to sell/store/give away most of our furniture and other household items by July 1. It also meant moving into a temporary residence until we actually could hit the road.

We lucked out and found a house that was up for sale but the owner agreed to lease it until September 15 th, our planned departure date. Thanks to our friends Dan and Bill who offered a part of their home for storage, as well as the above-mentioned garage sales, we had now whittled our possessions down to a bed, couch, a T.V. and a coffee table. For the next ten weeks we slowly acquired all of the clothing and travel “essentials” we would need for the trip.

The last items we sold were our trucks, which was over the last weekend before we left, and good friends of ours, Connie and Susan (Thanks Ladies!), let us use their truck to do last minute errands.

How in the world are we going to fit all this on two bikes?

We had been telling everyone that we would be out of town by the 15th but as it turned out the house we were renting was sold and we had to be out by the 14th of September. This resulted in loading the borrowed truck with all of our gear and checking into a hotel. O.K., so we did put some things off until the last minute and probably would have had to get a hotel anyway but I like this excuse anyway. I knew we still had some more shedding to do when we loaded up all of the items we were going to pack onto the bikes and it almost didn’t fit into a FULL SIZED PICKUP TRUCK!

We ended up shipping 40 lbs of things to friends in California and I have no idea how we are going to pack it all on the bikes when we get there. More shedding to come, I’m sure.

From Lynne: The toughest part of the shedding process - finding homes for our two dogs and two cats - was really an emotional time for us. It took us over six months, but we found good homes for our family - and are really grateful to those who opened their homes and their hearts. It is heartening for us to say that after all this downsizing, those cold noses are really all that we miss. I find myself patting Tom on the head occasionally and scratching his tummy...