United States – Less Car, More Life

Tempus Puget – Putting Down Roots in Seattle

A lot has changed for us in the past 4 months: a new house, a new city, and even a new car. So how did we get here?

Why Seattle you ask? We love trees, I mean really love trees!

It’s been over 4 years since we set out from San Francisco on our grand adventure. Freshly vaccinated in April 2021, job notice given, a progressive purge of belongings, and into storage for the things we just couldn’t part with; we set off in August 2021 with our house still in escrow, two (old steel) touring bicycles and 6 bags for a planned two year experience. It was hard to imagine it could turn into 4 years, but it did. Turns out the world is pretty big, and other cultures very attractive (especially more familiar European ones). But time is fleeting, and as we settle into a new life, it all seems like a bit of a dream now.

February 2022 in a nearly empty Venice. Now that was a dream for sure.

Every day really was a new adventure. As we navigated ongoing Covid restrictions, testing, passes, and vaccinations, it was stressful, but we also felt the exhilaration of exploring magnificent new places with almost no tourist crowds to be found…Zermatt, Morocco, the English Lake District, and an almost empty Amalfi Coast, Venice, and Rome! Three trips through North and South Asia. And for most of our European adventure, the ultimate freedom of having just what we needed on our bicycles, with the ultimmate freedom to zig or zag at will. Time like this when everyone is in good health is precious, and we knew it.

Saying goodbye to our beloved San Francisco was tough.

The nomadic life was addictive and a great way to transition from a real full time job. And add in the amazing Trusted Housesitters experiences we had and the kindness of so many generous friends everywhere, and we truly felt like we had figured out a major hack of potential mid-life malaise and early retirement. We are especially grateful to those who hosted us in Europe and back in the States while we were without roots. It made it all possible. Not just having a place to stay, but having a familiar base to land, whether it be in the UK, France, San Francisco, LA, Chicago, Palm Springs, Seattle…. One of our nomadic priorities was to keep our close ties to family and friends back in the USA, and therefore we swung back through nearly twice a year, which wasn’t always easy and often the most exhausting parts of our blissful existence.

One last hike in one of the most spectacular city adjacent parklands in the world, the Marin Headlands.

Our month of goodbyes in San Francisco also meant a lot of hellos on the wonderful new Sunset Dunes Park along the former Great Highway. A magnificent addition to open space in the City.

But just as we were in sync on the idea of nomadic life in 2021, we started to hit a limit in early 2025 and both began to feel a strong pull back to more permanency. We just couldn’t muster more packing and unpacking, tweaking temporary lodging to our likes, and never having a true home to come back to. There are a lot of things that you struggle with as a nomad. Daily travel adaptation takes a lot of your brain space (and expands it!) so it doesn’t always leave as much focus and energy for other aspects of living. We missed a community, our furniture and art, cooking, gardening, and having a few more clothes to choose from daily. So we came back to the West Coast in late June with the goal of finding a place to call home by the end of the year. Faster if possible.

Our summer back included my visit back to see family and friends in Chicago included catching the Mekons at the Square Roots Music Festival in Lincoln Sqaure. Thanks Michelle and Alan!

And a family visit to Western Colorado, of course.

My brother in law and I checking out the new sandstone cave suites being built at Honey Rock Landing on the Gunnison River; also a working orchard.

Well, the heat had come early this year, so the cherries were mostly past, but it was still a fun day out.

We were definitely not in Europe anymore, look at all this American space!

And fast it was. We have been following real estate in North Seattle for a few years now, and had hired an agent in January, who was fully aware that we would be far away for the first half of the year, but was happy to send us listings for a future potential sale. (I think he could sense we were serious and ready to settle down)

So when a new construction house-like condo that we had been tracking was still available in late June, we jumped at a chance to settle early. The timing was perfect as we had a house sit in San Francisco for our great friends and former neighbors (and their adorable cats) in July, but could then load up once and move our life North.

Saying goodbye to our storage unit was fun, with some final sorting and organizing and fun discoveries like this vintage 1970s Kelty Backpack. Still comfortable and useable! The bins on the front edges of our storage unit had served as our home shopping and gear swap-out point for trips home.

Nope, not taking a Uhaul to Seattle this time, just to the storage unit. We hired movers -:)

Great to see some good friends in SF for a “final” dinner.

Our Step-Nephew was kind enough to stop for a sweaty Photo Op at Mile 20 of the SF Marathon as we cheered in the Haight-Asbury (His first, well done Ben!)

Excited or freaked out?! Leaving San Francisco for our two-day drive to Seattle.

So we’ve owned our new home in Seattle for three months now and I can already feel a change in how my brain is looking at its surroundings, how I see every person and place now as an opportunity for a new long term friend. Our travel brains are now recording the surroundings in permanent mapping mode reserved for “home”. And long term relationships with shops, businesses, and culture again. When you are a nomad, you make some great friends along the way (and keep many!), but you are often just skimming the surface of the world and your surroundings.

Seattle is big, progressive, and evolving, and we’ll be talking more about how that influenced our decision to move here.

Looking at our new house…one thing we craved after living out of bags for 4 years was a bit of space.

So how has life in North Seattle been so far?

First off, people are mellower here than the Bay Area. Not every one of course, but in general. This suits us as we are now mellower after four years of travel and detached from our 30+ years in the wonderfully stimulating and dynamic San Francisco Bay Area. The west coast has always been a draw for a certain type of person, and the Pacific Northwest seems to draw folks who are perhaps a bit more introspective, down to earth, and happy to enjoy a bit of rain and darkness during the winter balanced with the joy of trees, water, and four distinct seasons.

We have a jump start on friends in the area, with some of our closest friends walking distance from us.

And we’ve not really experienced the famous “Seattle Freeze”, as we’ve found our neighborhood to be very friendly and we’re slowly starting the process of building a new community here. Maybe we brought the right attitude from our travels, and it seems the love of bikes and a green Subaru has made us almost indistinguishable from the long time locals. Well, at least a bit.

So why Seattle now?

Climate and the outdoors – Yup, we like rain, forests, evergreens; and clouds. It may be a little rough in the heart of the longer and darker winter, so we’ll let you know how we fare. A bit of winter travel is definitely in the cards, especially after the warmth of the holidays passes into January.
The Right Direction – Seattle has been building a ton of housing. They liberalized re-development on almost all lots in 2019 and we actually moved into one of the results: new housing in an old established neighborhood. Almost unheard of in SF. (We were waiting and trying…)
Economic Diversity – Seattle has a broader range of economic strata, and has built so many apartments and condos that market prices are almost the same (or less!) than dedicated affordable housing. This is a success. Single family housing prices have soared here recently and this is still a huge challenge for the continued prosperity in the region.
Transportation – ok, Seattle is more car based than San Francisco, and probably will always be based on its development geography, but Seattle has passed 3 bond measures to build out transit and an extensive light rail system. Sound Transit is now running two lines, with multiple expansions and openings coming. Rapid buses and great upgrades to the cycling infrastructure (mostly due to another city bond measure renewed by voters last November).
It’s a big city! Ok, it’s not New York, London, or Paris, but it’s also not Austin or Portland, which just don’t quite check our real city boxes (sorry), with a deep history, global connections, and a broad base of businesses and companies to pump life into the local economy. It certainly feels more like a working city than the core of the SF Bay recently.

Seattle has a history of bike friendliness, including extensive and well-used rail-trails like the Burke-Gilman

The economic diversity matters a lot as San Francisco was in a bit of a service doom loop, as most blue collar and service workers couldn’t come near to affording to live within 50 miles of the city. Here people have many more options. Of course, they have to compete with white collar newcomers from California and elsewhere, who have been migrating to the PNW for years.

We still love buses and trains, and Seattle has a good network, despite the size of the City.

A reason we didn’t consider in the move here was taxes – It’s true, Washington State has no state income tax, but that was not really a factor for us. Life is too short to live somewhere just to save 5-10% on taxes. Besides, other taxes and user fees are pretty high, so it’s not exactly a tax haven. We do notice that a lot of infrastructure and services are more streamlined or less robust than California and San Francisco but maybe that’s ok. We’ll see. I do have long term concerns about the sustainability of the infrastructure in the state, and they are constantly chasing repairs on nearly failing bridges. But local leaders have figured ways to fund things here, such as the 15 year special sewer fee we’ll be paying for our new house connection.

Yup, a New Subaru and bit more car in our lives. But our final car rental retun for awhile.

Seattle is a big diverse city with lots of similar ties to Asia and Asian cultures found along the West Coast. Vietnamese food is everywhere here and delicions.

Full combo Pho with all the good tendon and tripe I love. Expect to see more on food in future posts.

So we plan to continue to blog about our continued travels and our post-nomadic life transition. (Yes, I am already planning our spring bike tour in Europe…) We plan to host lots of friends and family for a change, and be closer to most of them too. But we don’t have a specific plan for how long we will stay here, 5-10 years, maybe longer as we settle in and continue to love it. We’ll see. We have been nomadic travelers twice in our lives now, so we know how to do it.

We also plan to keep housesitting in our lives, even as we settle in our unexpected new house, we just wrapped up a memorable house sit for a lovely family near Gig Harbor, with Puget Sound waterfront views and access. It was really magical, but was a bit tough to be away from our new place after moving in for nearly two months. But we committed to the sit before we knew we would buy a place, and were determined to keep our word to do the sit regardless. We take the “trusted” part of housesting seriously and it was great to experience life on the Sound.

It’s really hilly in Seattle and our neighborhood is on the plateau of the old glacial ridge (as is much of the city), so Cheryl decided it was time for a new tool in our transportation mix, an ebike.

There is so much to explore here in the Pacific Northwest that we already have dozens of adventures on our minds; mountains, rivers, camping, wildlife, and the endless salt waters of the magical Puget Sound. And just as we explored every nook of San Francisco over 30 years, We are already enjoying getting to know Seattle and its many urban gems. And we plan to keep our precious SF Bay Area friends close, with visits to and from our former home.

Enjoying frequent swims at our house sit near Gig Harbor. Refreshingly clear, but cold!

So I need to wrap up, as Cheryl has so many more things to add and blog about, and we have finally slowed down a bit from our big transtion to reflect again in more future musings.

Happy Halloween and Happy Fall to All!

It’s Different Up North

We continued our Northwest summer ramble out of Seattle and headed up I-5 about an hour and a half to Bellingham, WA.

Emerald or « Toad Lake » near Belingham, Washington.

Closer to Vancouver than Seattle, Bellingham frequently appears on “Best places to retire is the USA” lists or click bait, and for good reason. It’s a small city (90k) on Puget Sound in a beautiful natural setting, kept vibrant by the constant youthful churn of 14,000 students at Western Washington University. This was our third visit to Bellingham, but the first time we had spent a week.

My summer bike at Clayton Beach, part of Larrabee State Park and the Chuckanut Mountains

Our house sit was across from a small lake at the edge of town, but amazingly secluded up in a steep vale in the local foothills of the Cascades. Our responsibilities included a very sweet outdoor dog and seven chickens. The dog was reportedly standoffish but we soon bonded with him and enjoyed some fun walks around the lake and woods.

Our dog letting me know he was ready for a walk!

Our house sit included all the fresh eggs we could eat!

House sitting is great for really trying out new locales to see if it a place we may want to spend more time or even settle for a time. We really liked Bellingham in the summer and had considered settling here at one point, but think now that we still need a bit more city in our next home.

Downtown Bellingham is in the process of reimagining its industrial waterfront with popular interim uses as a wild bmx track, shipping container bars and restaurants, and summer festivals.

The Pacific Northwest and Seattle in particular are so different than the Bay Area we called home for most of the past 30 years. We are used to the pace and competition of dense SF living and you really notice the difference in the Seattle area. We are the angsty rushed city folk here. The massive amount of wealth and economic prosperity generated in San Francisco and Silicon Valley has put pressure on every aspect of living; cost, housing, services, transportation. We lived a great life in San Francisco by keeping our work and home close and cycling, walking, or transiting most places.

Riding the #40 bus in Seattle. It’s fairly extensive, clean and reliable, but can we live comfortably without a car here?

And our double income, no kids (DINKS) life kept us comfortable financially. But we could feel the strain the past 20 years on services and the vast gulf that was growing between “knowledge workers” and those in service or more traditional blue collar roles. San Francisco and California has tried to fight this trend with social programs (minimum wage, city health plans, affordable housing, etc) but it can’t keep up with the demand for housing. It’s a global problem in wealthier areas of the planet, but especially evident in California.

Cycling the boardwalk to the Fairhaven neighborhood of Bellingham, arguably its most charming area.

The Bellingham area is unrivaled for mountain biking, including expert crazy bike only downhill runs

So back to Seattle. Seattle has a lot of the same challenges as the Bay Area, including tech wealth and escalating housing costs. But as we noted in our winter visit Seattle blogs, they ARE building more and have looser zoning laws near transit by right. (meaning NIMBYs can’t stop it) DADUs (Detached Accessory Housing Unit!), townhomes and condos are sprouting all over the city in almost every neighborhood.

Great to meet and chat with fellow nomads at a meetup in Edmunds, WA

All this fairly random looking new housing looks strange to us as we’ve hardly see any housing construction in San Francisco, except the thousands of units concentrated South of Market, Mid and Upper Market Street Areas, and a few other pockets and buildings. But they are often not in the areas where most people want to live.

Great Pho at Miss Pho in Crown Hill. The diversity and quality of the food in Seattle is first rate, but unlike SF, you may need to search for it in strip malls.

Seattle is building more where people want to live, as well as very dense high rise residential in First Hill, and the South Lake Union edge of downtown. Add to this an ever expanding light rail metro system (thanks to a $54B 2018 bond measure) and you have a fairly dynamic feel to the City. It’s almost twice the size of SF, and feels more spread out, especially from north to south. It generally doesn’t have the magical density and intimate feeling walking from neighborhood to neighborhood as San Francisco and many more trips are by car. This is a big difference for us to adjust to if we settle in Seattle.

Golden Gardens Beach Park; beautiful and swimable, if you don’t mind chilly water!

The Puget Sound beaches are more for exploration than swimming

SF is dense but could and should be denser, with more new buildings all over the western half of the city, where the weather and transit are great. But NIMBYs, Prop 13, and zoning keep the city at a relative standstill. It’s created a bit of a housing doom loop, since new housing construction is so expensive, that it’s not even affordable for developers selling condos for 1-2 million each. We’ve blogged on this on our past visits, but the issue just gets bigger and bigger and plays a big role in our decision on where we might settle down next in the World (if we do -;).

« Bruun Idon » at Lincoln Park, one of Thomas Dambu’s six troll sculptures in the region and made entirely of recycled/reused materials.

But to be honest, the biggest difference we noticed in Seattle this stay was the pace of life and what I like to call the “expectation of goodness.” People here are more patient and expect that you are, and are acting honestly and in the public good. A friend of mine in SF noted to me that Seattle today is what SF was like in the 80s and 90s. A bit slower, more provincial, and where everyone was not quite so full of themselves. It’s a cutthroat world in the Bay Area…not quite New York City levels yet, but noticeably more manic than the Pacific Northwest cities. Seattle’s slightly slower pace is attractive to us in our early retirement.

The Iconic Aurora Bridge built in 1932 connects Fremont to Queen Anne

So after a pleasant week exploring the trails and cycling paths of the beautiful Bellingham area, we headed back to Seattle for our final house sit of the trip in the Ballard/Sunset Hill neighborhood. We loved the area as it’s very quiet traffic wise and has a nice grid of roads cut off on the western side edge by a bluff and Puget Sound. There are some views toward the Olympic Mountain Range that allows you to get out of the trees.

Cheryl tending our house sit Pea Patch, a community garden system throughout Seattle’s neighborhoods.

Garden fresh tomatoes and beans from the Pea Patch

Sampling some beers at Lucky Envelope, one of over a dozen craft breweries in Ballard alone!

Another magnificent troll outside the National Nordic Museum in Ballard

Cheryl contemplates how to get some of the endless driftwood to our future garden.

Our house sit kitten testing breakfast table boundaries.

The grid layout of most of Seattle makes walking and biking very tenable, but the hills are a challenge, even coming from San Francisco!? Why? Because the large masses of each neighborhood often rise up and fall over long distances, meaning a trip back up to your house can mean climbing up gradual hills for 10, 20, or even 50 blocks! And much of the east-west geography is steep, so cross town journeys can be steep in places.

The Neighborhood Greenways are a nice way to get around by bike in Seattle. The hills and rough pavement mean that wider tires and electric assist would be a great addition for getting around realistically by bike

Enjoying Ballard’s Scandinavian roots with good friends Cecily and Christine at Skål Beer Hall.

Oh but the trees, mountains, and water interplay are so nice! And there is a good bike network with some famous long distance rail trails, such as the 20 mile Burke Gilman, which links up much of the interior shoreline of North Seattle. I was able to do a 35 mile north Lake Washington loop from North Seattle almost entirely on separated paths…very nice.

Saying goodbye to Seattle summer for now with one final swim in Lake Washington….so nice and different from the always cold S.F. Bay.

So we loaded up the rental car and headed early out of Seattle for the 2 day drive back to San Francisco, again with an overnight in Ashland. The drive is possible in one long 13+ hour day, but we never like to drive more than half of that in a day. Heck, we don’t like to drive to the grocery store, but sometimes a car is the most convenient way and it is a chance to listen to some good podcasts and music!

Enjoying a road bike ride back in the Bay Area

And saying hello to some UK friends Frank and Liv in Alamo Square on a lovely fog-free evening.

Our four days back in the Bay Area were busy with sorting gear at the storage unit, haircuts, finances, Covid/flu shots, etc. but also some nice time with friends. But we now just arrived back to our euro-base in France after a successful and fairly pleasant one-way journey on Condor Airways. (SFO-FRA-GVA)

Now we’ll relax a bit, get over our jet lag, sort our gear, and get ready to head out on the bikes for another fall bike tour adventure in a few days. More on that soon. A Bientôt!

Summer time is social time.

Riding across the Evergreen Point Floating Bridge (the 520) in Seattle.

Our month long stay in SF was filled with visiting friends, enjoying our house sit kitty buddies, a trip to Chicago for Rich, a visit from my sister Kathy, and a trip to Colorado for me, and loads of cycling and hiking with friends for Rich.

A walk in SF with local and visiting friends.

Rich on an urban hike with his friends Mike and Fred. Just three retired guys wearing hats and having fun.

Dinner with good friends. How amazing to be able to host a dinner party.

Rich, my sister Kathy, and me after a bakery stop. Enjoying the pastries and the views from Alta Plaza Park in SF.

Dinner with the upstairs neighbors, Gisela and Randall.

Rich having a moment with our mailing address.

Oh yes, a word about our mailing address and our residency. We are California residents. It’s where we pay taxes and vote. We are lucky to call home a place where our city and state want us to vote. We’ve heard of other full time travelers from other states who are getting removed from the voting rolls due to using a mailbox service, and having to re-register and make their case for voting. Thank you San Francisco for making voting accessible.

Sunset light for a family photo. My mom with all four of her children in Colorado.

July on the Grand Mesa means wildflowers.

A dramatic sunset in Grand Junction making a lovely backdrop for Lorilie the ranch Dalmatian.

And a dramatic sunrise to bookend the night. Yes, there was smoke in the air from western fires.

With Mom and Chuck at the Fruita Farmers Market.

Meanwhile, back in San Francisco, Rich is single handedly wrangling two cats! A chill contemplative cat moment.

Dinner at our friends’ house in Oakland. We miss these kind of get togethers when we’re on the road.

Keeping in touch with our friends in the US is so important to us. During past visits we’ve run ourselves ragged trying to see as many of our friends and family as possible. It leads to exhaustion. Our solution this trip was to stay longer, thanks to our good friends Nancy and Mike who let us stay at their house and take care of their kitties for the entire month of July.

With friends, Robin, Jeff, and Rob, sitting in a beer garden in SF. July in SF means down jackets.

Crocheted birdies on a street tree on Page Street in SF.

As if having two cats to look after and cuddle wasn’t enough, Gisela and Randall got kittens!

Which of course meant kitten cocktail parties.

Following one of Nancy’s walks in GG Park for a book she is working on.

A month of San Francisco socializing done we got into a rental car and headed towards Seattle. We stayed two nights in Ashland, Oregon, just long enough to marvel at the huge trees and go for a walk in Lithia Park. We spent the hottest part of the day hiding from the heat in our hotel room.

And another huge tree in someone’s front garden.

Will we get a handle on fires by letting nature handle it? And letting fires burn?

Our walk in Lithia Park was thankfully mostly shaded.

From Ashland Oregon we went all the way to Seattle in one day so we would have time to spend with our dear friends Christine and Cecily before they left for a trip.

A walk in Saint Edward State Park. Rich rode there and met us.

Picnic with new friends Chris and Katherine who we met in Borneo.

Warm summer evenings. Something we rarely had in San Francisco. Dinner outside – without jackets!

Rich was thrilled to go for a ride with Annie, who showed him a great Lake Washington loop.

Erika shared some of their garden bounty with me.

Even though the weather turned to grey the shorts stayed. On the ferry to Whidbey Island to meet up with more friends.

Linda and Steve, fellow nomads. You can follow their nomad journey here.

We were fortunate enough to book two house sits during our time in the Pacific Northwest through Trusted House Sitters, and our first sit in Bellingham was about to start. If you are interested in house sitting we do recommend THS.

The Happy Travelers, enjoying a PNW summer.

Still to come, the sit in Bellingham, back to Seattle for another ten days, then down to SF to get ready to fly to France to be reunited with our touring bikes again.

One night in Lisbon and on to the USA

Tap airways seems to have become our airline of choice to get from Europe to the USA. Their one way pricing and timing of flights works out well. Rich can buy extra leg room seats, and the planes they fly have a 2 4 2 seat configuration so we can sit just next to each other. No dreaded middle seat. Since TAP flights from Geneva go through Lisbon we can spend a night or few days there. This trip we spent just one night in Lisbon, at a hotel on the red line so it was easy to get from and back to the airport. This is what traveling with a master planner is like.

Enjoying a warm summer evening in Lisbon.

Hanging out at our favorite little park, Jardim Fialho de Almeida.

So what is it like coming back to USA? Busy. We try not to go crazy with over scheduling, but there are always so many people we want to visit. In the past we’ve landed in NY or Chicago and stayed with friends or at a house sit. This time, arrival June 1st, we stayed in a hotel in downtown SF for two nights (friends had come down with Covid so we pivoted). That gave us time to go out to our storage unit, recover from jet lag a bit, and have a wander around downtown before heading to our first house sit with two cats not far from Golden Gate Park.

Salesforce Park above the beautiful transit center in downtown SF.

The retired engineer reflects on his experience working on the transit center.

It’s an odd feeling to stay in a hotel in what was for so many years our hometown. It was the first time we’ve ever stayed in a hotel in SF so we leaned in. The Galleria Park Hotel had a nightly happy hour with a signature martini, or wine. We settled into cozy chairs and chatted with a fellow guest from Oroville, California. It’s a social buzz to get to the US and be able to talk to everyone again. Thankfully Californians are quite friendly.

These two were much friendlier than this photo makes them look.

Storage unit mayhem! It’s fun shopping for clothing in your storage unit – everything is your size and in your style.

Our summer schedule was built around our niece’s wedding. That was our first must not miss event. A stop by the storage unit to get clothes for the wedding was good timing, as we discovered that moths had moved in. We’ve had our things in this storage unit for almost three years and haven’t seen a moth. I assume they came in with someone else’s stuff and flitted around looking for tasty wool. I left a wool sweater loose on top of a bag last January. That obviously was like a formal invitation to dinner for moths. We spent a few hours moving our clothing from cardboard boxes to plastic containers with cedar blocks in them. Other than that one sweater we saw no visible damage. Hopefully we’ve made our storage unit inhospitable to the moths.

The cleaned up version of us. Clothes from the storage unit.

It was a little warm even up in the mountains, so a pre-wedding creek foot dip was welcome.

Our niece and her new husband. A gorgeous and fun filled wedding.

The wedding venue, Gordon’s Rim Rock Ranch.

Lights and fire pits as the sun went down and the fun continued.

The wedding was up near Mount Shasta, Old Station in Shasta County. It’s a beautiful area, shaped by the volcanic activity of nearby Mt. Lassen in Lassen National Park, and Mt. Shasta a bit further north.

Rich and his step mother out for a hike.

Information signs as you walk through and marvel at how a lava tube is created.

And out the other side a stunning view of Mt. Lassen. It’s actually named Lassen Peak and it’s a
10,457 ft (3,187 m) lava dome. Last eruption 1914 to 1921.

After the wedding and lovely visiting time with family we headed out to stay with friends near Redding before driving back to SF to catch a flight to Grand Junction, Colorado. If you’re wondering about logistics, at this point back in the US we took BART from the airport to downtown SF. A car share out to our storage unit, a MUNI bus to our first SF house sit and, then after our house sit a rental car to the wedding.

A stop by McArthur-Burney Falls Memorial State Park and a peek at the 129 foot waterfall.

This osprey parent with chicks in the nest helpfully built their nest trailside. What a classic sight. Huge nest on a tall snag.

Mt. Shasta,
elevation of 14,179 ft (4,322 m). Last eruption 1250.

Grand Junction Colorado is another frequent stop for us, where my Mom and Sister live. It’s been another home for us during our three years of nomading. We are thrilled to have Breeze Airways flying directly from SF to Grand Junction now.

Kathy, Mom, Rich and Lorilie – the ranch Dalmatian.

Some sunset dog play time. The extra dog, Mo, belongs to a niece – he comes to ranch camp when she is traveling.

A cloudy day feels rare in the Grand Valley. Made for a nice hike in the canyons near Fruita.

Look at those lovely clouds. And handsome husband.

My sister getting the newly cut and baled hay in before the rain started.

Mom and I helping by staying hydrated. It was hot.

Kathy took some time away from work to take us up to the Grand Mesa where it was quite a bit cooler, and beautiful.

Sisters with a view. That’s the Grand Valley behind us.

Always take photos. It brings back the feel of the day.

The 500 square miles (1,300 km²) of the Mesa rises 6,000 feet (1,800 m) above the river valley. Since Grand Junction is already 4593 ft / 1400 m above sea level, you definitely notice the altitude.

A haircut for Mom. She’s a good sport and not too picky with the job I do.

After our Colorado stay it was back to California again to visit more friends and family. A night in Redwood City, two nights in San Luis Obispo, and on to Moorpark where my brother and sister-in-law live. It’s a good thing all our bike touring has made us good at packing and unpacking. It’s tempting when you have a rental car to gather more stuff to take with you, but we try and keep our life lived from a rental car as minimal as possible.

With our friend Jim hiking the coast near San Luis Obispo.

With Chuck and Linda in downtown Ventura, a nice pedestrian street with cute local shops.

From Moorpark we took the Metrolink train to downtown LA to visit the Broad Museum and have a wander around.

Always check out the bike car, even when we don’t have bikes. Nice. A very good use of space.

We were post rush hour so the train was not crowded.

The Broad Museum. Designed by Diller Scofidio + Renfro in collaboration with Gensler. It’s a stunning building and entry is free by timed reservations.

Under the Table, by Robert Therrien. Or, as I called it, Rich gets to feel like a cat.

Red Block. Born in Ghana and based in Nigeria, El Anatsui crafts bottle caps, reused aluminum commercial packaging, copper wire, and other materials into giant shimmering sheets of what he calls “cloths.” We saw another of this artist’s works at the Guggenheim in Bilbao.

A day at the coast and time to enjoy the newly renovated Point Dume State Park in Malibu.

We saw workers continuing to remove invasive plants and encourage the native plants.

After a great stay in Moorpark it was back in the rental car and back to the Bay Area. We’ve been eagerly awaiting a house and cat sit for friends for the entire month of July in our old neighborhood in San Francisco. Our second summer must do. That’s where are now. Not only do we have two wonderful goofball cats to live with and love, but it’s Tour de France time, so, after fetching our big screen from the storage unit we introduced the cats to the joy of watching the tour.

The great thing about the Tour, according to the kitties, is loads of lap time.

Rich and his riding buddy Fred at a foggy Golden Gate Bridge.

So what’s next? After a wonderful month in SF full of catching up with friends and being happily in one place for a change, we’re headed to Seattle for the month of August. We have friends to visit and one house sit lined up. Have a wonderful summer.

The happy travelers having a chill summer.

The holiday whirlwind and nomadic musings.

In San Francisco posing in front of someone else’s house. It must have been some party! Real snow and trees.

I’m writing on Christmas Eve day, looking back on six weeks of time in the US so far. Chicago, Colorado, California, and now Washington. Thanksgiving and Christmas this year are times to get together with friends and family, to try to renew the bonds which constant travel can fray, and catch up on small and large life events which feel like the very important glue holding relationships together.

Gorgeous White Park cow waiting for their water trough to fill.

To dip in and out of folks’ lives like we do can be challenging. To us the traveling, the changing locations and adapting to a new place is just life, it’s what we’ve been doing for almost two and a half years. But what’s it like for our friends and family to have us plop down in their houses and let out a big sigh and say repeatedly how lovely it is to be somewhere familiar?

Uh. You coming out to throw my ball? Soon?

The Getty Center in Los Angeles. The week after Thanksgiving can be a great time to visit attractions – not crowded at all.

Rich and our niece pondering life and the view.

Mercedes Dorame’s installation Woshaa’axre Yaang’aro (Tongva for “looking back”).

How tired are they of our travel tales? Are we getting insufferable? When, we hear from some friends, are we going to settle down? Get jobs again? Do some volunteer work? Something other than this constant travel and adventure and fun.

Wildwood Regional Park, Thousand Oaks California.

The creek is an oasis for wildlife. And us.

Short answer- not right now. Two plus years in and we’re still very content with our lives. We visit our storage unit when we’re back in SF (it’s actually in Walnut Creek), roll up the door and say “So much stuff!”. It’s not really that much stuff, the unit is only 10×15 feet, and we carefully considered what was worth storing and liberated the rest. We swap out some clothing and shoes, exclaim over the things we can see, oh look at that chair, my favorite. And then we roll the door back down, lock it, and leave.

San Francisco City Hall in festive red and green.

An SF Victorian decked out for the holidays.

We do miss nesting, especially around the holidays. Having a place set up to your own specifications, the things you want close to hand, comfortable furniture to enjoy. This is where house sitting, through Trusted Housesitters, becomes such a joy. With careful planning we can find sits in places we want to be for the holidays, Christmas in Seattle this year, near good friends with whom we will stay before and between two house sits. Right now, for Christmas, we have a lovely kitty to cuddle, and a comfortable house to enjoy and look after for the homeowners.

SF leans in to Christmas lights. And the buildings wear them well.

And what’s next? As we were boarding a flight from Denver to Burbank a few weeks ago Rich was trying to book flights for us from Singapore to Geneva in March. The website was not cooperating and he was frantically trying to get the payment through before we got to the gate agent. His boarding pass is on the phone. The tickets to Geneva are almost on his phone. I teased him, you know you have a travel problem when you’re booking tickets for a flight while boarding a flight. It’s not a problem, he corrected me. I did it.

Rich is working on our onward travels. SF to Taiwan. Borneo, Malaysia. Somewhere somewhere, and Singapore to Geneva via Istanbul in March. To be reunited with our touring bicycles. We look forward to bike touring so much.

Our sweet elder kitty at sit number one. The heating vent is Maggie’s favorite spot.

Our end of year list of countries as traveled: USA, Taiwan, Thailand, India, Sri Lanka, Japan, South Korea, USA, Switzerland, France, Germany, Chezia, Germany, Belgium, Netherlands, UK, France, Albania, North Macedonia, USA. Happy Holidays wherever you may be.

Not skipping stones.

Happy feet in sandals in Venice. Carnival meant confetti everywhere on the large paving stones.

Most folks don’t think much about the asphalt of the streets and concrete of the sidewalks until it’s not asphalt and concrete, but huge blocks or small chunks of stone. When you look down and see the streets and sidewalks paved with stone, large or small pieces, you picture the process of putting the stones down in the streets. In Italy I was fascinated with the choice of paving materials. Who wouldn’t be? My fascination started in Venice and didn’t stop.

It wasn’t until we left Venice that I read about the use of lighter colored stones on the edge of the canals and bottoms of steps to alert pedestrians that they are about to step into a canal or tumble off stairs. When I went back to look through my photos, sure enough, there they were. Safety stones.

The edge of the lagoon is obvious in broad daylight, but imagine a dark cloudy night before electric lights. You’d be glad for that strip of white stones.

The black paving stones of Naples. And some well worn hiking boots.

Dark Vesuvian lava blocks pave the older streets of Naples. I assumed the surface was natural, but apparently on some stretches, especially the stairways, the dings and impressions come from hammers and chisels to create a less slippery surface when wet.

Naples paving stones in the rain. They look slick, but the dangerous surfaces were the metal utility/manhole covers.

How could anyone fail to notice the cobblestoned streets of Pompeii and Herculaneum? However, it would be easy to miss the small white stones placed in the joints as cats eyes, or reflectors.

Small, not so noticeable white stones, but helpful on a dark Herculaneum night.

A giant stone jigsaw puzzle leading out of the amphitheater in Pompeii.

After the dark paving stones of Naples the streets of Bari old town were a surprise. Of course people used the local stone, the ‘chianche’ (the big paving stones) in Bari are mostly white or cream, with black pavers used, apparently, to help merchants unfamiliar with the old town find their way out.

The light color of the stones in Bari makes a wet night time stroll quite atmospheric.

The stones are a lovely backdrop for the green plants of a resident gardener in Bari. I always appreciate intrepid urban gardeners.

The warm glow of decorative lighting makes Bari magical at night.

The town of Conversano pavers were light colored as well, and a bit slippery when wet. This night time photo was taken as I carefully picked my way along on boots that had the tread worn off from miles and miles of use.

Luminaria, which we saw being created in town, look beautiful against the creamy stone of Conversano.

This kitty knows the stones are very flattering to their coloring, and that Rich is always good for a scritch.

We knew that metal utility covers were slippery, but I hadn’t appreciated how tricky they might be to integrate into paving stones until the town of Alberobello. While most visitors look up at the Trulli, make sure to also look down and admire the paving stones.

The metal utility cover on the left must have taken some time. The stone faced cover, upper right, blends quite well.

Another utility cover, this one set cross wise against the flow of pavers. Oh, and some lovely Trulli.

Rome. Rome. Rome. Where the stones you tread were trodden by Julius Caesar, and marched upon by Roman warriors and enslaved people who were the capital of the empire. Our time traveling in the UK, Morocco, and Italy gave us a good look at the extent of the Roman Empire, but I hadn’t visited Rome before.

The road from the forum to the Colosseum. We arrived early to admire the mostly empty paving stones.

In the Forum. Rich added for scale. Huge pavers.

Apparently, the small cobblestones of Rome’s roads, “sampietrini”, which means “little St. Peters,” are being replaced with asphalt on the main, busy roads. It will make for a quieter and smoother surface for bikes, scooters and trucks. But, the promise from at least one mayor is to move the paving stones to smaller more pedestrian scale streets. It would be fascinating to see the cost benefit analysis of stone versus asphalt. Wear and tear. Re-paving costs. Environmental considerations. Is my inner bureaucrat showing?

A lovely small street in Trastavere. Cobbles intact. They certainly win the charm competition.

The Appian Way. A road built to march armies and supply wagons. Those large stones were the surface, they were laid atop an under layer of gravel, smaller stones and mortar. The surface was smooth, but now it’s a better idea to go around these bits on your bike.

We’re in San Francisco now, catching up with friends and sharing our travel tales. Traveling the world is amazing, but being somewhere familiar, and where we have wonderful friends is rejuvenating.

The Happy Travelers admiring a modern road surface, red bus only lanes on Van Ness Ave in San Francisco.

Make room for awesome.

The posters at our storage facility are giving us advice as we move the first load in to our new space.

Selling and moving is a lot of work. It’s exhausting and exhilarating, and in an hour moods can range between joy and snappish cranky. We are doing what we can to make our lives easy, not much cooking since our kitchen is in a state of disarray for cabinet painting.

The auxiliary kitchen. Everything from the lower cabinets is in the bike room.

We keep reminding ourselves how good it is to cull your stuff – so much to GoodWill already! We’ve been in our lovely flat ten years. That’s a good long time to accumulate stuff. So now, we cull, save what we love, send the rest out for others to use.

Making room for awesome. As advised.

The signage game at this storage facility is strong.

The packing challenge begins.

July 3, 2021 If you catch a glimpse of us this week, the slightly panicked looks on our faces is because we’ve decided to sell our flat before we leave to go traveling. And we are just now remembering how much work it is to sell. Lots to get done but we’re up to the challenge.

We fly to Europe on August 13th. (Hopefully.) All our stuff, minus that we purge, will be in storage, and when we come back to SF we’ll plan on finding a rental. We love this City but the world is calling and we must go…

Getting ready to travel.

Like many people, the pandemic made us reconsider our lives. Pre-pandemic we were ready to rent out our SF flat and travel, knowing we would have a place in San Francisco to eventually come home to. Now, we have decided to sell our flat and be unemcumbered as we travel. We did this in 2006, so it’s familiar to us. The packing, the purging, the considering every object’s worth and emotional weight.

We spent a month traveling in Colorado with a rental car and camping gear. That helped us realize how much we love traveling lite, and traveling without a car.

So, here we go. House free, car free travel.