At the risk of sounding "cliche," I’m not sure this journey would have
been possible without the help and support of our family and friends (who are helping with everything from dealing with surprise bills, taking care of the horse, fostering 6 chickens, house maintenance surprises, getting prescriptions filled and delivered).
My horse, who is boarded at George and Carol’s place, now has a girlfriend and was completely uninterested
in me as I bid him a tearful farewell. Hill and Debbie, our
renters, stayed with us the last 2 days. This was a good opportunity for us to show them all the quirks of the house, where and when to put the trash cans on garbage
day, who to contact in case of this and that emergency…etc. I also put it all in writing, along
with where to shop, eat out, community resources, and other touristic delights. I feel like I’m leaving the house in
the hands of good friends despite just meeting them for the first time. They mailed the contents of their NYC apt. to us box by box over the last several weeks. We feel a bit like we are swapping lifestyles...the city mice swapping with the country mice.
Drew managed to get the Tundra, his
Miata, and the Yaris all into our 2 car garage, up on blocks... batteries
disconnected. That was after we delivered our 6 chickens to the welcoming coop of Marylu and Jim, who later chauffeured us to the train station
in Paso. Then it was off to the Bay area, where our friend Chris picked us up at the train station, and about 7 hours
later delivered us to SFO international airport. The journey went well…first to Miami, then over the pond to
Barcelona (having our own hi-pro snacks like hard
boiled eggs and nuts made a big difference). The first thing I did before leaving the airport was buy a
SIM card for my (unlocked) mobile phone, as I had planned to text our AirBnB host to let her know we arrived so she could let us in the apartment. Note
to self…look at the fine print when buying a SIM. It took me 3 trips to 3 different Vodafone offices (each one telling me I had a different problem-glitch in the phone, faulty SIM) to finally find out that the
text sending feature didn’t work because it wasn’t included in the plan I bought! I could receive texts, but
couldn’t reply or send them. Drew, had gone through a lot prior to leaving the country to get his phone unlocked, but found out upon arrival that the Verizon representative failed to unlock it after all. We later resolved this by using Skype on my ipad to call Verizon and talk to a "global" rep, who immediately unlocked the phone. So the bottom line is, technology can be great, but have a plan B.
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