California dreaming
Every time we come home we ask each other if we are ready to reintroduce living in California into the mix of our lives. For the past 3 years, the answer has always been no as we felt that we could not get enough of the novelty in our lifestyle that retirement has provided us. This time we began to ponder the thought. No, we are ready to make the change yet but we are, for the first time, beginning to think of when. We are committed to renting our home out for 2 more years until Mandy finishes law school, and we figure it will take one more additional year of rental savings to make a dent in the expensive renovations that will then be required. After the past few years of minimal maintenance and the fact that the home is pushing 25 years it is going to be time for re-roofing (no mean feat on a geodesic dome), carpeting, re-tiling the kitchen, landscaping, repainting, yada, yada, yada.
Home in California just before we left on our big adventure
Every six months, as we transition from North America to Europe and back, we spend a week or so doing maintenance work on our home and 3 acre (1.2 ha) property trying to maintain it. At best, it is all we can do. While the interior of the house is in great shape, the property has never looked worse. I don’t mean 'bad' but just not anywhere near the level of care we had left it in. Our renters are 3 single guys who are rarely home. One is a model that does shoots all over the world, one lives with his girlfriend nearby but like to keep his own place as “back up” and the 3rd is in and out a lot. But, they each have 2 cars, Jet Skis, surfboards, multiple trailers, a 6 person portable spa (in addition to our built in hot tub) and lots of construction tools and equipment as one guy is a contractor and all around pack rat. This does no harm to the house of course but makes the place look like a used car lot and outdoor storage facility.
We love that they are completely settling in, ensuring that we will have steady renters until we decide to pry them out with a crow bar. However, they don’t lift a finger to maintain the property in the manner that we do when we live in our home and it annoys me when we are there. I can’t help but feel like asking, “what are these people doing in our house?”
Anyways, we miss some of our old haunts. Just because California is on the bleeding edge of technology and societal evolution doesn’t mean that it doesn’t have some fascinating ties to Americas past. A short distance from the house lies the town of Pozo. Well, “town” is a rather generous description as the population is only 30 people.
Pozo saloon. The only changes are the paved road and cars
Established during the gold rush, its current claim to fame is it’s remaining saloon that caters mainly to motorcycle clubs and veeeeeeery lost tourists. The ceiling sports a few bullet holes and the “hanging tree” still stands at its entrance where justice was served to a horse thief during its colorful past. Within a short drive, we also have a few past stagecoach stops, which have been converted into restaurants.
Murder Inc.
No sooner had we landed in Seattle that my grandson Alex asked me if I would like to go a few rounds of paint ball with him and some of his buddies on a 5 acre vacant property. Never one to pass up an opportunity to try something new, I enthusiastically accepted. The guys soon got into it as to which team was going to get "stuck" with grandpa, who had no experience to boot. They joked about how he would be the first to be slaughtered.
Evidently, my 3 years as a military policeman including leading a military SWAT team attached to the secret service detail during a presidential visit to the refugee camp where I was assigned, or my 'expert' marksman ranking could not hold a candle to the tactical expertise of these trained killers and paint ball aficionados.
All of the players, except ... ahem, me, wore full camo uniforms. I was the funny looking old fart in jeans and a funky shirt who might as well have a red bullseye taped to his noggin. As we got underway, I low crawled my way to a dense brushed area and proceeded to make a poor mans ghillie suit by having twigs, leaves and foliage hang out of every area of my clothing and face shield that I could manage.
Now as close to invisible as I could make myself, I proceeded to stalk my prey. Since they all looked alike, I used the time honored principle of "kill them all and let God sort them out". The good news was that I managed to "kill" 4 out of the 7 players, suffering only a leg wound from a stray shot. None of the kids ever saw me coming, including the one I took out with a head shot from 8 feet away. The bad news was that I killed both my team mates. I guess I am better suited as a lone ranger....
The business end of things
Days before we pulled the plug and bailed outa-here at the Island last fall we went through our yearly ritual of having our “holding” tank pumped out. On any habited island that does not allow for a septic system and leach field (like ours), a composting toilet (which we chose not to have) or a holding tank stores the waste until it can be pumped out. Our tank is a 2000+ gallon (7500 liters) tank and with the addition of an ingenious gray water system it is sufficient for our needs for a whole season.
Phone company making a service call
It is amazing to me just how many services are available to the island community. Much like the phone company who shows up by boat for a service call, these guys just show up on a barge, snake a 4-inch line to the tank, fire up the pump and a half hour later are on their way. It is just like having our septic tank occasionally pumped out in California, only by boat instead of by truck. This pump out turned out to be particularly profitable for us.
As we spoke with the young business owner, our conversation turned to our ongoing search for a cheaper way to secure a shore boat slip for our regular trips to the mainland. Since we bought the property we have docked our boat and parked our car at two different marinas that are primarily intended for much larger boats and / or people who live on their yachts at the marina and use them as a floating cottage. Read “expensive”.
Our need is simply for a parking space for our car, boat trailer and 20 feet of dock on the mainland that we would use very little. To make a long story short, he ‘just happened’ to have a spot available at his family’s property that could not have been better located for us, at half the cost we had paid in 2007. This news became all the sweeter when a few days later we got an email from our now “ex” marina owner. He announced that due to improvements and upgrades that had been made to his marina, if we came back for the 2008 season, our fees would double. Talk to the hand…
Opening the cabin this year was no picnic. While everything in the house was basically OK, last year saw several new systems being added; Reverse Osmosis water filtration unit, an icemaker in the refrigerator, a dishwasher and a washing machine. This was in addition to the existing water pump, hot water tank, pressure tank, ultra violet filter, commercial sediment filter, shower, toilet, sinks and outdoor faucets. No big deal per se but in this environment …… a big deal. Since we do not heat the cabin in the winter and it freezes harder than a constipated Rhino, any water remaining in any machine will cause pipes, valves or pumps to burst. I have gone to great lengths to research just what I needed to do to protect the systems from freezing damage and it almost worked.
Technicians and manufacturers never expect their equipment to be in an unheated home so they are sometimes at a loss to know all the little nooks and crannies where water can hide and yes, they missed a spot. A few drops remained in the washing machine inlet valve and it ruptured. Of course we found this out when I turned the water on and it began gushing out of the machine all over the kitchen floor. That detail has been added to the checklist and hopefully won’t be an issue next year.
Then, just to keep things interesting, we picked up our boat from it's warehouse where I hitched the boat trailer to the car and drove the very short distance to the launch ramp. Unfortunately, I failed to notice that the boat trailer hitch was only resting on the top of the car trailer hitch receiver and was not properly seated on the ball.
My bad.
We got a few hundred yards down the road when we heard a 'clunk' as the trailer came off the car's half of the trailer hitch and began just sliding down the road behind the car. Of course the safety chains were attached (did you think I was completely dumb?) so the trailer just bounced off the back of the car trunk and bumper as I was trying to slow to a stop without dragging the trailer, yet without having the boat end up in the back seat. Yes there are a few minor dings and scratches but no worse than the scathing scowl I was met with from my co-pilot.
Just because we don’t have any huge indoor projects left to do doesn’t mean we are sitting on our thumbs. After settling in, I set out to finish a bunch of loose ends such as window and door trim and laying acoustical insulation panels on the bedroom floors in preparation for the carpeting being laid. I also installed some architectural hand forged eye candy that I made this past winter in France and brought over. (and you wonder how we can have 200 lbs (92 kilos) of luggage!)
Widow trim and treatment that we finished upon our arrival after
cutting through the log wall and installing the view window last fall.
A lot of what we will do this summer will be getting rid of little piles. Piles of rock that I will use to close the space under the outer edge of the cabin walls. A little pile of insulation that I will use to finish insulating under the floor of the main cabin. A pile of logs that I cut out of a wall when I installed the dining room view window that will become the base to the outdoor kitchen prep area for the BBQ. A small pile of hardware cloth that I will wrap around more trees to protect them from the beavers. Each little pile that is used up makes the place tidier and finishes incomplete projects. But first, it is time for lemonade and to go ponder it all at the dock………..
