Imminent Travel: The Home Stretch

With apologies for the dearth of travel updates in the last two weeks, I must admit that I’ve been spending an inordinate amount of time reflecting on the heightened state of tension and uncertainty produced by our imminent travel itinerary. This caused me to think long and hard about the pre-Socratic philosophy of Heraclitus and his epistemological skepticism, ultimately leading to an utterly tedious blog article which I finally had to relegate to the scrap heap. In the meantime, however, we have continued to enjoy our long stay at Tierra Nueva co-housing in Oceano, where almost everyone in the community has made us feel right at home, like part of their blessed and happy family. We raised sourdough with them, broke bread with them, washed dishes with them, and even passed germs with them. By day we played freeze tag and slipped on fallen avocados. By night we gazed at the moon and Jupiter conjunction, and assembled some of the most frustrating and mirthless jigsaw puzzles imaginable. But this afternoon we bid them a bittersweet farewell. After nearly two months, it’s hard to believe that at least a few of them wouldn’t be happy to see us vacating the premises. Even so, we celebrated our last night with a community potluck, the latest in a long series of farewell dinners. As usual, our hosts outdid themselves with kindness and generosity, punctuated by a one gallon tub of Motor Oil from Doc Bernstein’s ice cream parlor. From our ten by ten cell of a guest room in Oceano, our family relocated today to the Oxford Suites of Pismo Beach, located conveniently at 4th Street and Highway 101. Two nights in these luxurious accommodations will mark our last stop before we leave the Central Coast, and the country, for quite some time. The short hotel stay also gives us an opportunity to assure ourselves that we have absolutely everything we need—nothing more and nothing less—before embarking on this momentous transatlantic journey. To be honest, we hadn’t really planned on spending our last two nights in such a classy joint. But late planning and the SLO City marathon had rendered the more affordable options unavailable. So here we are in a swanky suite, twice the size of any other hotel we would ordinarily stay in. It’s really like having two hotel rooms for the price of three. But at least they offer complimentary libations in the lobby cantina. For more details about the early steps of our radical departure, take a look at some of these previous blog posts.

• Open House
• Getting On and Letting Go
• Are we there yet?

To learn more about the lifestyle of freedom, check out these other articles.

• WWOOFing with Children
• WorkAway With Kids
• Digital Nomadism
• New Education for Global Citizens