Time to Hit the Road

Our target departure date, July 28 arrives in now what seems like no time. John has plotted our route. We will head in a south-easterly direction with the intentions of seeing our friends, Tom and Laura now in North Carolina. This means we must travel from Colorado through Kansas, Missouri, Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky and even a bit of the Smokey Mountains of Tennessee before reaching our "pit stop" outside of Charlotte, NC. Despite the fact that both John and I travelled by car with our families growing up, most of these areas of the country are new to us. However we are not "mad" road-warriors and decide that 400 miles per day is about our speed.

With that in mind, John makes reservations for overnight stays in Kansas City, MO and Louisville, KY. Since this region is known for its BBQ fare, the real question is which restaurants must we try along the way?  Of course, John has high hopes that we'll hit at least one such place made famous on his favorite show, Diners, Drive-ins and Dives (aka Triple-D). In his pedantic way, he makes sure to make note of all such possibilities in and around our planned stop-overs.

The ride through Kansas is as expected, long and monotonous. Getting through Kansas City proves to be a fair challenge due to traffic and construction. Our hotel is on the eastern side of the city and John wisely decides that we will not backtrack to hit a Triple-D restaurant for BBQ that night. Instead we opt for a local chain recommended by the hotel called The Rib Crib. It's nothing to shout about.

The only memorable moment of our next leg is (no, NOT the famous arch in St. Louis - though we passed by it) but a little side-trip we couldn't resist to Cynthiana, Indiana! The town is well a small, rural farm-town and probably a nice community although not a place we'd ever consider for retirement despite its namesake - even our quest to find a coffee shop failed! I'm sure the corn is very good though!

John with the homerun hitter

Giant bat outside museum

Next evening when we reach Louisville, KY we're chatting with our friend, Andy about what we can do there. He mentions the Louisville Slugger Bat Museum and Factory! In fact it's right on our way and we both agree it'd be a fun addition to our itinerary. Indeed that proves to be the case. John swings a bat used for home-runs by Red Sox player, Big Papi. Then we enjoy the factory tour and spy bats waiting to be finished for another favorite Red Sox player, Kevin Youkilis. You can see more here!

Afterwards, we find our hotel and decide that once again the Triple-D restaurants are not convenient to our location. Instead, Cindy find's this place called Mark's Feed Store (MFS) that looks promising. As it turns out, MFS is terrific! Their BBQ is excellent but they also serve something called Burgoo which we learn is a Civil War stew. I can highly recommend both Mark's BBQ and that Burgoo although the Buttermilk Pie I try for dessert just doesn't hit it. In any case, we end up buying a couple bottles of their homemade BBQ Sauce to bring to Tom and Laura's.

Next stop, Charlotte, NC (or thereabouts)!

Departure Time Closes In

 With our home-sale and packing behind us and a definite start date for John to take up his new job, we work out a cross-country itinerary and make plans to depart from Colorado on July 28th.

As you might expect there's a last bit of scrambling to say goodbye to friends and family before we go. We spend a lovely afternoon with Anne and Alex and their adorable new elkhound puppy appropriately named Rock! Isn't he just adorable!

There are burgers and brats with our rediscovered friends, Dave and Cindy in Evergreen (and an encounter with a fox that evening that leaves us with a story to tell). There's rounds of drinks with neighbors and meals at favorite restaurants and pubs. We finally celebrate our anniversary (which officially was on July 3rd) at an elegant place in Boulder, Frasca's that serves exquisite Northern Italian food. Our meal was made extra special through two generous gift cards we had received that covered half the very large bill!

On Sunday, just four days before our road trip, my sister and her husband are up from Durango visiting their kids in Denver and we make plans to meet for breakfast at a Triple-D (ie. Diner's, Drive-ins and Dives) locale called Steuben's. What is it about their food? All I know is we all gorge ourselves and afterwards we wander around a city park nearby while our bloated stomachs digest...

John, Keanan, Jazmin, Carol, Ron and Me!

That same evening we have plans to meet up with Tom and Pat, longtime friends now living in Ft. Collins. We are packing a picnic dinner and heading to Red Rocks to see Chicago perform with the Denver Symphony! Red Rocks itself is such a unique venue, truly a magnificent setting. It's a gorgeous night on the Front Range and couldn't make for a better send-off!

     

      

The Job Search goes Global

John (Biz Pic)

On the job front, John had from the start gotten quite a bit of interest and several serious interviews. He flew to California, Boston and North Carolina in succession and felt fairly positive that a job offer might come out of one of these opportunities. But one after another he got turned down, put off or caught in a bureaucratic morass. He decided to move on and pursue things outside the country. Besides his hard-earned permanent residence status in Hong Kong was nearling expiration and (oh, by the way) while he was at it the Southside Hash was getting ready to celebrate their 2000th run which of course he couldn't miss!

So while Cindy was busy selling off the furniture and household goods as well as locating a moving and storage company to handle the remainder, John began to organize his trip to Hong Kong. He planned to depart on June 21 for a 10-day stay which would involve meetings and interviews with recruiters or potential employers plus a certain degree of play-time with his old running buds. Oh and let's not leave out that before his departure we also had to travel back to Cape Cod to prepare our home for the approaching rental season!

But wonders never cease and one of the key job opportunities that John had interviewed for earlier came back to give him a second chance! This company is involved in the marine shipping industry and has headquarters in Boston although the position of interest would be for a regional director in Asia and head of their office in Singapore! Fortunately the timing worked out very well since they wished to make arrangements for further interviews while we were in Cape Cod. Additionally, John was able to propose that he add on a leg to his trip to Hong Kong that would enable him to meet with the staff already in Singapore. The company agreed and from there things progressed in due course. He had a successful trip that resulted in job offers from both a company in Hong Kong as well as for this role in Singapore. Since John's heart had been set on the Singapore job right from the start he was over the moon when he received their offer and accepted the job with a start date in early August!

At this juncture our goods are mostly sorted or stored and we completed the first part of this wayward journey from Colorado to Boston. Thinking back to the beginning it's staggering now to realize all that we accomplished between March and the end of July. It's also not an experience either of us hope to repeat anytime soon! It required almost overwhelming degrees of focus, persistence, creativity, and will to make one thing after another happen. Yet that alone cannot account for success and we are both aware and grateful that in these difficult times for so many the wide-ranging support from friends and family contributed greatly and that fate or an angel or both saw us through what could have otherwise been very ugly times. Instead we have this whole new starting point and another new chapter to add to our lives...

What goes? What stays? And how do we not kill each other in the process of deciding?

We had just over a month before we would close on the sale of our home and be required to move out! It would have been easy to just pack up everything we had in Colorado and put it in storage until our next destination was established. Yet we both realized that we had some unnecessary or unused things that would have been silly to keep - especially since the bill was on our tab! So although we agreed we needed and even wanted to downsize, the difficulty lay with our thoughts on certain items that we had to make decisions about. This was compounded by Cindy's impulsive tendency to toss things out while John's attitude held toward sentimental value that was hard to overrule. But we had to plunge ahead and make the best of it!

A Favorite Thai Painting

We both agreed we must keep our beloved Asian artwork and collectibles plus certain furniture pieces and household goods that would be needed even if we ended up in a condo or apartment somewhere. Also we had very little bedroom furniture of any value so except for our bed and a guest bed, it was easy to put those items up for sale. In addition John had some none-too-attractive office furniture he'd acquired for free through his former employer and that was easy to jettison. Then there were a couple of pieces of older furniture we had taken from his parents and both of us knew it was time to let anything except a couple of special pieces go. And there was lawn-care equipment and various tools that John enthusiastically agreed we would sell while Cindy sorted through kitchenware, bedding and clothing to whittle that stuff down (and learned in the process how little any of it was really worth from a re-sale standpoint).  Then we got to the hard stuff.

Cabinet and Buddha

Cindy had a funky lounge/futon in her office space that she sadly agreed to let go of while John determined that despite the fact he had a 55-gallon aquarium that had sat in the basement since our arrival in Colorado, it would stay (although he did sort through several boxes of accessories to minimize the load).  There was a sideboard we'd used as an entertainment center that was a rather big piece and in the spirit of downsizing we finally concluded it would go along with some decorative Asian chairs, a Chinese painted cabinet and one of our Buddha's.

Rosewood Dining Room Set

Last but not least was a gorgeous, custom made rosewood dining room set that was big, heavy and almost wholly unused for dining or entertaining anymore. John swallowed hard but finally agreed with Cindy's campaign to sell it.

From there it was a scramble to line up a reliable company to pack and store the things we were keeping while simultaneously selling things through Craigslist and preparing for a garage sale. Finally it also became clear that some items we had determined to sell would not be accomplished by the time we had to move out so Cindy set to work finding an alternative means and reluctantly settled on a consignment firm to do the job.

While we are thrilled with the chosen moving company, Flatirons Moving and Storage (which we can highly recommend) and had mostly good results with our own sales efforts through Craigslist and the dreaded-but-necessary garage sale, the consignment results have been mixed though not altogether surprising. As expected, the dining room set was the most expensive item put up for consignment and the hardest to sell. To date, it's still at their showroom with little or no interest - ugh!

However, of most importance is the fact that despite our differing attitudes and sometimes difficult situations in determining what to do, we came through it all feeling accomplished and largely satisfied without any big riffs in our relationship!

A Little Story Before We Begin

This chapter of our lives all started in the Spring of 2011 after John learned he was going to be let go and would join the rank of the many unemployed. In earnest he began a new job search and simultaneously we decided to put our home in Colorado on the market expecting both to take many months to come to some positive outcome.

In rapid order we secured a real estate agent and our home went on the market in March. John jokingly promised a bonus to our agent if he would sell it at or near our asking price within 30 days. In fact, to our surprise, we had a good offer within 97% of our asking price in just 34 days! Wow! We weren't really prepared for that but couldn't turn it down. That meant we not only had to sell-off or pack-up things very quickly but also needed to figure out where we would go for the coming summer months (our other home in Cape Cod was completely rented out for the forthcoming summer months). Fortunately we have so many generous friends and family that offered us alternative lodging and plenty of help along the way! Thank you to all of those who gave us that needed support and oh, what a relief!

The next big step was determining what to do with a houseful of goods and furniture with no clear idea of where we would be going. It was a rather extraordinary challenge made more so with each of us approaching it from opposing points of view.