Invisible in my new community

It finally happened, 6 weeks after we moved here:  I was in a store in town, and ran into someone I know! It took me by surprise, because for the past 2 months I haven't seen anyone I know, or even recognize, in a store, walking along the street, out to eat, or driving through town.

I've met a lot of people in Prescott, but there are around 40,000 residents and the odds of running into a familiar person, especially someone I know by name, are slim. I lived in southwestern Vermont for 22 years, and saw someone I knew every place I went. Sometimes it's nice to be an unknown. There are no expectations about what I'm wearing or what foods I'm purchasing at the grocery store. I don't have to search for people's names or be embarrassed when I don't remember where we met.

Not knowing many people forces me to be more outgoing. I strike up conversations with people in stores, and when they find out I'm new in town they tell me their favorite places to hike, or the best places to get lunch. I'm more likely to introduce myself to people at the gym, or talk about our workouts instead of focusing intently on my workout knowing I only have 20 minutes before the next appointment. I chat with the woman sitting next to me at the Saturday morning gardening class, and I even had a long discussion about the best places to buy quilting supplies with someone I met on the way to the bathroom while eating lunch downtown.

Because I'm out of the habit of recognizing people I know, I almost walked right past Wendy at Kohl's. In the back of my mind I thought:  I think I know her! Then she said hello, I remembered her name and that she's our interior designer from Bella Home Furnishings and we had a great conversation.

I wonder when meeting people I know will become part of my usual routine, something expected instead of unexpected?

Moving opens more doors than we realize

Often when we make a big move, like ours from Vermont to Arizona, we focus only on the problems:  packing up all our stuff, deciding what to keep and what to give away or sell, figuring out where the grocery store is located, getting lost driving to the post office, meeting new people, finding a job.

As I was talking with a friend this past week, she commented that this move has opened up doors and opportunities that I never expected.

Because I'm working fewer hours, I have time to take webinars, clean out my email inbox, and I even signed up for a digital photography class at the local community college.

Living in unfamiliar surroundings gives me the opportunity to learn about the area. I love history, and the first book I checked out of the library before we even had any furniture except a mattress was a history of Arizona by Marshall Trimble. When I heard that Trimble was performing at the Palace, one of the oldest frontier saloons in Arizona and located in historic Whiskey Row (downtown Prescott - that's another story), we invited a couple we recently met to join us.

I bet most parents have boxes of their kids' artwork, school papers, and childhood memorabilia stored away in the attic or basement. Now that I have time, and need to find a home for these boxes, I've started actually opening them up and going through the contents. Yesterday I found a folder of Duncan's 5th grade writing projects and read through each:  stories about his dog, Jasper; letters to penpals describing his life as a soccer player, reports of a vacation we took to Cozumel, and the dreams of a 10 year old looking forward 30 years into the future.

A large part of my work focuses on helping people figure out how to make changes in their life. I've found that moving makes this process of change much easier, because almost everything in my life is also changing. I can develop new routines, and decide what routines are important to me and which I can let go. I remind my clients that changing our habits involves everyone around us, and requires friends and family to get used to our new routines. Because I've moved thousands of miles away, the people I meet in Arizona don't have any expectations of who I am or my routines.

Of course we don't have to physically move to a new location to make these types of changes, but moving makes the process easier.

How many times in our life do we truly have the opportunity to think about the person we want to be, and put those changes into practice? I remember going to college and thinking that because I know absolutely no one in Vermont (I grew up in Indiana), I could be whoever I wanted. I told our boys when they went to college that this is a rare opportunity to give themselves permission to change things up and live their lives differently.

The door to our house and my life in Vermont closed, and the door to our house and life in Arizona opened. Who knows what's around the next corner?

Shaking up routines

I've been reading about how habits and routines shape our lives, primarily so that we don't have to think through every detailed step in hundreds of activities that take place each day. We have a morning routine so we don't have to think:  which side of the bed do I get up on? Do I take a shower before I eat breakfast or after? Which route do I drive to work?

Moving throws many of those old habits and routines out the window. Not all of them:  I always sleep on the side of the bed closest to the bathroom and unless I'm exercising first thing, I shower first and then eat breakfast.

A big part of the stress - and fun - of moving is developing new routines. One of my neighbors encouraged me to try a new activity or group three times before deciding if that group or activity is right for me. In the past few days, I've tried several new things that may be surprising to people who know me:

Yesterday I took a pickleball class. I'm not usually a person who takes group exercise classes, participates in competitive activities (I run in races, but I'm not competing against anyone except myself), or plays sports that require hand-eye coordination. My family played tennis when I was young, but my version of tennis involves more laughter than balls hit expertly over the net. Pickleball as far as I can tell is a combination of badminton, tennis and ping-pong. It's the second most popular activity here in Prescott Lakes, right behind golf. Not only did I have fun in the class, I met two new people and we got together today to practice.

That's another new thing for me:  inviting people I've just met to do something with me. I've been doing a lot of this:  inviting a neighbor to go for a walk, asking a couple we met to join us for dinner theatre, and I even sent someone I've never even met in person a Facebook message, asking her to go for a run with me.

For the past several years I haven't made the time for knitting, crocheting or cross-stitch embroidery, activities I loved from the time I was young. My daily routine revolved around work and exercise, and the only time I did anything creative was when I decided to make a gift. That usually entailed late nights filled with frantically trying to finish the project on time instead of a relaxing and enjoyable hobby. I'm starting to develop an evening cross-stitching routine; of course the sampler is one I started in 1998 (I only know this because the '98' portion of the date is completed) but it feels good to sit and stitch instead of working in front of the computer.

I actually started cleaning the house every day. For the past 20+ years our house was messy, lived-in, and definitely not cleaned on any type of schedule. I vacuumed only when the dust balls were large enough I could see them rolling across the floor, cleaned the bathrooms only when I noticed an off odor, and dusted only right before company came to visit. Since we've moved, I've cleaned the bathrooms once each week, used a dust mop on the wood floors without seeing dust balls, swiffered the tile floors without any muddy footprints, and cleaned the cooktop every single time I've used it.

I wonder if I'll fall back into my old habits and routines of too much work, too little down-time, and a messy house; or if this move across country is the start of some truly new and different routines.

New floor completed and memories unpacked

We now have a beautiful oak floor in our living room! Of course we only have one true, comfortable chair, but the floor is awesome! Light streams in through the windows making the whole house seem brighter.

We spent the day moving dishes into the pine hutch we purchased in Germany 30 years ago. The hutch now contains Grandma Michael's china dinner service for 12 that I helped her pick out and Mike's Uncle Lyle's dinnerware for 8. We have enough space that we can actually use our family's dishes instead of storing them in boxes packed away in the attic, brought down only for special occasions. That means more handwashing and less use of the dishwasher, but Grandma Michael and Uncle Lyle didn't have dishwashers, either.

Mike once again put together the pine shelving unit that we also purchased in Germany. Each time we reconfigure the shelves and carefully unpack the books, pictures and photo albums (Remember when you had to send away film to be developed into pictures, and the excitement when you picked up the pictures?) I spend time with the memories:

- The books we read night after night to the boys:  The Story of Ferdinand, Stella Luna, and several much-worn books by Dr. Seuss and Roald Dahl.
- Forgotten framed photos that we found in dusty boxes under the guestroom bed:  Duncan as a 5-month old with a big smile and curling his toes, Nate with a big grin sitting in the grass when he was 4 months old, family photos from trips to Jamaica.
-  Small glass and china cups with names of towns in Germany, Austria, the Caribbean, France, Canada, Mexico, and numerous places throughout the United States we've visited.

Moving is an opportunity to pull out the dusty boxes stacked in the basement and attic and find the treasures we lovingly packed away years ago.

New floor and new furniture

 

This is what our living room with the carpet ripped up looks like, complete with large garbage can in the middle of the room. We're putting in oak floors, which is a 2-3 day process. In the meantime, the dining room chairs are in the bedroom, the bottom of the hutch is in the kitchen, the top of the hutch is on the back porch, and the only real piece of living room furniture we moved from Vermont - Mike's leather chair - is also in our bedroom. My office is full of boxes of wood flooring and there is a coating of dust everywhere.

 

It's all worth it because look at the beautiful wood floor! We also ordered a couch and love seat for the living room and two gorgeous round chairs for the library that are so big I can curl up with my feet under me and still have room. Picking out the furniture was easy, choosing fabric was moderately time-consuming, and picking out fabric for the pillows, to make sure the color flows through the house, took a lot of time. Thank goodness Wendy from Bella Home Furnishings is talented and funny or I would have given up.

Moving is definitely an exercise in patience and waiting:  packing up everything in Vermont, waiting two weeks after we arrived in Arizona for our stuff to be delivered, waiting another 2 weeks for the floor to be put in, and now waiting another 4-6 weeks for furniture.

And I thought moving would be easy!

Where does the time go?

One month ago today - July 26th - we got on our BMW motorcycle and left Vermont, headed for Arizona.

In the past month we traveled across the country on the motorcycle, moved into our house in Prescott, AZ; met several of our neighbors, attended more social functions than we have in the entire last year in Vermont, and are beginning to feel comfortable in our home.

My days in Vermont were ruled by my calendar, filled with appointments with clients, running groups, volunteer activities, and writing assignments. My calendar these days contains blocks of empty space, leading to a much slower pace. In the past week I've:

- Transplanted two bushes and planted three new heuchera perennials that love the shade, and learned that the soil here truly is more rock than dirt. No wonder our neighbors use a jackhammer - the kind that you see workers using to break up concrete - to dig holes for planting. We picked a rainy, wet weekend to do the planting which made digging holes with a shovel a possibility.

- Attended Zoo by Moonlight at the Heritage Park Zoo where we walked around the animal sanctuary after dark, guided by flashlights. I saw my first javelina, wild pigs that roam our area, along with coyotes, mule deer, and even emu.
- Strolled around Prescott during the monthly 4th Friday Art Walk, visiting local art galleries and dreaming about pieces we can place in our house - someday.
- Went to dinner at a neighbor's home and talked about the motorcycle trips we plan to take together this Fall.
- Invited other neighbors over to give them tips about their trip to Vermont in September. They asked  that if Vermont is so beautiful and has so much to offer, why did we move to Arizona?
- Met with Wendy, our interior design guru from Bella Home Furnishings to help us decide on furniture, colors, and decorating our home.
- Went to lunch with Margie Geiser, a dietitian I met years ago when we both volunteered with a national group, and who luckily lives in Prescott. It feels good to start to get to know the local dietitians and find out what's going on with nutrition in our community.
- I've been running almost every day, exploring trails and streets around our house. On the Peavine Trail early one morning I saw rabbits, heron, ducks, a mule deer, and a coyote long before I ever saw another person. Prescott is a mid-size town, but it's really easy to get outside town into the countryside and get a good idea of what Arizona was like 100 years ago.
- Baked a belated birthday cake for Mike, and learned that following the high altitude guidelines (Prescott is at 5400' elevation) is essential.

Mike's birthday cake:  it rose too fast, overflowed the sides of the pans, and then sank in the middle. Not my best effort!

 



We're still not completely moved in, waiting for oak floors to replace the carpeting and shelves for the closets. We can fit both cars into the garage, thanks to a wall of shelves for boxes of things we don't use every day.

The current goal is to have everything unpacked and put away in the next week. Now all we need is furniture for the living room!

The first time I bumped into someone I know

I couldn't go through a day in Vermont without running into someone I knew at the bank, post office, grocery store, or even driving down the road. Some people I recognized but didn't know their name; we would say hello and share a smile. The people at the bank and post office knew my name, and we'd talk about the weather or local news. Or I'd run into friends and we'd stop and chat so that I almost forgot why I walked into that particular store in the first place.

None of that has happened since July 26th when we left Vermont on our motorcycle for Arizona. It seems that folks in Prescott are genuinely friendly:  people on the street make eye contact and say  hello, we've had conversations with the folks sitting at the next table when we went out to dinner, and I've talked briefly with neighbors walking their dogs.

Today was the first day I bumped into someone I knew and we had a conversation. We met Mike when we first walked on the Peavine Trail, an old railroad bed that's now a beautiful, flat trail that winds through the granite dells around Watson Lake. It turned out he and his wife were in the process of moving to Prescott from Boston, and we chatted about moving across the country, looking for a house, and running.

Today I took Carole, one of my neighbors to the Peavine to walk. She's only lived here since June and hadn't heard of the Peavine. As we started off on the trail I recognized Mike coming the opposite direction. We said hello, he decided to walk with us, and we walked and talked for the next two miles.

Until we moved across the country, I took knowing people and the ability to have spur of the moment conversations for granted. I never had to make an effort to meet people and chat, and stopping to talk simply became part of the day. Here I make an effort to say hello and get to know people, to make a connection.

Carole and I plan to walk together again, and Mike suggested we make plans to hike in Sedona. I feel like I'm in the middle of a K'Nex toys project; meeting new people, making a connection, and introducing a new friend to someone else.

Finding a running community

Running was a big part of my life in Vermont. I volunteered at local races, walked or ran with a large group of friends throughout the week, went on weekend trips to races, and always saw someone I knew at a race.

Today Mike and I took part in the first annual Heroes Run in Prescott to honor the 19 firefighters killed fighting the Yarnell fire the end of June. The community hosts a fundraiser or memorial just about every week, raising money to help the families.

the back of the race t-shirt honoring the 19 firefighters

Today's 2 mile and 10K races were held on the Brownlow Trail, a hilly system only two miles from our house. When we arrived at the race at 5:20am it was still dark, and I remembered volunteering at several Vermont races where we set up in the dark. The sun came up pink and rosy in the East and by the time we started at 6:15 headlamps were no longer necessary.

As I slogged up the rocky, washed out sections of the trail I thought about several people I know participating in the 100 on 100 relay today in Vermont. I shifted my gaze from the ground in front of me to the mountains, granite dells, and town of Prescott in the distance when the course ran along the ridgeline, trying to pick out landmarks in a town where we've lived for two weeks. When I passed the volunteers at the aid stations, I thought about the hundreds of people who volunteered at the local races in Vermont, many of them not runners themselves, but happy to cheer and encourage everyone on the course.

All small-town races end the same way:  we congratulate each other as we come through the finish line, thank the volunteer who hands us a bottle of water, and stand around and talk about the race. I met Steve Orth, one of the active members of the local Mountain Milers running group, who told me about several races in the next month and invited me to the local group training runs.

I'm one step closer to truly feeling at home in our new community.

Groceries!

Today I did our first major grocery shopping trip in over five weeks.

During our last two weeks in Vermont, meals were planned around what we had on hand in an effort to use up as much food as possible. I gave away full boxes and cans of food to the food shelf and asked friends if they wanted mostly-full boxes.

We ate out for two weeks while moving out of the Vermont house and traveling by motorcycle to Arizona. When we moved into our home in Prescott, AZ we had no pots, pans, utensils, etc. We ate cereal in plastic bowls with plastic spoons, made sandwiches, or cooked frozen meals in the microwave or oven.

Wednesday our furniture and household goods arrived, and we celebrated by grilling steak and microwaving fresh potatoes and frozen corn. We ate on the back deck with real, it-needs-to-be-washed dishes and silverware and felt like the camping trip in the new house was finally at an end.

Now the house is stocked with food in the pantry, fridge and freezer. I'm planning fresh sweet corn, sauteed chicken and fresh broccoli for dinner using an actual recipe, and have meals for next week already picked out.

We still have unpacked boxes in every room, only one chair in the living room, and I haven't yet found some of the silverware. It feels like getting back into pre-baby shape after having a child:  everyone tells us it takes time and patience to get the house arranged and everything unpacked.

I'm hoping it doesn't take nine months.

Boxes everywhere we look

Furniture and box after box of our household goods were delivered today!

The moving company packed up our stuff in Vermont on July 23rd. 22 days later everything was delivered to our house in Arizona. We spent two nights in a hotel in Vermont, 8 days in hotels on the road on the motorcycle, one last night in a hotel in Prescott, AZ and then the last 10 days in our house with only a mattress and a stability ball chair. Today our open, minimalist house is packed high with boxes that seem to multiply like the rabbits that run around our yard. As fast as I empty out one box of dishes and glasses, another appears full of pots and pans.

In just a few hours we've gone from eating cereal out of paper bowls and using a plastic spoon while sitting on the floor to enjoying a grilled steak, baked potato, and fresh fruit sitting outside on the deck in real chairs, at an actual table, using dishes and silverware that need to be washed. Instead of rotating one pair of shorts and a pair of running shorts, I have piles of clothing in my closet. Every cupboard and drawer in the kitchen is full, my office desk is set up and books are on the shelves, and we now have full-size bottles of shampoo and toothpaste instead of the travel size.

Three weeks with basically no furniture and only two changes of clothing brings a refreshing perspective:  do we really need a bunch of stuff? I was thrilled that my grandmother's fragile and much glued-together china tea cups arrived unharmed. We set up photos of family on the shelves in the living room, and as I unpacked my boxes of letters, cards and drawings from the boys that I've collected over the years, I paused to read one or two.

Our empty house felt like home because we were living in it together. Now our house overflowing with boxes feels even more like home because of the famliar and cherished items that surround us.

Tomorrow is our 32nd wedding anniversary. We started married life in a small, furnished apartment in Augsburg, Germany and we're entering our 33rd year of marriage in sunny and friendly Prescott, AZ. May the adventures keep coming!

Things I never thought I'd do

We moved across the country to live in a completely different place, meet new people, and try out different experiences. I never expected that we would be part of a country club.

It's not really a country club, although there is a Hale Irwin private golf course and tennis courts, and a wildly popular game called pickleball that seems to be a cross between tennis and ping-pong, or as one of our neighbors calls it:  tennnis for old farts with injuries. There's also a beautiful club house, complete with a dining room. Next door is an equally beautiful health club with both indoor and outdoor pools, and locker rooms with higher quality furnishings than our home bathroom.

Our new home is located in Prescott Lakes, a planned subdivision with a home owners association (HOA) that takes care of the common areas. Our monthly HOA dues include membership to the club, and since we would otherwise join a local health club, we work out at the Prescott Lakes club on a regular basis.

Last night the club hosted a get-together for residents in our corner of Prescott Lakes, an area called the Summit. I've never been to a country club for dinner or a get-together, and I didn't know what to expect. What we found were very friendly people who welcomed us to Prescott, told us about local activities, and invited us to dinner, a hike, or to stop over one evening. Everyone in the Summit moved here from someplace else within the past 10 years. There really aren't any 'locals' in this type of neighborhood, although we did meet a couple of people who were born and raised in Phoenix.

We've never considered ourselves social people, rarely inviting friends over or going to their home. We were always busy with work or with the kids and evenings and weekends we looked forward either to family time or some quiet down-time. Now our lives are different. In the past 10 days since we've lived here, we went to a neighbor's home for wine and appetizers, attended the neighborhood party at the club, went to another neighbor's home after the party, and are starting to plan inviting people to our house - once we have furniture in place.

I may even learn to play pickleball.

How running helps me feel a part of my community

I love to run, always outside and preferably not on concrete sidewalks.

 

When we met with the Prescott Lakes membership coordinator, she asked about our hobbies. I told her I like to run, and when she pressed me for more hobbies I said I really like to run. Running is more than a hobby; it's how I feel connected with place, a stress-reliever, and a way to meet people and establish friendships. It also allows me to eat pretty much whatever and however much I want.

I brought my running clothes and shoes on our motorcycle trip as we moved from Vermont to Arizona, and ran almost every afternoon after we finished the day's miles. Running in a strange town allows me to get out of the hotel and off the main highway into the quiet side streets, and often I discover a restaurant or breakfast spot along the way.

I started out running in Prescott from our house on the sidewalks. Sidewalks aren't my favorite surface because they make my legs hurt, but I like towns with sidewalks and the opportunity to move around the community safely. Once I knew more about the local traffic patterns, I felt comfortable running in the road on some of the side streets. Then I discovered dirt trails around our subdivision, and I've been exploring the trails and adding them to my morning run. My happiness level increases each time I get off the sidewalk, turn down a different street, run through a new neighborhood.

This morning ran on trails/road to the health club, lifted weights, then ran back home using a different combination of trail and road. I purposefully took the trail to the highest point, where there are petroglyphs depicting the sun. I stopped for a moment at the top, looked around at the unbelievable scenery, slowed my rapidly beating heart (the combination of hills and mile-high elevation takes some getting used to), and trotted off downhill toward home.

Home. The more I run around our community, the more Prescott really does feel like home.

Waiting for furniture is like the last days of pregnancy

As I was sitting in our empty living room - empty except for the two $15.00 hard plastic outdoor chairs we purchased yesterday at Home Depot - a thought came to me. The last 10 days of living in our empty house, waiting for our furniture and household goods to be delivered, is a lot like the last few days of being pregnant.

We call the moving company to find out an estimated day that our stuff would be loaded on a moving van. That's a lot like the weekly doctor's appointment, where I hopefully asked when the baby might be born. At this point, there's no definite answer except for:  soon.

We putter around the house, taking care of some repairs:  retouching paint, installing a new outdoor faucet, changing a light bulb. That's a lot like putting up the crib and getting out the baby blankets. They aren't essential items, but they keep us busy.

We watch movies on TV that we've seen several times before. We don't feel like going out and are simply looking for something mindlessly entertaining to occupy our time. I think we watched some of those same movies waiting for labor pains to finally begin.

Friends email:  any news yet on the furniture? Neighbors act surprised that we've been here 10 days without furniture. I had those same types of questions in the last days of pregnancy:  what, you're still pregnant?

Finally, the moving company calls and tells us the delivery date. That's a lot like going into labor:  I know this baby is really going to be born!

We've gotten used to living in a house with only a mattress and now 2 chairs, using plastic silverware and paperplates, and standing up to eat our meals. We're in a holding pattern, filling our days with simple tasks and going to bed early.

Guess what? The furniture is being delivered on Wednesday!

Centennial Trail Hike

Arizona became a state in 1912, and in 2012 a new trail was built to honor the state's centennial. The 2-mile Centennial Trail has a parking area in the middle, and this morning we hiked the western portion toward the petryglyhs. The trail winds up and down through giant granite boulders and crosses several sandy, dry creek beds. The rocky terrain reminds us of hiking in Vermont and New Hampshire, until we spot cactus growing by the side of the trail.

We stopped a few times to catch our breath as we climbed up the steep parts of the trail, and also to look out over Prescott to Granite Mountain.

 At the end of the trail we were rewarded with several petroglyphs on the huge granite boulders.

We'll be back to hike the eastern section of the trail. Prescott boasts so many trails, we have lots of hiking opportunities close to home.

Quail

I've never paid much attention to birds, but the quail who live in our neighborhood have captured our imagination. Every afternoon/early evening they parade across the back yards with the larger male with a coppery topknot leading the way. Several females follow along, and often we see small babies, no bigger than a cottonball, zooming along behind the adults. They can fly, but typically we see them running at high speed. Check out this video to see how quickly they run.

We amuse ourselves by watching the quail, trying to take pictures of the quail (not easy since they don't stand still for long and are easily spooked), and looking out for the babies. It seems we're not the only ones fascinated with quail. Today we went to an arts and craft market on the Prescott courthouse lawn and saw quail images on napkin holders and magazine racks along with paintings and photos of this cute bird.

Our first purchase to decorate our new house? A trio of bronzed quail from CopperAnza Furnishings that is now perched on the shelves in our living room.

Wine, appetizers, and help with a UPS delivery

Meeting people seems to be a domino effect:  we met Bob and and Missy who live behind us, and they invited us to wine and appetizers with their next-door neighbors Tom and Christine. Tom and Christine ride a Victory motorcycle, and plan to introduce us to other motorcycle riders and show us some of their favorite roads.

We met our next-door neighbors Rick and Terri two days ago, and the UPS driver left a delivery for us at their house when we weren't home. Rick helped Mike carry our new TV set over to our house, which resulted in a conversation about their retractable screen door. Our front door doesn't have a screen, and we'd like to keep the door open during the day to get a cross-breeze through the house.

Talking about the retractable screen door led us to Prestige Security Doors where we talked with Rob, the owner, about screen doors, screen windows, and life in Prescott. Our new screen door will be installed by the end of September.

I wonder who we'll meet next, and where that conversation will take us?

Neighbors!

It feels more like we really live here now that we're meeting people.

Yesterday we met our neighbors on one side (Terri and Rick) and behind us (Missy and Bob). Both have lived in Prescott Lakes for over 10 years and love Prescott and our area. Missy is a master gardener, and this morning she brought us grapes from her arbor.

We went to a local garden store and had a wonderful talk with Peggy, who seems to know everything about plants and trees. She gave us an armful of information about watering our shrubs and trees, crucial in this dry climate. It's like the Goldilocks story:  we need to water just enough, but not too much.

While I was at the health club yesterday I met Burt, a local runner, who told me about some upcoming trail races. And then this morning while I was out on a new-to-me trail near our house, I met Karen. Karen and her husband volunteer with the city trails organization, and she told me she works on trails every day.

In Vermont, every place I went in town I ran into someone I knew by name, or at least recognized. That's partly because Manchester is a small town, but we also lived there for 22 years. Now I don't expect to know anyone. Prescott is much larger and we've been here less than one week. It almost feels like we're on vacation in a new location:  finding our way around town, getting lost, checking out new stores, and every face is new.

Each day I'm making an effort to talk to someone other than Mike. Tonight we're going into town for dinner and to watch Prescott Idol, a local competition sponsored by one of the radio stations. We'll sit on the courthouse lawn, listen to local people sing, and hopefully have the opportunity to talk to the folks sitting near us. I'm waiting for the day when I walk into a store, or down the street, and I see someone I know and can say hello to them - by name.

Navigating a new town

It's a good thing we have a GPS, otherwise I would be driving in circles, vainly trying to find a grocery store or our house.

For the past 22 years we lived in small towns in Vermont with less than 5,000 people. The first 13 years we lived in Arlington, with no stoplights. We didn't have interstate highways in our area of Vermont, and 4-lane highways are few and far between.

Now we live in Prescott, AZ, home to about 40,000 people. There are 4-lane roads everywhere, even through the center of town; lots of stoplights, roads that change names at an intersection, and streets in our subdivision that curve and wind around in seemingly random directions. Over the past 5 days I've learned to get from our house to the health club, hospital, and major shopping district just outside town. I've started trying to second-guess the GPS, picturing where I want to go and which turns I need to make without relying on the computer, but I'm not yet ready to travel without the  GPS safety net.

Today I thought I knew that Gail Gardner Way would take me from one major highway to another. I was right - if only I had turned the other direction. When I turned left instead of right, I ended up on the west side of downtown. At least I recognized that Gurley Street was the main street through town, and then I relied on the GPS to take me back to my original destination.

What did people do in the days before GPS? I don't have a smart phone, and the only map I've found is one of those tourist maps that aren't drawn to scale and leave out whole sections of the town - usually the places I want to go.

I remember circling Bennington for 30 minutes trying to find a grocery store when we first moved to Vermont. Bennington has a population of around 15,000, but there were stoplights and cross-streets and unfamiliar roads. I finally found the grocery store, and then managed to find my way home - all without a map or a GPS. About 3 years later I decided to attempt finding a shopping mall in Albany, NY, with our 2 boys in the back seat of the minivan. They kept asking if we were lost, and I told them I  knew where we were - sort of - so we weren't lost, just misdirected.We eventually found the mall, but I didn't drive back to Albany in search of a mall for over 10 years. It was easier, and less stressful, to simply drive straight up to Rutland and not have to deal with interstate highways with lots of traffic.

One of the major reasons for this cross-country move was to shake up our lives, face new challenges, and be a bit uncomfortable in our surroundings. Driving around town certainly meets all of these goals, and as I set out each day I take a deep breath, plug in the GPS, and remind myself that I'm not getting lost, I'm becoming familiar with my new hometown.

Living in a house with no furniture

It's the simple things that trip us up.

Breakfast and lunch without pots, pans or cooking utensils is easy:
- yogurt and fruit
- cereal and milk
- peanut butter or ham sandwich
- snacks of string cheese, nuts, crackers, baby carrots, cherry tomatoes, apples, bananas, peaches

Dinner is a bit more complicated. We have a microwave and oven, but no pots, pans, or microwave-safe containers. Frozen pizza and a pre-made salad are OK, but not every night. We picked up pre-made meals at Trader Joe's instead of relying on frozen dinners.

We eat meals either standing at the kitchen island or sitting outside on the deck. I lean against a wall, resting my laptop on my lap (I guess that somehow makes sense; I wonder if the person who coined the name 'laptop' was living in a house with no furniture?).  Mike dearly loves music, and listening to his favorites through his phone doesn't give good sound quality, but it's better than me singing.

living room

Living in a basically empty house gives us plenty of time to imagine where we'll put our furniture, what new pieces we want to buy, and how to decorate. We've gone back and forth between making the original dining room into a media room, my office, or a combination media room/office. The local library has a wonderful collection of magazines, and I can hardly believe that we've both started regularly reading decorating magazines and books, looking for fresh ideas.

I used the washer and dryer to launder clothes that we've been wearing for 9 days while riding the motorcycle to Arizona. I let most of my clothes air dry; without a drying rack or clothesline, where do I hang them to dry? The answer:  draped over every towel rod in the bathrooms and laundry room plus hanging over the shower curtain rod in the guest bathroom. It's a good thing we don't have very many clothes because there's limited space for drying.

I guess if we were truly camping, I would hang clothes from the trees.

New house, no furniture

Sometimes you get what you ask for.

When we talked with the moving company, we told them we needed 8-14 days from the time they picked up our household goods in Vermont before they could deliver them to Arizona. We sold our cars and planned to ride our BMW motorcycle to Arizona, a trip that we estimated would take us 8-10 days depending on the weather. The moving company promised they would do their best to meet our request.

We arrived in Prescott, AZ today after 8 days on the motorcycle, traveling through Vermont, New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Iowa, Nebraska, Colorado and finally Arizona. Our household goods, however, are in a warehouse in Boston, waiting for a moving van headed West.

We keep reminding ourselves that the primary reason to relocate across the country was the promise of new adventures, and living in a house without furniture has to qualify as an adventure. We purchased a new mattress, pillows and bed linens; picked up some inexpensive towels, stocked the house with toilet paper, soap, paper plates, and plastic cups and silverware.

It may not be camping, but it's close!

Good-bye Vermont, hello Arizona

We just spent 8 days riding 3200 miles on our BMW R1200GS from Vermont to Arizona.

Most people think we're nuts, but we love the adventure of leaving a place we've called home for 22 years and moving to Prescott, AZ where we've spent less than 2 weeks in the past 2 months.

Why would we leave friends, jobs, and a familiar environment for something completely new and different, where the only two people we know are our real estate agents and finding the grocery store requires a GPS?

Why not?

When we first married 32 years ago we lived in Augsburg, Germany where I was in the Army and Mike worked for Sony in the PX system. We traveled often, learned a new language, and lived in a small German town where we were the only Americans. Back in the United States we settled in northwest Indiana where I grew up, building a house on my grandparents' farm. Almost as soon as we finished a new addition to the house we decided to move to Vermont. I can't believe no one tried to stop us:  we planned to open a new business, we couldn't sell our Indiana house and bought a house in Vermont, and we had two young children ages 18 months and 2 weeks.

As the boys entered high school we started thinking about the next chapter in our lives and decided to move to a new location. Mike researched places to live based on economics, weather, outdoor activities, thriving community, close to a major airport. Over the next 5 years we traveled to Maryland, Virginia, North and South Carolina, Colorado and Utah looking for the perfect location.  The economy crashed at the same time that we settled on Colorado and put our house on the market. Two years later we crossed Colorado off our list due to hydraulic fracturing, the economy improved, we felt our house would sell and we needed a place to live.

We heard about Prescott, Arizona, spent four days in the town, and loved everything. One month later we had a contract on our house in Vermont and we spent another five days looking for and purchasing a house in Arizona. 3 weeks after that we were on our motorcycle headed West.

Moving into a new community isn't easy, and that's the point. We want to shake up our lives, challenge ourselves with new work and new activities, learn about a different part of the country, and find new roads to explore on our motorcycle.

The next chapter in our life begins.