Friday, April 20, 2007

The Odyssey to nowhere.

Last night we picked up our new Honda Odyssey. Sey how Odd we are with a "minivan". We successfully made it through all of those minivan years that America went through without giving up our right to have a car that was fun to drive. We looked the other way when America started veering heavily into pickup trucks and we closed our eyes and covered our ears when the SUV's began lumbering around... We almost made it, but this trip requires a little more packing space than the MINI Cooper could offer us. Beth and I went car shopping. I was heading towards the Honda Element (the toaster) because we thought that the Odyssey was HUGE. We drove the Element and it was OK, but it just didn't grab me. Eventually we tried an Odyssey and found that it handled VERY well (for a large vehicle). The gas mileage is actually higher than the Element because the V6 in the Odyssey will shut down to a 3-cylinder when it can get away with it. The seat configuration is much more flexible for our uses. the third seat plunks down into the floor, while the Element folds the 2nd row seats up over the side windows which makes the large blind spots into a huge blindspot. The Odyssey has lots of bells and whistles to make our tour to knowhere easier and costs almost what we paid for the house we just sold. The paperwork was messed up a little when we picked it up last night. The title was supposed to be made out to the name of the trust that all of our worldly possessions are stored in. The typist had trouble fitting the name into the little space available in their automatic form software that they use and all of the paperwork ended up being labeled for "D Witherell Trust". Derek would have been proud. He was a big fan of traveling and he always wanted to buy a bus to drive all of his friends around in. We are having the paperwork updated, but at least we were reminded of why we are doing this.

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Thursday, April 19, 2007

A General update from Major Disaster

Hello folks,
I guess I have to start with the regular entries now that we are officially in "coasting" mode.
We accelerated hard and did the estate sale and almost everything is now sold or given away. We closed on our house yesterday (April 18th, 2007). We now are holed up in Beth's dad's little house with the intent of scanning all of our history (photos and papers), outfitting our adventuremobile, visiting all of the locals, handle some legal stuff... whew! I'm feeling tired again.
The house closing went fine. This week was a miserable wet time emptying the house. Everything had to be wrapped in plastic because of the "NorthEaster".

When people asked where we were planning to go, I had gotten into the habit of saying "we are gonna drive South until we hit warm weather and then turn right". I stopped saying that last week because we would have to drive to Mexico if were expecting to hit warm weather.
We have decided that we will bring our winter coats along, just in case.

Beth REALLY wanted the day after we sold the house to be bright and sunny (new beginnings and all that), but the forecast was that maybe on Friday the rain would peter out. Well Beth got her wish. Today was bright and sunny and we took naps in the sun. Our brains are starting to pull themselves out of the muck now. We were sooooo toasted yesterday. If we didn't have the help from Leslie, Kay, and the Enman clan on Tuesday we would have failed.

The new owners are very pleased and have started moving in.

Now that I finally have a little time to breathe, I will fill in the blanks on this story so those people like me that want the background story and not just the pictures, will know what is going on, or I guess "what went on". We are alive. Our brains are starting up. The rain stopped. The Marmon Newsletter was delivered yesterday (I haven't got mine yet, but I don't have a mailbox, so I guess that should be expected) and I just got a couple of calls from Marmoneers and a couple of invites for visits. Invites will be very handy.

Pictures! Lots of pictures of our travels. Our spiffy new cellphones have cameras too, so we can be like those people in those commercials...

Well I have to go get a haircut and then we are going to the King's for dessert and a little sanity.

We are over the hump.
ww Thursday, April 19th etc etc

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