After A Week Long Send Off, My Round the World Trip kicked off with eight days in Maui visiting my sister Sarah who has split her time between Hawaii and Alaska for many years. What an epic way to start this adventure! There was mist falling when my sister greeted me at the Kahului airport on Maui a week ago, so she teased me about bringing the rain from the mainland. We headed straight for Paia where she presented me with a young coconut and a lei, accompanied by the chant for the gifting-of-a-lei.
A number of circumstances collided recently to compel me to move the Lucky Penny to my property in Walla Walla where I have a ground bound small house called Valencia Cottage. So on Tuesday trusted tiny house movers Linh and Stephanie Pham helped me move the Lucky Penny safely from Portland to my place in Walla Walla.
As I packed up recently in preparation to travel cross country in my Honda Fit, I did some downsizing… It was harder than it had been during my last couple of moves because this time I had more stuff. I’d been living in a bigger space…My apartment was a studio, but it was still about 6 times bigger than the Lucky Penny! I talked with several people about the experience and a handful of them said “oh my goodness, I need to do more of that!” So I’ve decided to offer a 6-week Downsizing Tune Up…
On Tuesday, I moved from My Brattleboro Landing Pad into an apartment on the property of my friends Erin Maile O’Keefe and Kevin O’Keefe…Now Erin and Kevin live in their tiny, which is considered a detached bedroom by the town. The house is occupied by some great folks, too, and now I’m in the apartment, which means that I am once again living in a tiny house community. This is the third one I’ve lived in, after Simply Home Community and Going Places.
In early 2020 I traveled to Yestermorrow to teach the 3-day Tiny House Design at Yestermorrow (Feb 2020) course with my friend and colleague Erin Maile O’Keefe… It seems strange to think back on that now, how that was the way we always taught design classes, in real life and in close proximity. Amidst the global pandemic, we pivoted and by June we were able to offer a Tiny House Design (Online) course. It immediately filled and a waiting list was started.
I realized this morning when I woke up with four (mostly) unscheduled days ahead of me that a Thanksgiving blog post has become a bit of a tradition for me… I know for many people around the world this has been an extremely challenging year… And yet, I strongly believe that gratitude can be transformed into generosity and dedication to the wellbeing of our planet and its people. So let’s be grateful for what we can be and dedicated to creating more to be grateful for.
Yesterday marked 4 weeks since arriving at My Brattleboro Landing Pad, which means a month of working remote(r). I’ve found that there are some aspects of working remote(r) that I’ve really enjoyed and a few that are amusing. One of the amusements is that I can’t commiserate about the weather with my colleagues because we’re not experiencing the same weather. So now we compare notes on the weather instead.
Three weeks ago when I arrived in Brattleboro I landed at a furnished apartment that was created in the home of a friend-of-a-friend. In Portland, OR this would have been called a Carve Out Accessory Dwelling Unit (ADU), but here it’s known as an apartment-in-home. With door that separates these rooms from the rest of the house, an exterior entrance, and the addition of a kitchenette it’s a sweet little living space.
This past week I added several new things to my fall associations list, in the New England category: the sight of red sugar maple leaves against blue sky, the taste of fresh apple cider donuts, the smell of walks in deciduous woods during senescence, and the feel of blankets draped around me to extend outdoor hang outs. There’s also my friends finding gargantuan edible mushrooms and putting up apple butter and gifting both.
Raffi and I woke up in Rochester, NY yesterday morning and set the GPS coordinates for Brattleboro, VT. After nine days on the road, Brattleboro Bound, it was neat to have the final destination be the next one. We had said Bye Bye Walla Walla, traveled through Big Sky Country, saw Rainbow Land & Rainbow Sky and appreciated some Mideastern Hospitality. Finally, we were on the Home Stretch of our crosscountry journey.
I’m Brattleboro Bound and by the time I’d said Bye Bye Walla Walla, made it through Big Sky Country and South Dakota (which I discovered was Rainbow Land & Rainbow Sky) the Midwest felt like it was very far indeed from the West Coast. I understand why it was dubbed the Midwest long ago, but perhaps a renaming is in order because it’s certainly to the east of middle. It’s really the Mideast. Or perhaps the Eastern Middle. But that Midwestern hospitality I’d heard about? That’s a real thing.
Raffi and I are Brattleboro Bound and we’ve enjoyed a couple days of Big Sky Country. Fortunately, when I asked some friends who have made the trip many times about the route and Covid-safe sites along the way, the responses were unanimous: South Dakota for the Badlands!
Montana is a big state. Over the past couple of days Raffi and I have traveled from Coeur d’Alene, Idaho on Monday morning through Montana, a snatch of Wyoming, and into South Dakota where we spent the night last night. I woke up in Billings, MT yesterday morning in an Airbnb called Linda’s Loft that was a cleverly converted attic.
