Moving to Maryland

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Hello to everyone around the world, to friends we have met from many countries who have returned home, friends still in Jacksonville, friends on other overseas postings, and friends and family back in Australia. Hopefully I got you all. Please know that we think of you often, no matter how busy we are. For any who do not know, the basic update is that we are still in the USA, but have now moved North to the state of Maryland. Clinton is on a new posting and is about to start a new job. Check out the map to the left to see where this all is in relation to each other if you are interested.

It is FREEZING here! Literally. Down to 37F or 0C overnight last night. Welcome to Maryland.

For our move, we decided to drive from FL to MD, so that we could take a bit of stuff with us for the month or so before our removal follows us, and so we could have our car to get around in. We stopped overnight on the way in Richmond Virginia, got out of the car in just ¾ pants and tshirts and realised we had made a rather bad choice of wardrobe. After a rather yummy dinner at Lone Star (best steak I’ve EVER had, by the way), we stayed at the fancy shmancy Sheraton- compliments of Johnny Howard and the Australian Government. Lovely room, however very thin walls, with an African American woman straight off the Jerry Springer show having an argument on the phone at 230am and then a group of drunken blokes who got home at about 400. Needless to say, I didn’t get much sleep. 😞

We actually drove this trip about 6 weeks ago, on our way up to New York to pick up Clinton's mum and dad for their month-long adventure of the East Coast. On the way last time, I spotted an awesome old house that I really wanted to photograph. Clinton turned off the car and sat there with the windows open, enjoing the "serenity" (Aussie joke/reference to "the Castle") as I happily snapped away. When it came time to leave, Clinton started the car, and discovered that he couldn't change the transmission from park to drive. We were locked in park. After a fruitless attempt to find the problem ourselves, we called roadside assistance and waited several hours for a tow truck. (We had picked a Sunday and an extremely deserted country road to break down!) Anyway, the end of the story is, it turned out that there was nothing we could have done on the roadside, as a tiny plastic part in our transmission lever had snapped! We have learned why cars are so cheap in America- the integral parts that would normally be made from a metal in Australia are made of plastic here! We had an internal part of our door handle snap a few months ago (yes plastic- of course) and Clinton fashioned a replacement part out of wood. Works like a dream! I didn't like our chances of him making one for the transmission though. So $500US later and an unscheduled overnight stop, we were on the road again. Needless to say, on our second trip through the area on the way to Pax, Clinton wasn't keen to stop at the same picturesque spot.... oh yeah I did get a nice photo though.

Anyway, we're here safely and currently staying on the NAS Pax Recreation Base; something which is impressive in itself. Our accommodation is reasonably basic- a fairly old bungalow with a small kitchen. There's some unreal brand new waterfront "cottages" that we stayed in with Clinton's mum and dad here as well, but they weren't available for the time we needed. This "base" is separate from the military installation, and is here just for recreational purposes for military families. It's covered with all sorts of accommodation, including the ones I just mentioned, as well as apartments, campsites and RV sites. The amenities include: minigolf, a driving range, fishing piers, a nature walk, fitness centre, BBQs, bike trails and a games room. I made the comment to Clinton how well the troops get treated over here and wondered why we don't have similar facilities. His response clarified things neatly: The actual Navy base here has 30000 people working on it (not all uniformed), which is twice the size of our Airforce or about the same size as our Army. Considering this of course is one of many bases around the country and only representing one of their four service arms (they have the Marines as well as Army, Navy and Airforce), it's far easier for them to justify such extravagant things such as this rec base. We'd have to have our entire Army all using it at once in the one city to justify it! By the way, this is apparently the biggest US Navy rec base in the country, so I guess we've now seen the best they have. It is a bit run down in places, but heck, it's still certainly impressive!

The search for a house here was extremely short. I did LOADS of research on the internet and Clinton and I did quite a bit of exploring on our first trip here, so it wasn't too difficult to know where to look once we arrived. I was kind of looking forward to the roaming about, viewing lots of different houses, but we fluked one that is absolutley unreal! The owner is a developer who builds the same house in this region, thus keeping some of his costs down. He was more interested in getting a good tenant into his home, than charging too much rent, so we've managed to get it for a steal. It's brand new, on about one beautiful acre of land, surrounded by trees. Another big bonus is it's located exactly where we wanted to be. Central to everything and close to the base. We're still waiting for it to be completed and move in date is 10th of November. So far things with the landlord have been a dream. He's been more than willing to give us everything we've asked for, and even asked us to come along when he's been picking out things like blinds, carpet and kitchen cupboard fixtures. We are still a bit nervous about whether or not it will be finished in time, so stay tuned for updates.

Clinton went in to work to meet all of his future bosses and colleagues and also had a big meeting with some bigwigs who came over from Australia. I was invited to lunch and were able to meet them all and I'm happy to say, they all seemed like a nice bunch of blokes, so if that's anything to go on... I guess it's a good start for Clinton. It's all pretty exciting, as he'll be working on a project to develop a new aircraft. It's going to be an "Unmanned Arial Vehical" (UAV), or in layman's terms: a "remote control plane". All very futuristic and no doubt great for the future of his career. It's unclear as to where this will take us when we go back to Australia, but Canberra or Adelaide are distinct possibilities at this stage. We're both prepared for anything.

We've met some of the expats here and were invited to our first "shindig", which was a halloween party. I'll do a separate post for that so you can see some interesting photos. The crowd here so far does seem a lot different to the one we had in Jax. Much quieter I think, and makes us miss our old group even more. I think it will be hard to top the loony Jacksonville crowd. (yeah we love you guys) Maybe it's early days. I guess we need to wait and see. There are two lovely Aussie families that we're getting to know. One who's just had a baby (Fish and Emma) and one who's about to (Michelle & Marcus). Just like Jax, there's something in the water up here and kids are everywhere. No comment on whether it's rubbing off on us yet. Maybe. 😊

Clinton went out for his first round of golf yesterday here and traded the gators on the course for marmots (otherwise known as groundhogs or woodchucks). He counted four on this round. I'm going to head out with him tomorrow and take some pics of what he tells me is quite picturesque. The fall (aka autumn in the rest of the world) colours are starting to really get going, so I'll be shutter-happy in the next few weeks.

By the way, our internet access is a bit on and off at the moment, so if it seems like we take a while to get back to people, that's likely to be the reason.

For some of the recipients of this blog, this is the first time you've seen our page. Hope you enjoy it and hopefully it helps us stay in touch with everyone. I'll try and do my part by being a bit more forthcoming with updates. You guys do yours and let us know what's happening in your "neck of the woods" ok?

Love to all. We miss you!!

PS To the Aussies: Would you believe, "I Still Call Australia Home" came on the Ipod earlier while I was typing. As much as we love it over here, Peter Allen's song is still our motto and pulls at the heartstrings everytime I hear it. We still long for home and look forward to the day we return. Our thoughts go out to those struggling back home with the drought. We'll see if we can ship a rain cloud or two to ya!

Michelle and Clinton

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Photos

Kevin the Koala living it up at the Sheraton
"No Kevin, we're not there yet." (Aussie TV reference)

Broken Down
Somewhere in country Virginia. Photo op in the background.

THE House
What inspired me to want to stop in the first place. It looked like the house was going to be eaten up by nature. Maybe if we'd stayed there long enough, nature would have eaten us too.

Autumn Splendor
The leaves are changing! I hope to get some good photos soon when they really get going.