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Published: June 10th 2007
A Toast to 2007
Shelly & Jeff toast on New Year's Eve 2006. This is the parallel picture to the champagne toast we made in January 2006 at the start of our road trip (below).[photo=201591]
At home in Port Townsend, Wash.
Approx. 6 months after our return The following letter was mailed in April to the 160 families we came into contact with (!) on our trip. It's been updated through June 2007 and, along with a separate entry detailing our trip statistics (see Final Trip Stats), is intended to be the final entry of this epic travel blog. Thanks for following along! 2006 was a life-changing year for us, and we will always remember your role in it.
We write to update you on the conclusion of our round-the-continent road trip and how we have taken the lessons of our year-long sabbatical to heart. We aren’t slipping back into old, worn roles, but have taken the opportunity to craft new directions for ourselves upon our return, so that, as Jeff puts it, “the trip never really ends.”
We “waltzed” Matilda home to eastern Washington state in late November, just in time for Thanksgiving with Jeff’s parents. My parents drove five hours from the other side of the state so that we could all be together, and it was a delightful reunion.
But soon after crossing the
Solar Panels on The Roost!
Bonus photo: In late June, we installed a 2-KW photovoltaic electric grid-tied power system on our roof. A great benefit of Jeff's new job...read on. Cascades—the last mountain range between us and our western Washington home—we were hit hard by the sudden and tragic death of my Uncle Clark mere hours before we were to visit him for the first time in nearly a year, an unusual snowfall that had us housebound for three days, and a virulent 48-hour stomach flu that started making the rounds on Christmas Eve—in that order. All of this just happened to us, making December a bit of a let-down after all the months on the road where we largely chose our course and activities.
(In addition to my mother’s brother dying at age 52 of a heart attack, three relatives in my father’s hometown of Rogersville, Tenn., have passed away since we visited the extended family last summer. Although we dearly miss “Cousin” Freddie, “Aunt” Georgia, and my cousin’s father-in-law Carl, we are so grateful that our trip included memorable visits with all three.)
To be honest, we were tired travelers at the end of our trip, and yet as soon as we arrived back in Port Townsend in mid-December, we had to start picking up the pieces of our lives here. It was impossible not to
Disparity in Size...
We had so much more STUFF to deal with once we moved out of Matilda and back into our 2,400-square-foot house. But it's good to be back in The Roost, our lovely, self-designed home. re-engage with friends and community, although I really wanted to hide out in the abodes we were house-sitting (more about this later) and focus on preparing my digital photos for a trip slideshow, indexing my eight hand-written trip journals, and working on the address list and content for this letter. My goal was to have it in the mail by the end of January—sorry, it just didn’t happen. But a lot of other good things did.
Not Just New Employment, New Careers Good Thing #1 is that Jeff launched himself on a new career track: marketing, selling and advocating for grid-tied solar electric systems. Starting Jan. 3, he became the third salaried employee at
Power Trip Energy Corp., which has been in business since 2002 and has gained a solid reputation for sales, installation and service of photovoltaic systems. Jeff made his pitch to the company president (a pre-trip acquaintance) and volunteered more than 40 hours in the office over two weeks in December as a means of introduction, having singled out Power Trip as worthy of his talents and providing an entry door to his passion for renewable energy, a passion that was stoked on our trip.
In the
Jeff Promotes Solar
Jeff's new job with Power Trip Energy Corp. is selling grid-tied solar electric systems. Here he is promoting solar and his company at the recent Earth Day festival. progressive town of Boulder, Colo., our host—who happens to also be employed marketing and selling grid-tied solar electric systems—said at the conclusion of a whirlwind tour of his latest projects, “Jeff,
you can do this. It’s a young industry seeking smart, passionate people.” And that was the mental push Jeff needed to make the leap from a 13-year career as a public-sector urban planner to a private-sector job in the dynamic “green power” industry. (His official job title is “Solar Agent”; I’m sewing him a cape, and guess what he’s going to be for Halloween this year?)
One huge bonus of this career move: it's making it possible for us to install a 2-KW photovoltaic system on our own house this summer!!! The panels have been ordered and the Power Trip crew will install them on our roof during the next period of down time. Soon we'll be spinning our electrical meter backwards!
A typical week for Jeff might include 2-3 site visits to residential or commercial sites around the Olympic and Kitsap peninsulas to evaluate them for solar feasibility, writing up project bids, answering the questions of potential or current clients, making a presentation to architects, builders
Our New Housemate in the Middle
We invited one of our renters to stay on after we moved back into The Roost. Doug, a skilled musician, lives on the lower level and sometimes joins us for a jam. Photo by Polly Price. or utility providers, and updating the
website. Check it out—you can read bios of his colleagues, see photos of past projects, and browse the FAQ, which Jeff has created from scratch.
This was our best-case scenario, for Jeff to be earning a salary at the start of 2007. Interestingly, he had the opportunity to apply for an open planning position in our county government that would have put him in a role similar to the one he’d played at the city for 8-½ years. But in the end, he withdrew his application to the county and went with the Power Trip job that he was totally excited about. No more night meetings, no windowless cubicle, but for the time being, no health benefits either… Balanced by the fact that the commute is a healthy 20-minute bike ride!
I had no great epiphany about my career during the trip, except that I enjoy
writing much more than I do
marketing my writing. I wrote one post-trip essay for my Williams-Mystic (maritime studies) alumni magazine,
The Gam, that you can link to
here. I am still thinking about ways to publish stories from the trip, but it's hard to make
Doug Teaches Vince a Chord
Our Little Brother Vince thinks Doug is cool because he knows how to play the electric bass! (We're getting reacquainted with Vince, with whom we were matched through the Big Brothers Big Sisters program in early 2005.) freelance magazine writing pencil out and I'm finding it's more lucrative to sell my broader communication and interpersonal skills closer to home.
The field I've happily fallen into since returning to Port Townsend is consulting. The last four months have been a successful experiment in "working for myself" by contracting my communications services to other small business owners. My two main clients are an environmental management consultant and a philanthropic consultant (so I'm a consultant to consultants!), both successful and generous businesswomen from whom I am learning a lot. They were pre-trip acquaintances who heard I was back in town and approached me about working for them. Both are writing me into contracts they are pursuing, as an associate or team member, and I'm doing general project assistance on current contracts for their clients, who range from the state Department of Ecology to our local
community foundation.
In addition to this work, I have signed on as publicity coordinator for our wonderful community theatre,
Key City Players. How nice to learn that the theatre had turned my volunteer publicity role into a contract position for the 2007 season, and offered it first to me. I've also taken one-time jobs from colleagues
Spring Break Road Trip
It's true that we have no desire to leave Washington state this year, but we did take Matilda back across the Cascades on a spring break trip to eastern Washington with our Little Brother Vince. who have approached me about my writing and editing services. The most exciting for me is a contract to do a "substantive edit" of a self-published
novel by a local author in preparation for a second-edition printing. It’s my first job working on a novel, but it’s exactly the direction I want to take my skills. Just for fun, one more new avenue: I'm signed up to teach two sections of creative writing to 7- to 10-year-olds at a week-long summer
youth arts camp!
I’m very glad not to be working a 32-hour/week “office job” (even for a worthy nonprofit), as I was before the trip. I'm working fewer and more flexible hours and earning more overall than I did before the trip. If that's not a plug for taking a sabbatical and rethinking your career path, I don't know what is! While it’s true that Jeff has taken a pay cut, we're convinced that the life changes we’ve made are worth it, and that both of our careers have great potential for growth.
Moving Back Home—Now The Roost Sleeps Three But we weren’t really HOME until we moved back into our house, a process we started the last
Jeff & Vince at Grand Coulee Dam
Vince, age 12, had never before visited Grand Coulee Dam. The largest hydroelectric plant in the WORLD is an hour's drive from Jeff's hometown. Electricity is cheap there... weekend in January. The Roost, as we call it, had been leased for the year to two friends, and we couldn’t have asked for better tenants. The woman occupying the master bedroom found a new place to rent in early January, and we helped her move her out, but then we made a bold decision and asked Doug if he wanted to stay. He had installed himself in the bottom-floor bedroom, meaning he had a bathroom all his own, access to the laundry room, and a separate entrance through the shop doors. To this, we added another room for his sound-recording equipment and instruments, and he agreed to pay rent equaling half our monthly mortgage payment.
We share the kitchen and musical interests: Doug (who’s my parents’ age) is a talented folk musician and we don’t mind at all when the strains of his guitar or banjo drift up the stairs. Also, Doug has been sight-impaired since birth, and it’s interesting to learn how he navigates the world. At least for the duration of this transition year, we're finding him to be a welcome addition to The Roost, and the extra income enables us to be more flexible in
Xmas Family Gathering: 19 of Us!
Jeff doesn't look so good in this group photo because he still had the stomach flu... But otherwise it was good to get together with 17 other members of the Garrison clan for the five days between Xmas and New Year's. our career pursuits. A win-win! (Post-script: the rental arrangement lasted through July; now the house is ours again.)
You may be wondering where we laid our heads for most of December and January, and the answer is, not in Matilda. We were ready to be done with driveway parking, and the weather was really too cold for that to be an option. We had faith that if we put out the word we were looking to house-sit, offers would come through, and indeed they did. Many thanks to Port Townsend house-sitting hosts Heida, Luke & Audrey, Gary & Mary, and Frank & Jess, and to those who offered accommodations that thankfully were not needed. It was ideal to ease back into our community in this manner; in fact, it would have been too much to return and have to deal with moving back into our house right away.
Matilda is a little sad to be parked in our driveway instead of exploring open roads. Our 1989 VW Westfalia performed splendidly on the road, running smoother the more we drove her, with only a few excusable glitches (see
Final Trip Stats)—happily in major cities with VW mechanics in the phone book.
Tom & Polly: Our First Trip-Related Visitors
In February we were pleased to host Tom and Polly at The Roost. They'd hosted us on Lake Lake in Ohio the year before, and now it was their turn to take their Roadtrek camper-van on a cross-country drive! Yet when Jeff took her to our mechanic in March for a well-deserved tune-up, the list—and bill—of worn-out parts was long: radiator, coolant hoses, fuel lines and front axle seals, all of which were probably original. Well, she deserves the new parts.
It’s impossible to summarize the trip, so you’ll just have to READ THE BLOG! I recommend a read through our reader’s additions (click the “View All Comments” icon at the bottom of the page next to the flag and map). To anyone who casually asks, “How was your trip?” I reply, “It was amazing and we’re so glad we took the time to do it.” Maybe that’s enough of a summary for you, too.
New Hobbies, Commitments Six months after our trip officially ended, not a day goes by that we are not reminded of our adventuring. Sometimes it’s a phone call or email from a new friend, or a regional reference that we get now that we’ve traveled to that region of the U.S. When we step into the kitchen to prepare a nutritious salad (yes, Jeff is still on his gluten-free diet), our feet are cushioned by the colorful rag rugs we scored
Milagros: Our Second Trip-Related Visitor
Our second out-of-state visitor in February was the daughter of a couple we stayed with in Red Wing, Minn. Next to Shelly is Milagros; the couple with the baby are friends of hers from Seattle. at an Amish auction in upstate New York. And when we grab a pencil by the phone, it’s from a colorful, bilingual can of maple syrup (
sirop d’erable) we saved from Quebec. We didn’t bring home many souvenirs, but we’re glad of the few we did.
And we're happy to be picking up new hobbies and volunteer commitments, since we literally wiped our calendars clean when we left town at the end of 2005. Jeff is diving into his role as a board member of a new affordable housing nonprofit,
Homeward Bound Community Land Trust (he created the website), and has agreed to head up a team developing a concept for a new community pool and fitness center in Port Townsend. I am doing work-trade on an organic farm a couple times a month and getting into a new fitness trend called Nia. Never heard of it? Neither had I, until we returned from our trip and all my friends were going to classes. After educating myself, I decided I'd write an article about Nia for our local paper, and it just published
here.
We were honored to be the subjects of a "Randalls return" profile in the same local paper in
5th Anniversary Parade Re-Run
For our 5th wedding anniversary in May, we drove Matilda in the Rhody Parade along with a dozen other Volkswagen vans. (We were also in the parade on our wedding day, in a "Just Married" float!) late January. The reporter got phone numbers from us and called up a couple of our friends-of-friends hosts to ask what they thought of our unusual trip. One of the more quotable quotes captured was, "'I don't feel like leaving Washington for the next 12 months,' Shelly said. 'We're both really happy to be back home.'" Read "Randalls back from yearlong journey"
here.
In closing, we would love to stay in touch with you. Drop us a line anytime using the "Contact Waltzing Matilda" feature provided by this blog. And
please contact us if your travels ever bring you out our way!
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Marinkie
non-member comment
Shelly, wonderful to read about where you are now. The comfortable seductively lit guest bed sure looks inviting. We will try to come by in not too distant future. Very happy for you and Jeff, for the new found places you've found for yourselves in life. It sounds as if you two are really happy with what you do now, more at peace and all that! Hugs and kisses to you both!