As we move into the beginning of our ninth year of “retirement,” we are finally learning to take life as it comes, with minimal rush.  This includes being involved in activities that satisfy us, rather than from some sense of obligation or need (although there is still plenty of that to go around).

Travels

This year was again a year of travel. In January, we headed south the day before Inauguration Day.  The drought had broken in California: we drove in slushy snow in the north and rain in the central and southern parts of the state. The first week, we took Judy’s brother-in-law Ben from Anaheim to San Diego to visit her cousin Margaret, then headed east to New Mexico and west Texas: Las Cruces, El Paso, and Albuquerque, to visit Larye’s children, grandchildren, great-grandchildren, and great-great grandchild.  Then, it was back to California, via Flagstaff and Bakersfield, then through rain again to San Francisco for a week exploring the city before driving home.

While at home, we worked on our van conversion project, building a folding sleeping platform with room beside it for the bicycle. In April, we made a test run to Idaho, camping overnight to and from McCall, where we spent a week with our friends Gary and Char at a timeshare, getting in a couple of short bike rides despite the snow and wet of central Idaho. We toured the Painted Hills of central Oregon on the way back. While training for the summer bicycling season, we had a frame failure on our Bike Friday, prompting a trip to the factory in Eugene to have it repaired. That trip showed us the old van was not ready for our ambitious touring schedule, so it was back to the shop for some major repairs on that, too.

While our bike was in the shop, we dusted off our 31-year-old Santana tandem for a scheduled charity ride and ended up taking it to Victoria, Canada when we attended the Association of Northwest Weavers Guilds conference over the Canada Day weekend. After the conference, we rode parts of the local trails we missed in the spring of 2010.

At the end of July, we set off on Road Trip 2017, starting with a detour to Eugene to pick up our Bike Friday, then off to northern Idaho for another week with Gary and Char at their vacation home. We soon discovered that our old van had no working air conditioning, so we spent the next six weeks of summer heat reliving the nostalgic days of yesteryear when turning on the “factory air” meant cranking the side windows down.

From Idaho, we headed east, spending a week in western Montana, visiting relatives, some also visiting from Florida and New York, visiting friends in the Bitterroot, and checking out the new Experimental Aircraft Assoc. chapter hangar at the Missoula airport. Heading southeast through Wyoming, we got in some trail riding in Nebraska and a weekend in Lincoln to be there for the total solar eclipse on Monday. After a brief stop in southern Minnesota to drop off a family heirloom with cousin Cathy, we worked our way through Iowa, riding around Lake Okoboji in the northwest, then the High Bridge Trail north of Des Moines. We drove down the Des Moines River, posing for Grant Woods’ American Gothic painting before turning north up the Mississippi River at Keokuk.

At the Quad Cities, we bicycled along the Great River Trail in Moline, Illinois and up Duck Creek in Bettendorf/Davenport, Iowa. We continued up the Iowa side of the Mississippi, then along the Wisconsin/Illinois border and up to Middleton, to visit son Matt and family over the Labor Day weekend, getting in one family bike ride in the process.

Crossing over the Mississippi back in to Minnesota, we stopped in Shakopee to visit a newly found cousin on Larye’s maternal grandfather’s side of the family. We bypassed the traffic around the west side of Minneapolis and checked into a campground on the south end of the Paul Bunyan Trail to ride up the trail to Baxter. The next day, we met with more of Larye’s cousins for a weekend reunion in Baxter and nearby Motley, near where the clan’s great grandparents had homesteaded.
Following the reunion, we rode some more of the Paul Bunyan Trail, starting north of Brainerd where we had turned around two years ago. The next morning, we headed to North Dakota to spend a couple of days with Judy’s cousin Fred and his wife, Ann. Smoke from the fires in Montana made visibility poor, so we pushed on west toward home, bypassing a return stop with the Montana folks to get home after a long trip, with the rain coming in and snow starting in the mountains.

The last weekend in October, we went to Astoria, Oregon to camp at and ride the trails at Fort Stevens State Park, in perfect weather. Our riding was cut short by the first flat on the front tire, which has lasted through two back tires, nearly 6000 km (3600 miles) in six years. The casing is a bit thin in the grooves, and a tiny puncture in the thickest tread: we “retired” it to secondary spare status.

By the end of November, our wanderlust struck again, and we retreated to Long Beach for a few days on the beach, on the edge of winter, one of our favorite times, since the crowds of summer are long gone.  In their place, however, is cold rain.  We also finally got talked into upgrading our vacation club membership, despite uncertain financial future of our status as elderly poor.

A return trip to Vancouver, BC in December capped the touring season, with Char joining us this time, Gary stayed home with a sick pet.

Travel Hosts

Between our own tours, we host international bicycle tourists through the Warm Showers network. We had 14 in April and May, then restricted visitors to “by invitation only” while we were preparing for our summer tours, picking up two more, a weaver from New Zealand we met on Facebook and a 69-year-old world traveler from Australia we met at the Olympic Bakery near Spencer Lake and invited to drop by on his way through Shelton.  On our return in the fall, we took in six more tourists before the rainy season and cold weather.

Transitions

As the rainy and cooler weather arrived in mid-October, Delia, our feline companion for the past 17 years, lost her struggle with kidney disease, just short of her 21st birthday. She had come to us in Missoula in the spring of 2000, a 3-1/2-year old “pound kitty,” wary of people in general. Over the years, especially after the demise of our other pound kitty, Nicolaus, in February 2005, she warmed to us and spent many hours of lap time in front of the fire. She also came to enjoy the attention of the many bicycle tourists who passed our way. She saw us through four houses and spent a lot of time “vacationing” at Pampered Pets in Darby, Montana and Just Cats Hotel in Olympia, where she was a favorite guest over the last eight years. She had been in poor health for about a year, but rebounded in the spring and summer, her favorite times of the year.

We welcomed a new great-great-granddaughter, Bea, in August, who we have not yet met. Bea joins her brother, Hyperion, in our growing and dispersing family. Visiting family takes longer now that grandchildren and great-grandchildren are becoming adults with their own households and schedules. Judy made a trip back to her hometown, Sunnyside, Washington this fall, for a family gathering of cousins, many of whom she had not met or had not seen for many years: Larye had a weaving class scheduled, so did not attend.

Lifestyle

For the first time in more than a dozen years, we have television, the result of upgrading our Internet service, which came bundled with a TV offer. The set is installed in Judy’s upstairs craft studio, which we furnished with a thrift shop small sofa. However, only a few available programs have piqued our interest so far, so the space has become just another reading room in the evenings. Public radio, both broadcast and satellite, remain our primary source of news and entertainment, along with selected video clips on the Internet.We continue to regularly practice yoga at the local senior center (when we are in residence), and attend the Ruby Street Art Quilters group in Tumwater. Judy completed a project for an exhibit at a brew pub in Olympia, and Larye finally finished a 2012 class project quilt as a baby quilt for Bea. We also joined the Friends of the Shelton Timberland Library this year and spend one afternoon a week sorting and pricing donated books and restocking the sale shelves, from which the proceeds support youth programs at the library.

We are still active in both the Olympia and Tacoma Weavers Guilds, and Larye manages the web sites for both. We both attended classes at the conference in Victoria this summer, and Larye attended a class in Olympia this fall, but not much progress on projects during this year. Between our travel schedules and taking care of our ailing cat, there simply hasn’t been a lot of time to actual work on the hobby projects for which we belong to the many organizations.

Find our videos on YouTube: Larye’s YouTube Channel, or view a summary of our bike touring season below:

and on Vimeo: Larye’s Vimeo Channel