Although I haven't posted in over a month, a lot has been happening. Here's what's new...
End of an Era
As I mentioned in my last post, our condo went on the market shortly after Labor Day. We ended up accepting an offer on the place the first weekend it was on the market! The family that bought it lives in the same condo complex, in a unit identical to ours. They are currently renting, but like the condo and the area so much that they wanted to buy. It turns out that they have boys about Madeline's age, and Jill knows the lady and was aware of their interest.
Long story short, escrow closed on October 20. The proceeds from the sale will almost, but not quite, cover all of the costs of our new home.
This brings to a close our time in San Clemente. Except for a few months in 2006 when Cathy lived there before moving to Ohio, we never lived in the place. However, daughter Jill lived there just about the entire time, mostly with husband Joe and, later, their two children. Because of that, we spent a lot of time, especially around the holidays, in the lovely beach city of San Clemente during our sojourn in Ohio.
Road Trip
Speaking of Ohio, we made a lightning-quick roundtrip to Ohio and back. We left Newport Beach (where we left the dogs with Sherry) on Sunday 10/4 and got back to Paso Robles on Tuesday 10/13. We drove The Beast to Ohio, rented a U-Haul trailer there, filled it up with the keepsakes we had left in storage, and headed back to California. We did the drive east in four days, averaging about 550 miles per day, which is a lot of driving. Coming back, we took five days, for two reasons: 1) we were whipped by all that daily mileage; 2) we wanted to stop at brother Brian's new place on the Colorado River, across the river from Needles, CA. Doing the trip in five days let us make day four a fairly short one so we could spend the afternoon and evening seeing Brian and his place; more on that below.
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| The Beast had little trouble with this itty-bitty trailer! |
We spent a lot of time planning this trip. The key item: how much time would we spend in Ohio, and what would we do with it. We both left lots of friends in Ohio. After a lot of discussion, we made the tough decision not to see anybody. We simply felt it was too much of a risk; in pre-pandemic times, we'd have spent several days, or more, stopping by work, going to lunch, or dinner, or drinks, with everyone. We're both 67, I've got diabetes and Cathy has a history of pneumonia. We didn't particularly like our decision, but we both felt it was the right one.
That's not entirely true that we saw no one; we stayed two nights with our good friends Dennis and Leah. Even doing that turned out to pose a risk: the day we left them, Friday 10/9, Dennis started displaying COVID-19 symptoms. Several days later, so did Leah; they both tested positive. Thankfully, they are both well on the road to recovery.
Leah notified us as soon as they got their positive test results. We self-quarantined for 14 days from our last date of exposure. We both managed to dodge that COVID bullet: no symptoms whatsoever.
One of the keepsakes that we moved was a piano. Pianos weigh a ton. They are also somewhat top-heavy, and the front legs can be easily damaged. We knew we couldn't move it ourselves, so we arranged, through U-Haul, to have a crew come out and help. Although we really only needed help with the piano, these guys were amazing. They did a world-class job on securing everything in that trailer. Nothing moved on the entire trip!
Here in CA, we had made prior arrangements with one of the guys who works at the storage place to meet us and help us move the piano from the trailer into storage. After a lot of head-scratching and discussing options, the three of us managed to get it off the trailer and into the storage unit, sans scratches and hernias.
River Ranch
Brian's named his new place River Ranch. It's just about perfect for him. He's got about 75' of beachfront on the Colorado River, on the east (Arizona) side of the river across from Needles, CA. Although his house is in and perfectly liveable, a lot of the outside is still a work in progress. He's got plans for building a launch ramp for his jetski, a garage, firepit and a bunch of other stuff. Since he's recently retired, he chugs away at all of these projects, always allowing sufficient time to sit on the beach, drink silver bullets, and watch the river roll by. It's a pretty nice life.
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| Dusk on the River |
The House
The good news for us is that the entire permit package is supposed to be delivered to the county planning department this Thursday; in pandemic times, one needs to actually schedule an appointment to deliver building permit applications!
With our condo money now in hand, we pushed to get our house ordered. The main reason: avoiding price increases. During these months that all of the planning was going on, we endured two price increases, with another one scheduled to go into effect the end of this month. This is all driven by lumber pricing, which has simply gone through the roof. With the permit nearly completed, the home people were more than amenable. So, on Friday (10/23) we placed the order. Kelli, our agent, tells us that the home should be built and on the road by the end of February!
With the permitting underway, a lot of other things are now, or will be soon, underway. We've got PG&E working on the plans to deliver electricity, we're delivering a deposit to the well-drilling company this coming week, and we've had our first walk-through with the contractor that's handling building the garage and porch, as well as building the foundation. All of these things, except the garage and porch, need to be completed before the house arrives onsite.
