Adventures on Beannacht

We’re on the road, the I5 South to be precise. Kel’s driving while I plug a few words into the iPod for a roadside upload outside Fresno. I’m struck by how vast this all feels, we’ve been driving for 3.5hrs and we’re not even halfway. On Saturday we left Vancouver at 7am and arrived in San Fran at 2am Sunday, 6 hours through Washington, 6 through Oregon, and 6 to SF, with a couple of food and pee breaks. This is a vast continent, in a vast largely undiscovered world.

Our destination today is Riverside, California, where our fine friends Andrea and Hardy live. We’re both really looking forward to our annual catch up with them, and our first introduction to their one year old son Mahlon.

Yesterday we ‘did’ San Fran. Well Keli did anyhow. I chose to ‘do’ dirt biking with Dowdsy instead. Awesome balls! Mark & Claire have just moved down from Toronto and in a bid to assimilate with the natives Mark bought motocross bikes for his son Shaughn and himself. 4 hours of racetracks and trail riding. Fabulous. We grabbed dinner with them later in the evening which was lovely. I think I looked pretty good on the old bike:

A modest attempt at cornering on the track

This morning we woke up to pure luxury. Hardy’s parents, Tom and Caroline, live in downtown SF and have a beach house on Muir Beach, just 20 mins outside of the city. We met them at 5pm and had a wonderful chat over pizza and wine, listening to their stories of living in Central America and the Caribbean, and giving them the scoop on the boat. We were both really struck by their life experience, fascinating people and really hospitable. It was lovely to meet them after hearing about them for so long.

The beach house

The house is a wonderful, simple construction of wood and glass, with a large deck. Every window had a great view of the beach. The sea or the hills. A mother and two young deer sat all morning in the back garden watching us potter around making breakfast and drinking coffee. We’re stayed on their Paris apartment twice before and they have such a knack for creating simple, liveable, inviting spaces. We envy and really hope to emulated their ability to pick special homes and then open them up to people. If we find a little hideaway in Columbia or Nicaragua we may just attempt a similar feat. Kel has just told me that it must have a place for a hammock in the shade, I think we can probably work that out. If we’re stuck we can always grab a hotel somewhere like here: houston cheap hotels.

This rights many wrongs, well this and coffee.

After falling out on the way home from the Dowdses, a small matter of me failing to follow Keli’s instructions on the freeway and then taking her admonishment thickly, we made up over a coffee – even managing a game of chess without killing each other which is almost unheard of! It’s difficult to remain grumpy in such a zen like location, perhaps Maginness and Robinson need an all expenses paid trip to Muir beach- there’s even a nudist beach just below the house they could hang out on, so to speak.

Andrea and Hardy have become a continual source of amazing holiday destinations to us. I first met Andrea, pre Kel and Hardy, after failing in an attempt to chat up a hot lady at a Coldplay gig in New York. Having walked her (hot girl) back to her car and returned without so much as a peck on the cheek to a mile long queue for the bus home I didn’t fancy being delayed. I quietly slid in to the front of the queue attempting to arouse no suspicion and was greeted by a feisty Italian American who asked ‘excuse me, who are you?’ to which I of course replied ‘don’t worry, I’m just a queue jumper’. By the time our journey finished we had a date at her local Jesuit mass on Sunday, which became my NY church. That one little social infraction (i like to view it as charming and cheeky, almost Russell Brand esk?) gave birth to an amazing friendship that has opened Kel and I to great holidays in New York, Palermo, Paris, California and now a divine night in a beach house in San Fran.

It’s a funny, and in some ways lucky or coincidental happening, that has given birth to an amazing friendship. But I also think it’s the fruit of living hospitably and making conscious decisions to pursue opportunities as they arise. You make your own luck on these ones. Andrea and Hardy are already planning return visits to Columbia and Barbados which is really exciting, and we’re really hoping that Tom and Caroline make a trip out as well.

Today was also a really big sailing day as we viewed the Beneteau for the first time. As I mentioned earlier this week there are four options on the go, one of which was in San Fran. It was our first time on this type of boat, and we both had bucket loads of hopes and fears. Whatever we buy will be our home for the next 3-6 years, and despite all our research and rational thought, the right boat has to ‘feel’ right. What fun.

The boat in Alameda

It felt right. Spacious living, good deck layout. A well-loved boat waiting for new carers. This particular one has only had one owner, and has been on SF it’s whole life. We spent an hour working our way through a checklist, and in the end are both convinced that it’s the right model. We’re probably going to make our first offer on the boat in Rhode Island, it’s cheaper to start with and has a lot more kit, but this boat is a perfect backup which is great. I’ll phone our broker tomorrow to begin the bidding process.

On that note, somebody please tell me what’s to become of the stock markets and the global economy in general?! (204 miles to L.A. apparently) I’ve been watching the money markets, stock markets and housing news non-stop since we arrived in Canada as we’re going to have to convert pounds to dollars to buy the boat. In July the exchange rate was about 2:1, whereas today it’s down to about 1.75 USD to the pound- ouch! Thankfully we managed to sell our house, unlike so many of our friends, but I’m continually amazed at the extent of the crisis, and the complete failure of the free market to self regulate. Feels like a good time to be away actually, and definitely a time to learn some lessons about living more cheaply, or at least within our means- something we never managed in Ireland.

So, my turn to drive- does this road last forever or what? We’ll have driven 3000 miles by the time we get back to Vancouver- that’s about the distance of our longest ocean crossing, from Galapagos to French Polynesia. In a boat that takes a month mind you, I’ll write a book during that one!