Justin and Hazel Around the World

Well, we discovered to our dismay that we’ll be staying for an extra 8 hours while they find more people to fly to New Zealand!  Of course, they didn’t say it that way but we know that’s what was going on.  Stayed at a reasonably nice hotel with free breakfast and lunch though!  No sightseeing, just lounging and napping to be had.  Too bad it will take away from our time in Auckland but all in all it could have been a lot worse.  See you in New Zealand!

We’ve had an incredible couple of days in Seattle!

Family!

Food!

Scenery!

And now we’re off!  See you in New Zealand!!!

After two very long days we’ve made it to my parents’ house on Bainbridge Island, WA.  I won’t say much about yesterday except that it involved shots, cleaning and saying goodbye to Daisy.  Not my favorite.

We managed to leave the Bay Area at around 3:30 p.m. after stopping at Barefoot Coffee for a little caffeine fix.  After a four hour or so drive we made it to Anderson, CA which is just south of Redding, CA.  Justin found us a great deal on a hotel and it turned out to be a really nice place.  If you’re ever driving through we recommend it highly.  It was the Gaia Shasta Hotel.

Our roomÂ

They also had a yummy all-you-can-eat breakfast (I seem to be getting a lot of those lately!) for $3.50 a person.

Yummy Breakfast!

11 hours, a double rainbow, and a rainbow that appeared to end in our car later we arrived safe and sound on Bainbridge Island.  Now we have a few days to relax and see family (Justin’s parents are arriving shortly!!!  This is so GREAT!!!) and then we head to New Zealand on Saturday.

Rainbow's End

It feels really, really good to get this trip on the road!

I had hoped to get a lot more blog posts up before heading out, but it’s time to turn off my computer, pull out the hard drive, and say goodbye to the rest of it.

It’s so hard to leave this place – we love our apartment and our friends and our dog!  The goodbyes have been tough, but wonderful to have such amazing friends.  And now we’re almost on our way.  Tomorrow we set off for a few days in Seattle with family and then on Saturday we fly out.

Thank you California friends!!!!!  We’re really going to miss you!!!

It's so empty!

This is getting so real!  Had to say farewell to several friends last night and to all of LiveOps today.  Between that and the stuff fleeing to Goodwill it is all getting crazy.  We leave tomorrow!  Vamanos!

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We decided to go with Allways car rental for our New Zealand campervan.  This company, in addition to having vans when we called (who knew that all of New Zealand is also looking to rent a campervan in the middle of summer), has been really helpful with everything we need.  They had a super cheap deal on their older models going, $65 NZD/day or so, but in order to guarantee an automatic transmission we decided to upgrade to their premium model, the “Ferns” van, for which we could request an automatic.  This also has a stove and a fridge right in the van so making our own meals will be even easier!

Happy Thanksgiving everyone!

Turkey Trotters (minus Justin since he was taking the photo)

We started out the day today by running in the Turkey Trot in downtown San Jose.  We did the 5k, but they also have a 10k and tons of people showed up in the perfect (but chilly) weather.  They were saying that there were 14,500 runners there and it was a very festive atmosphere!  There was a costume contest and the people watching while running made the 53 minutes it took me to run it go a lot faster.  Justin was a champ and finished in 29 minutes!  Our friends do this run every year and if we were sticking around I think we’d add it to our traditions too.  Thanks John and Cynthia for sharing your tradition!

Victory is ours!!! And now the turkey will be too....

One week from today we will (hopefully) be arriving at my parents’ house and be completely out of our place in California!  Time is flying by and our house is oh so gradually emptying out.  Here’s somewhat of an update on what we’ve been up to:

Recently:

• Dealing with selling/donating/giving away the furniture and other stuff we’ve collected over the years.  If you know anyone who wants anything we still have some stuff for sale.
• Last swing dance practice with our dance troupe.  Check them out – we’re sad to be leaving!
• Learning to tango!  This has been wonderful fun and we’re hoping we’ve gotten enough of the basics down that we’ll be able to keep learning in Argentina.
• An all too brief trip to Sacramento for a visit with an awesome friend.
• Getting my trusty Subaru set for our drive up to Seattle.  We’re hoping that the recent cold spell up there will not make our trip too treacherous.

What we’re still working on:

• Finalizing our backpack packing lists.  I’m itching to get some more details up about packing lists, but want to wait until we’re pretty well set.
• Still have one more booster shot for Japanese Encephalitis.
• This blog!  We need to figure out photo management while we’re away and how best to display galleries to share with our friends.
• All the little planning details – so very time consuming.
• Making the most of our time with friends here.  It’s going to be hard to leave!

So we’re doing a bunch of selling on C-list and I thought I’d share a few choice quotes from the buying masses:

I saw your ad on CL and am interested in your bike pump.  What is your best offer? -Iris

Wondering if you missed the price :)

whats up y.ou presently there still? -Marvin

reply i.f you happen to be true -Marvin

post b.ack if your not fake -Marvin