Leaving town for a year is a job in itself. We are very fortunate we have jobs where we can take a leave of absence (we are both real estate brokers with RE/MAX Metro Properties). Still, the whole mind set is very difficult. We have been planning for so long and now that it is almost time to go, I wish I had another month. But then of course, I still would not be ready.
After careful consideration, we decided to rent our home. At first we thought we would sell it, but then I feared not having a home. Aside from the obvious lost of real estate appreciation, I just wanted to know at some point I could come home in crawl into a nice familiar bed. It's a security issue.
Our cars will be sold, hopefully a few days before we leave. I say hopefully, because my beautiful Toyota 4-Runner has 81,000 miles on it even though it still looks shiny and new, uninformed folks think the mileage is too high! Being a devoted Toyota fan, I know the 4-Runner is barely broken in! So, I may end up keeping it to drive when we return.
Vaccinations! Whew! I hated this part! We have been vaccinated for yellow fever, tetanus, diphtheria, polio, rabies, hepatitis A, hepatitis B and typhoid. This list may look short, but consider this, most of the shots are a series of THREE! Yuck. We also have prescription medicine for malaria.
The discouraging thing about malaria is the fact that even if you protect yourself by taking one of the drugs, you can still get malaria if you are bitten by the wrong mosquitoes! So we also are carrying Deet and a mosquito net to sleep under. Mosquitoes are really nasty little bugs that carry all kinds of horrible diseases. We just don't want to take any chances.
Our packing list has continued to grow over the past few months. We have added items based on needs. Unfortunately we have more stuff than we can pack into the allotted space. Since this is a "supported trip", we do not have to carry our gear. It will be transported to the daily destination via a locker truck. Our locker (we each get one) is 17 X 17 X 36 inches.
Now this doesn't sound like a very big space and it isn't. We have to arrange everything to fit into this space while keeping the weight at 60 pounds! So far our weigh is almost OK (thanks to carry on, we will cheat!) But the volume of stuff has to be pared down. Funny thing, three months ago we bought a "dish barrel" box from U-Haul. It is the same dimension as our locker. At that time we performed a trial run and everything seemed to fit just fine. Since then, we have added a "few" things, it no longer fits!
We have eight days to figure out a way to make things fit, or decide what stays home.
to be continued...go to packing list.
* In reality we decided to rent our house and let someone else pay for it for us. What else would two Realtors do?
