What a year! I thought I would write up a summary of the past year since I have not done much blogging this year.
2006 seems to have gone by in about 5 minutes instead of 338 days (so far). This must be a side effect of aging – time speeds up.
The year started with the Slow Travel contest that turned out to be bigger (and much more work to administer) than we ever thought: 400 great entries; 100 fabulous prizes (vacation rentals for a week, 3 night stays at hotels, cell phones, car rental for a week, books, and more). Read more here - Slow Travel Contest.
At the end of January, when prizes were still being selected by winners, we went off to Hawaii. We spent a month there in our usual rental, the Little Grass Shack, but this year the weather was not as good as usual. It was colder, which meant we did longer walks in the mornings (good), but we did not do as much swimming (bad). The last few days we were there, it started raining, and it kept raining for the next month.
This was the year I decided that I could no longer face our yearly winter trips to Hawaii. January/February is always the busy time for SlowTrav, and there I am sitting in an uncomfortable chair with a dialup connection, trying to work. And then we don’t do an early spring Europe trip because we just spent a month in Hawaii and have to get caught up on things at home. But, as I sit here on a very cold day in Santa Fe in December, I wonder “what was I thinking?”
Our big plan this year was to get our house in good repair – because it needed it and in case we rent it out while living somewhere in Europe. We have a 100 year old adobe house that was completely renovated before we bought it in 1991, but things needed attending to. We got the stucco repaired, put on a new roof (had to move out for a week because the original roof is dirt and the dirt rained down into the house), did a kitchen remodel, fixed a bad leak in the garage, new washer and dryer, etc. We almost bought a new house last fall and moved instead of facing all these repairs!! But I am happy that we didn’t, because now this house is lovely. The new roof keeps the house warmer in winter – we should have done this years ago!
Getting the house fixed up is part of our “year in England” plan. We are still not sure of the timing of this, but at least we are getting organized for it. Next we have to get rid of unneeded books, get our files in better shape, “slim down” our belongings. Current plan is for spring or summer 2007. My tombstone will probably say "She was just about to do that year in England". We keep putting it off because the timing has not been good work-wise. I keep thinking maybe it is not worth the effort, maybe we should be based in Santa Fe and go back to doing our 2 - 3 month yearly trips to Europe. But then I respond with how we can do lots more Europe travel if we are based in England, plus we will do more daily walking in England. Then I get into a huff and refuse to discuss it anymore with myself. Probably I am just avoiding getting my files organized, which I would have to do before moving.
We spent May in England and had a wonderful trip. A few nights in Bath, a week in a cottage in Wiltshire, then 2 1/2 weeks in a cottage in the Cotswolds; lots of exploring and walking in the beautiful countryside. Again we ran in to bad weather – the most rain in May since 1973. It poured rain on several days and many of our hikes were through mud. It almost put us off our idea of the “year in England”, but time has passed and the good memories bubble to the top, so the plan is on again. I must have ranted to everyone I know about the weather when we got back from that trip, because whenever I talk to someone about moving to England next year, they say “I thought that was off?”
Photos from the England trip (six month later and I am still working on these)
We did a trip to California in July (Bay area for a GTG, then to Santa Barabara). If vacation bad luck comes in threes, the first was cold in Hawaii, the second was rain in England and the third was a bad strawberry in Santa Barbara. After a wonderful first day in Santa Barbara - walking along the ocean, going to the market (Pauline eating an unwashed organic strawberry), out for a fabulous Italian dinner with SlowTrav friends - there came intense vomiting (like never witnessed before in this household). As soon as I recovered, we cut the vacation short and whisked me home.
We went up to Toronto for a week at the end of August to see my parents and my brother and his kids. It is fun to be “Aunt Pauline” and “Uncle Steve”. We stayed at a great hotel in downtown Toronto, then drove the freeways out to the suburbs. We also got to visit some SlowTrav friends.
SlowTrav has dominated my life for most of this year. I cleaned up all the site HTML, moved from FrontPage to Dreamweaver and then moved the site to a dedicated server. I even hired someone part time to help me run the site (Kim). SlowTrav is in great shape now for growth – and it is growing. Traffic is way up, the message board is very active, new projects are lined up, reviews are flooding in, and I no longer have to beg for travel notes because people are sending them regularly (and I am always behind on posting them - some things never change).
Slow Travel got many great media mentions this year, including an article in Time magazine. See our Scrapbook.
Steve’s TabbySoft work is slowing down (everything was turned over to Pearson and they integrated it into their school software), so he spent several months working with me on SlowTrav. He wrote a wonderful Google Maps Maker system where Slow Travelers can create Google Maps to annotate trip reports or travel notes. Some of our members have been making fascinating maps.
Steve did all the technical work of getting us to the dedicated server. We both certainly learned a lot about running a server! CrystalTech has been wonderful to deal with on this project.
We did another short vacation to California in October, this time driving to Palm Springs for a wonderful SlowTrav GTG. We spent a great weekend there and then a few nights in Sedona on the way back. It was just the break we needed after being glued to the computers for a few months. Video from the GTG.
It is almost a year ago to the day that we got our new cat Buddy (an adult cat whose owner died). It took him about six months to really settle in – I think he was devoted to his previous owner and had a hard time letting go. But now he is our boy and is devoted to Steve (me, he likes; Steve is a God).
I bought myself an inexpensive video camera and learned how to edit a video, make titles and upload to YouTube. So, if you want to see more of Buddy: Buddy Tapes 3. This one was not made with the new video camera, but with the digital camera, but I am still working on it all.
I was in a bad phase of my relationship with Santa Fe about two years ago, but it seems to have passed. For the last year I have been back into my usual love-fest with this town. Spring was mild, summer came early (May, when we were in England) and was hot, the monsoons started in July and lasted into September, which was depressing, the fall was magnificent, and we got the first snow of the season last week. I am enjoying the cold, short winter days and the evenings with the fire burning, but I will probably be pretty sick of it soon.
Now that I write this all out, the year seems longer! Perhaps that is the key - take some time to write about what you did and you realize how much you did.
Happy Holidays everyone and here is to an even more wonderful 2007!
