The Trail's Our Thing

We arrived back home in mid-August 2005. We unpacked all the boxes we put into storage when we rented our house, sorted through the packages of treasures we'd sent home from Europe, and reconnected with family and friends. Kelly started seventh grade a few days after we returned home, and Charley easily started his home renovation business back up. For the first time ever, I was "home alone." I went to a health spa for a week in honor of my 50th birthday, and spent countless hours working on my digital photos and writing reviews of rentals, hotels and restaurants for the Slow Travel website. During this time Charley and I also decided to launch a small group tour to Provence, a trip we named The Luberon Experience. This was an idea we had developed while we were still living in Bonnieux, and we decided to pursue this plan and run our first two trips in September 2006.

The truth was that we couldn't really go back to our old lives-- we weren't the same people. And we missed Europe-- especially Provence-- intensely. I found it difficult to deal with some aspects of American life: the traffic on the interstate, the food in the grocery stores, the big big-box stores. I was living in the suburbs and longed for village life, the long vistas I had enjoyed in Provence. We decided we had to build a new life that allowed us to continue to travel.

People often ask us why we haven't moved to Europe permanently. The biggest reason is our daughter Kelly and her education. She's a strong and motivated student with a lot of potential. Although she's benefited tremendously by her European experiences, we want her to finish high school in America. She attends a wonderful private school near our home that offers a great education. We also have important family members here in Knoxville-- Charley's two older daughters and his granddaughter and my parents. My parents are in their mid 70's and moved from the Baltimore/Washington area about seven years ago to be here near us. I wouldn't feel right moving away with them here. Finances are another big issue. We spent much of our savings on the big trip, and we're not in a financial position to finance living in Europe permanently. We'd have to work, which is difficult to do as a foreigner. And last of all, we want to maintain a strong connection to America. Much as it frustrates us sometimes, this is a great country.

In January 2006 I started teaching a night class in the College of Business Administration at the University of Tennessee. I enjoyed the university environment and working with young people, and I found the work challenging and interesting. For the first time in a long time, I was learning a lot myself! I also started working with one of the executive MBA programs, providing leadership coaching for medical doctors participating in a year-long program. I had a few consulting opportunities too and developed a non-credit course called "Planning Your European Vacation" that was offered for the first time through the University of Tennessee Continuing education program in February 2006. (I'm about to start teaching that course for the 4th year, and will share more in my blog this month.)

We returned to Provence and our village of Bonnieux in March 2006 for an extended two-week spring break trip. And in the summer of 2006 we enjoyed an eight-week family trip to Europe: a walking trip in Ireland, a week in Normandy, and five weeks housesitting for friends back in Bonnieux. Our first Luberon Experience trips in September were small but successful. Amazingly, we were contacted by a USA Today reporter writing a story on the Luberon related to the upcoming release of a new movie A Good Year, filmed mostly in Bonnieux. She spent a day with our group in September and included us in her article. We began to get bookings for our 2007 Luberon Experience trips from all over the USA.

By this time I was teaching two classes a semester at UT and continuing my coaching work with the medical doctors. We were making some money, but also drawing on our savings, especially to fund our continuing travels and Kelly's education. And our health insurance wasn't good-- a high deductible policy that really only covered us for something serious. I began to talk to UT about the possibility of a more substantial role and was offered a faculty appointment beginning in August 2007. I'm now finishing up my second year as a non-tenure-track faculty member in the Management Department. (I'll blog more about this later too.)

My second career as a college professor has enabled me to pursue my part time third career, which is really my passion-- our small group tour business. Charley and I love leading the trips, and I really enjoy everything about running the business. This past September we hosted our 10th and 11th groups, a total of 99 people so far. We have met so many great people, and of course we love being back in Provence several weeks a year.

This year we have expanded our focus to offer a couple of trips each year in other parts of Europe that we love. We have a new website called "European Experiences," that includes our trips this June to the Salzkammergut in Austria and the Bavarian Alps. Many of the people who join us on these trips will be people who have traveled with us in Provence.

We've also been able to continue to travel and have spent most of the past three summers in Europe.

Three-and-a-half years ago, when we arrived back in Knoxville after our 14 months away, I had no idea what I would be doing or how I was going to earn a living. For someone who always had a "proper" job in the corporate world, this was a very strange position to find myself. Now I can't imagine it any other way. I have an ideal situation at the university, which provides interesting work, a year-round paycheck and benefits, and the flexibility to pursue several things that are very important to me: time with my husband and daughter, developing our small group tour business, and lots of time in Europe. Life has a way of working out.