Texas Train Tales

Train Stu with Bourbon

Stu loves the train.  He loves the whole experience, the rocking and clatter of the train on the tracks, the fresh coffee and paper delivered to us by a kindly train attendant, the countryside rolling by, and the interesting folks we meet.  We’ve been fortunate to meet a few that really stick out.

After a night at my parents house in Irvine, California,  we boarded the Texas Eagle heading East.  On the first night we met Robyn, an activist taking a three-month travel break from her studies in Osh Kosh, Wisconsin.  We have lots in common in life and dreams and enjoyed spending a night out in Austin once we get off the train there.

These nice real estate folks across from our sleeper roomette were partying!

 

The second night aboard the Texas Eagle, we stop in San Antonio for an eight-hour layover.  Stu and I walked to the River Walk to get some fresh air and see the sights.
The Walk, adorned with thousands of tiny Christmas lights, is romantic.  I can’t help but think about the history of giant 200+ year old trees along the riverfront, and what has transpired under their leaves.  I wonder how long the trees will live with roots encased in cement sidewalks surrounded by a strip mall of bars, restaurants and shops.

River Walk-- San Antonio, Texas

Chihuly -like glass work.  This one is near 5 feet wide and 8 feet tall

Chihuly -like glass work. This one is near 5 feet wide and 8 feet tall

Stu monkeying around

Stu monkeying around

The next morning we arrived in
 

 

 

 

 

 

Erin and I have been friends for 13 years.  It is fantastic to see her and Evan doing so well.   E & E take us out on the town and host us for four days in Austin.  Stu and I stay out past 2am consecutive nights for the first time in a long while.  We like the quirky energy of the blue dot in the red state of Texas.  While in Texas we meet up with Ms. Amy Cone, dancer choreographer extraodinaire.  Erin, Amy and I all know each other through our common friend, the late Philip Polosek aka DJ Phildawg.  We had a great time looking at old photos, telling stories, kayaking, and bar hopping.  One thing about Austin is the Tex-Mex food.  Everywhere we ate heated our mouths with fire and flavor.  Also meals of Frito pie can be had anywhere.  Favorite places to eat and drink: Black Star Brewery Co-op, Bouldin Creek Cafe (vegetarian), Brixton Bar (rainy day and holiday specials), and Izzoz Tacos (who are sadly facing a trademark name lawsuit).

Downtown Austin

"Rational" flight of beers, grilled portobello sammich

heart attack!

Shrimp and Grits in butter sauce at Black Star Co-op

 

Bikes fly in Christmas dreams at Mellow Johnny's (owned by Lance Armstrong)

RIding the Jackalope at Jackalope Bar

Hand carved chairs at Zilker Park

Evan and Erin row out of the creek and into the Great Colorado River.

From inside the Christmas light tree of Zilker Park

Amy, Erin, Mags, and Stu

Yesterday, we got back on the train for three squares meals (included with the sleeping compartment) on route to Chicago.

Romantic dinner for two in our roomette

Tomorrow, we have a day in Pittsburgh, followed by the greater areas of Maryland, Virginia, Pensylvania, and Washington D.C.

For the complete set of pictures from this part of our journey, check out our Picasa album.

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Leaving San Francisco

It has been a hectic few weeks. We had a garage sale on a rainy day, and I (Stu) was hit by a pretty bad flu that day. Mags had to go solo for some time while I let my body convince me that I was absolutely freezing in bed. AKA I had a horrible fever and chills.

Despite the rain and the illness, we sold most of our furniture that day, and a good deal of other stuff as well. (A special shout-out to Kemi who was a godsend on garage sale day. Thanks!) And after deciding that we were going to keep our Tempurpedic bed, which requires a moving truck to move, it made sense to keep a good deal of our other stuff as well. Anything that we loved, or that was quality we kept and put in the moving truck to move to Mom and Dad Chuang in Irvine.

We spent a few days in Irvine where we both continued to be sick. Despite being sick and sleeping most of the time, we did do a few things while in Irvine. The four of us (including Mom and Dad) drove to San Diego for Thanksgiving to celebrate with Ernie, Tiana, Rei, Myles, and other family and friends. The turduckhen, stuffing, pie, cake, and much much other food made for a very stuffed and delicious Thanksgiving, and it was great seeing family for the holidays.

That night we actually went to an insane Black Friday at the outlets in the desert. It was remarkably crowded. Mags and I just bought some sneakers before heading to the van to nap and wait for a few hours for Mom and Dad.

When we came back to San Francisco for our last two weeks, our apartment was empty of most furniture but still full of junk to be dealt with. It was definitely overwhelming at times, and it didn’t help that we had to adjust to sleeping on camping sleeping pads. I am doing better with it now, but the first three mornings or so I woke up grumpy and in pain. I’ve learned a few tricks and I think my body is adjusting, so I am sleeping much better on my pad, which is important because we will definitely be using them throughout the year.

Two weekends ago, we met with cousins Helen and Kristy to do business planning. Of course Kristy is in full swing with her successful editing/writing-coaching/business-coaching business, and Helen is having success in getting her counseling business off the ground. Mags and I both have put lots of thought and dreaming into our healing cooperating and permaculture farm business ideas, so it was great to sit down with a room of smart people led by exceptionally skilled and patient Kristy to turn our dreams into practical plans. We will soon put a page up on this site with our basic business plans.

Sheila and Matthew threw us an amazing going-away party. It was a performance party and we were quite touched by what people said, the effort people put forth, and the fact that people who we never thought would perform in fact did give surprise performances. We so appreciated everyone that came out and all of their well wishes. We will miss every single one of our friends and family in the Bay Area! Pictures from the party should be forthcoming.

This past weekend we visited a forming intentional community in Placerville. We will go more into our future living plans later, but for now I will just say that “intentional community” is a broad term for people with similar values and dreams work out a way to live close to each other and intentionally form a community. The two folks in Placerville were very friendly and have dreams that are very similar to ours. We are looking forward to keeping in touch with them and seeing what kind of progress they make with forming their community over the next year.

The last week we have been blessed by three helpers that must have been sent down from heaven. Billy lent us his hatchback car for the week, and was a gracious host for us at his new place in Sacramento, after our day trip to Placerville. Alfonso swung in out of nowhere with a pickup truck after we asked him last minute to store our bicycles in his garage for a year. We had to make this change of plans because a confluence of roadblocks kept raising and raising the cost of transporting our bicycles to the East Coast until the cost was $340 for the two bicycles. We made a spur-of-the-moment decision to change our bicycle touring plans from Virginia-to-Vermont to originating in San Francisco instead. We thought our future selves would appreciate the $500 total savings that this would give us. And besides, the West Coast is beautiful as well, albeit in a different way than the North East.

way too excited about packing

 

pack it up, pack it in, let me begin

 

Also, Peter responded to our last-minute request and came to San Francisco yesterday, our last day in San Francisco, to help us with anything we asked him to with regards to cleaning out our apartment. We are truly blessed to have such great friends.

We ended our stay in San Francisco by having dinner with Peter and cousins Pablo and Sherry. This morning, Peter accompanied us to the Amtrak bus station. It is really good that he did because, for now, we have a remarkable amount of luggage. Thankfully over the next month we will be shedding luggage in different places until we are down to just our backpacks when we leave the country. Pablo also ran (literally) to the bus station to send us off, and Kristy was walking as fast as she could to catch us. She missed us by a couple of minutes but that did not diminish how touched we were by the send off. It was really nice having local family send us off with love in our last 13 hours in the city.

At the San Francisco Ferry Building with way too many bags. We will be ditching them in various fashions here and there until we leave the country with just our two backpacks.

 

iconic historic streetcar and Bay Bridge. What a scenic way to say bye to the city!

 

Now we are on the Amtrak train from Oakland to Los Angeles. We’ll eventually take the train all the way to Harrisburg, Pennsylvania in a rather meandering fashion, but I’ll go into more detail on this train trip as it happens. For now I will just say that it feels GREAT to finally be all packed up and on our way!

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Dashing Warriors, Caves and Trucks

Muddy Stu and Peter

Muddy Stu and Peter after 55 miles on bike and 5K with mud.

Ready for the Race!

After the ride. All dressed up and ready for the race!

Last week, we drove our remaining belongings down to Irvine in a 16 foot Budget truck.  Mags’s parents are kindly allowing us to turn her childhood bedroom into a storage unit for the next year.  The drive was long in both directions but it’s done!  All our furniture has been sold, given away or moved.  Now we are sleeping on the floor on sleeping pads and bags.  Getting close to our goal of one back pack per person.

Even as we get ready to go we still make time for local adventures.  Halloween weekend,  we rode 55 miles from San Jose to Gilroy for the Warrior Dash, followed by another 15 miles to our hotel. Peter and Stu ran the 5k with extreme obstacles; leaping over fire, running over cars, climbing up rope walls, and swimming through mud pits under barbed wire.  Mags documented for posterity.

Through 70+ miles we ended up with 4 flat tires, one broken derailer, and terror riding on the highway shoulder with limited lighting.

fixing flat#2

sliding down wedgie hill

In September we went cave spelunking near Angel Camp.  The Moaning Caverns are beautiful.  They are named for the moaning heard outside of the caverns.   We had a great time rappelling, squeezing and crawling through the tunnels.

Stu birthing from a cave crevice.

Bacon

One week left in the San Francisco Bay!

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Summer Updates- July and August

 

Banana Slug

In July we took a weekend train, bus and bike ride to visit  Josh and Heidi in Scotts Valley, nestled in the Santa Cruz Mountains.  Their small farmhouse receives frequent visits from deer which love eating grape waste from the winery in the basement.  All around their house is redwood forest regrowth after the logging heyday in the early 20th century.  Mags geeks out on a sun bleached full deer skeleton on the trail behind their home.  Josh and Heidi are like minded activists and dear friends.  We hope that we might live together some day.

Rocky Peak

Team RunStuRun!

After nine weeks of training with Mags as his running coach, Stu ran the San Francsico Marathon in record time!  Four hours and seven minutes for his first formal running event ever!  Stu was tempted to leave the course at mile 25 for free whiskey and rock music, but resisted the lure and ran on.  We had a nice team of supporters at the finish line.  Thanks to all who came out!

Helen and Pablo with our champion!

In August, we camped at Samuel P. Taylor State Park with Peter, Monica, and Adam.  We took a few nice long hikes to the Pointe Reyes and Bolinas beach.  The trails are amazing– brush and rolling green hills, forest and beaches all in a few minutes.  Bolinas is a cute little town; tiny strip of independently owned mom and pop shops, barefoot surfers walking around, dogs running wild.    A handful of art studios beckoned us in.  We stayed at the only hotel/saloon that has been there since Gold Rush times.  The water there is so clear blue and warm.  It feels like another country rather then just 30 miles from San Francisco.   We love the feel of a small town like Bolinas, but the Marin real estate is out of our price range.

Willamette River Gorge

In Late August, Mags flew to Portland for a Level 2 course on PT for Pregnancy and  Postpartum Patients.  She got there early and stayed a few extra days to visit friends and check out the town.  Anna and her kids took me out to see the Multnomah Falls the “2nd longest Waterfall in the US” and we went for a swim and sang songs in the Sandy River.  Anna’s hubby Chad brought me a loaf of Dave’s Spelt bread (so tasty!) Martha and John hosted me and made

Urban GoatsSidewalk Horserings for every house

Roasted Chicken, heirloom tomatoes, organic everything. Delicious!

 

me amazing dinners all week long.   Tony introduced me to some of Portlands Finest Rock bands and we went for a hike on Portland’s dormant volcano.   Portland is clean, beautiful, and progressive.  It’s very bike friendly, arty, and real estate is affordable.  It has so many things going for it, but we question our ability to farm and thrive in the cloudy wet weather.

Lampost to Narnia? Mt Taber

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Summer Updates-June

Yeah!!

Yes, we realize that in many parts of the country October is Autumn, not Summer.  In San Francisco Summer comes in September and October, when the skies are clear, sunny and we can walk around in tank tops and sandals.  Now that both of us are officially FUNemployed we have a bit more time to write.  Summer has treated us very well with a few short town hunting trips, family vacations, and more.

Mags's bike, Marlena, overlooking China Camp State Beach

We packed light for bike camping.

We started in June with a bike camping trip to China Camp State Beach.  We had a group of 6 of us on the ride and spent 2 nights at China Camp.  Fantastic biking and hiking trails, lots of rolling green hills and oak groves.  This park was slated to close down September, but it is staying open on weekends until further notice.

Succulents, flowers, and moss on Mt.Shasta

Also in June, we ventured via Amtrak to Dunsmuir where we stayed with very nice CouchSurfers and explored to possibility of small town living.  Dunsmuir, population 10K, abounds with lush green beauty, hiking, farms, waterfalls and the Sacramento River.  Mt. Shasta is a short 20 minute drive away from this former logging town.  This waterfall was only a 10 minutes walk from our lodging!

Stu running near Hedgecreek Falls

Ben and Jess were fantastic hosts they even took us to nearby Stewart Hot Springs where you can get a private tub of mineral waters, saloon style!  Due to  long winter, the peak of Mt. Shasta still had enough snow to go sledding (Mags’s first time!)  We also heard some live music at the Dunsmuir Brewery.

We’ve checked off Dunsmuir from our cities list outside of the San Francisco Bay area.  We like it and could see ourselves being happy here.

Scenic overlook

 

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