Thursday 13th October – our first Walmart relations

Having already spent a fortune yesterday on preparation costs, the theme continued today! But it was bike day. Being the frugal one, and in a blind panic about how much our trip had already cost, I attempted to find a suitable second-hand bicycle on Craig’s list, which is kind of like Gumtree in the UK where people put their property up for sale ranging from items for a couple of quid up to cars, jewellery and more expensive items.  The description of the first bike we went to see said that it had been left out in the rain ‘for a couple of hours’. This turned out to be a drastic understatement. I took it for a test-ride but the seller was clearly very concerned that I might die, as he kept shouting out to “test the breaks!” and “don’t go too fast!” It was clear from the get-go that this was a rust-bucket project not a quick ‘doer-upper’! He almost offered it to me for free such was his keenness to get rid, however I declined and as we left had to admit to Simon that maybe he was right, a rare occasion! Investing in cheap, new bikes would save a lot of extra mileage, cost and bother in the long run. 

And so marked the beginning of our relationship with Walmart, the mega US department store (especially if it’s a Walmart Superstore, clue’s in the title). For the Brits who haven’t been fortuitous enough to step foot in a Walmart, imagine a very large Tesco Extra and then ‘Super-size’ it. You can buy nearly anything in these places, and yes, including guns and ammo – you’ll find them just along from the Toy Department!  We were left to our own devices to select bikes off the racks, pull them down and take them for a spin in the aisles. Simon selected a funky grey Mongoose with orange writing for $120 and I chose a more basic, mostly white mountain bike for $80. Even with the current shoddy exchange rate that’s a brand-new bike for 65 quid, bargain, so of course we then spent more on necessary accessories. We easily loaded the bikes into the back of the hire car and after a bite to eat we found an opportunity to test the bikes in the outside world having been recommended to visit Concord, Massachusetts. We found some free parking in a residential area and took a ride through the local cemetery before heading to the North Bridge, scene of ‘the shot heard round the World’.

The top pic is Simon posing on his new wheels by the Minute Man statue by Daniel Chester French. The lower image is an overview of the monuments and the bridge itself.  This location is where the first American soldier fired in anger and under orders against British troops at the commencement of the American Revolution in 1775 (although there seems to be some in-fighting between Concord and Lexington about whether shots were actually fired there earlier the same day but I’m not going to get involved in all that ‘he said, she said’). The rest of Concord was also very pretty and, dare I use the expression, quaint.  It was lovely to get our first opportunity to act like tourists having been in the country for 4 days or so.  It was a taste of days out to come.

Back in Westford it was another night for poor Eleri in hospital, but the doctors were hopeful that she was on the mend.  Another payment towards our new home was made as another 24 hours had passed in the UK.  Evenings here so far have consisted of cheap nights in with a couple of beers for relaxation before turning in for bed in good time for another hectic day to come.

Wednesday 12th October - splashing the cash

First job of the day was a call to NatWest in the UK (no, they provide no option of finding the answer to my payment query on-line or to getting a response via email apparently).  Having gone through the security rigmarole and getting to speak to a human being it turned out that there was literally nothing more I could do to speed up the payment.  I would have to wait until 24 hours ticked over to make my next payment and do the same again for a third day.  There was no option to move a large quantity of money any faster.  Campers Inn wouldn’t receive our payment for the RV until Friday at the absolute earliest but it would more likely be into the following week.  We decided to keep Campers Inn in the dark about this… in case it meant that they delayed getting our camper ready.  We couldn’t collect our RV until next week anyway so by then hopefully all this would be resolved.  Until then I tried to keep calm about spending such a large chunk of our cash.

Talking about spending cash….. Today turned into a major shopping day.  We may not have to look for an RV anymore but we had to equip it for us to live in for the next nine months.  One of the most important things for our sanity would be getting a good night’s sleep on board.  The queen sized double bed came with a not very luxurious or particularly deep mattress.  Tash came to the rescue with some money off vouchers and recommendations for stores to try and bag a bargain.  Well, I never knew how much choice or scope of pricing there would be for memory foam mattresses!  Check out how much this is....!

We traipsed around several stores and eventually invested in a 2” memory foam mattress AND a 1.5” foam sponge topper to give us an extra comfort ‘boost’ instead of shelling out what seemed like a ridiculous amount on 3” memory foam – we’re talking hundreds of bucks.  We then spent many more dollars on replacing many of the items we had given away or taken to the tip back in England!  Bedding, pots, pans, cutlery, mugs, crockery, tea towels, cleaning stuff... the list goes on. We bought the cheapest but hopefully user-friendliest stock we could find without resorting to paper plates etc.  (Being house-proud we tried to keep it on a colour theme of course, so the main colour of our new home is red.)

What to do about mobile phones and internet?  We had researched some options for getting mobile wi-fi in our RV but even when the cost was a couple of dollars a day, that adds up to a fortune on top of everything else, it was just going to be too much.  I had thought we would get pay as you go phones and only use them sporadically but we ended up taking out $40 per month SIM contracts with AT&T (not sure what that stands for folks) – which gave us free calls and texts within the USA as well as 3GB of data so that we would have some internet access when we needed it, and had a signal.  This seemed like a reasonable compromise and we definitely needed some way of communicating that would be cheaper than using our British phones.  Straight away it was apparent how useful having a US cell number would be for a prolonged visit such as ours.  We use them almost daily to call campsites, insurance companies etc so it was a good idea.


I am not very good at spending money.  That may come as a surprise to you having just read the first sections of this blog!  But I am naturally cautious when it comes to spending (healthy) and a bit tight with cash too (miserly?), so I may spend it… but then have a panic attack about it.  Together with Simon, who doesn’t seem to think twice before splashing the cash, I think we balance each other out quite well. Within the last 48 hours of this trip we had haemorrhaged money, all on things that were ‘essential’ to this trip but also seemed quite frivolous in the grand scheme of things.  Simon and I had budgeted for the US section of our trip to cost a certain amount whilst leaving another chunk of our travel funds alone for our other plans.  We refused to start using the real budget yet.  We put all this expense down to ‘set-up costs’ so we ended up using our savings to cover these instead; in denial because the real adventure doesn't start until we hit the road does it?!

Tuesday 11th October - Cutting a deal

I awoke again quite early the next day, keen to hear what Simon thought about our next move after a hard night’s deliberation.  I was still really worried we were buying something far too big that we would struggle to drive and end up resenting.  But on the other hand, we needed the storage space!  Then there were the finances – we were really pushing it, even after the price reduction we’d squeezed out of them the day before.  Plus, registering the RV was going to cost us extra in sales tax as we were going to have to do this in Massachusetts.  I will leave the whole registration saga for another day but to explain briefly, each US state has different rules regarding sales tax.  Things are cheaper in New Hampshire because you don’t have to pay additional sales tax, good times!  But, as we were going to use Tash and David’s (I’m shortening that to T&D’s to speed things up as it’s now December in reality!) address in Massachusetts (Mass) as ours then we would need to register the camper in Mass incurring a 6% sales tax, a hefty smack in your bank account when you’re spending several thousand dollars at once you’ll agree?!  We agreed that due to the low mileage and the buy-back assistance at Campers Inn, the Freelander was the more sensible investment, but it was still a little too pricey.  We had viewed over 20 campers yesterday.  To see any more would mean driving many more miles out of the area and this could make the buying process more complicated than it needed to be.  We decided to be cheeky and try to squeeze more money out of the deal at Campers Inn.  I called Joe back and explained our situation.  I blamed the sales tax in Mass, the low value of the pound and our general poverty in needing to get the price down on the Freelander by another couple of grand.  I gave him our contact number at T&D’s and basically said that if they could do that, we’d do a deal. 
We hung around the house nervously awaiting a phone call.  It was good news!  A yes to the price reduction and, to quell my nerves over the size of the beast we were contemplating buying, Joe suggested we took the RV for a test drive before agreeing any purchase.

To celebrate, David showed us the way to the local Costco so that he could add us to their membership to be able to get lots of goodies at knock down prices whilst on our travels.  This included cheaper petrol, which from this point on I shall refer to as ‘gas’ as that’s been drummed into me since.  Costco was a new one on me. There seemed to be no sense at all to the arrangement of the wares inside the store.  I’m not sure how David knew where anything was, but we left with the stock goods vital for survival – beer, BBQ meat and toothpaste!

Simon and I then drove on to Campers Inn and met up with Joe.  He gave us the keys to the camper and told us to go ahead and have a good snoop around it whilst he finished dealing with something else.  The camper was even better than we recalled from the day before.  It was difficult to find fault with the finish inside and, though I’m not claiming to know what I’m looking at under a bonnet, sorry ‘hood’, the engine did look very new and well looked after.  Joe caught up with us, started the engine and drove the three of us clear from all of the other pristine trailers he was trying to sell before he let us loose on the steering wheel!  I took first go and Joe directed me out onto the main road and into real, moving traffic.  It was much easier than I expected.  Whether the local roads were wider to allow for novice drivers?  But by taking care at corners, even the fact that the steering wheel was on the wrong side did not phase me.  We drove into a carpark for some manoeuvring practise and swapped over so that Simon could have a go.  As there is no view at all to the rear of the camper there is a nifty little camera on the back that helps with reversing to a degree and the wing mirrors stick out a mile so as long as you’re happy that a gap is big enough for them to get through, the rest of the vehicle should follow.  Both feeling far more confident about the size of the van we returned to Campers Inn and signed on the dotted line, committing to buy our very first ever camper van.  In our initial discussions with Joe we had told him that we wanted to be on the road for the coming weekend ideally.  But after a pow-wow with their service department the earliest that our camper would be ready for us would be a week’s time, Tuesday 18^th.  There was no way round this so we just had to hope that we could stay on a bit longer at T&D’s and make the most of touring the local area while we could.  We booked an appointment on 18^th for us to be shown the ropes of our new wheels before we could drive it out and left Campers Inn with a great sense of achievement.

It transpired the delay in being able to collect the van would be a good thing.  On returning to T&D’s I got straight on with the business of transferring the money for our purchase to Campers inn.  Turns out there was a limit of 20K that I could move out of my UK bank account in any 24-hour period.  This is even when using an app that I am happy to recommend called ‘TransferWise’ that I was tipped off about by my brother and his wife in Norway.  Instead of having to go into a bank or make a very expensive call to the UK from abroad before being charged even more to do a bank transfer, TransferWise payments are very easy to set up on your phone using the app and are much less costly.  I set up to send the maximum I could that evening as there was no point trying to ring NatWest when it was the middle of the night in the UK.  TransferWise customer services were also very quick in responding to my panicked email asking whether the payment would still go through if I was moving the money in dribs and drabs.  They reassured me that they would wait until they had received the full amount to make my payment and let me know when this happened and they were due to go ahead.


Things had also gone from bad to worse with poorly Eleri.  She had not made good enough progress at home so she was being treated in hospital overnight, meaning that Tash and David became like passing ships, one of them staying with Eleri at the hospital whilst the other looked after Olwyn and things at home.

10th October 2016 - RV shopping day

With help from David we'd identified some local trailer/RV retailers. The plan was to start at the largest one, Flagg, and walk around as many different models, sizes and styles as possible.  This worked perfectly. We weren't bothered by a salesperson and the RVs on the lot were all unlocked so we just let ourselves in and spent at least an hour getting a feel for the differences.  We quickly noted issues with storage space in some, living space in others and started looking at larger and larger mobile homes! RV may stand for Recreational Vehicle but we were looking for something to be comfortable in as our full-time home for the next 9 months, not something just to use on the odd weekend away. When we finally spoke to a salesman he gave us a tour of one of the RVs and gave us an insight into the basics that we should expect from any we might want to seriously consider – useful for a couple of novices like us!  For example, you need a separate generator to provide electricity when you don’t have the option of plugging in, the size of water tanks that would meet our demands and of course, the slide-out! We had noticed the popularity of these on the internet at home and I don't think we saw an RV without one – the basic and genius idea of being able to expand your living space at the touch of a button without having to drive the largest bus on the road, awesome!  You don’t need to have just the one slide-out…. You can have several!  Your bedroom can expand, your living room area, your kitchen space…. Many options.  Though our concern was - the more electrically operating slide-outs you have, the more potential for things to go wrong with the mechanisms etc.  We had a budget in mind and a limit to the funds from our house sale.  Thankfully it became clear that we would be able to afford an RV, however, the more space and gizmos we wanted on it would decide whether we took it to the maximum that we could afford.  Our Political timing was also poor, the value of the British pound being rock bottom post-Brexit was going to make the transaction more expensive.  Here's an example of one we liked at Flagg:

We had agreed we would never agree any purchase on the first day but we started to get an idea of how much we would need to spend and what age of vehicle we wanted for our trip.  After leaving Flagg we looked at an RV at an independent, smaller business. We loved the model, a Sunseeker, but were concerned about buying from a small business - without the back-up of a warranty or the chance of being able to re-sell the RV back to them on our return.  Here's the Sunseeker (spot the difference!):

We then headed into the neighbouring State, New Hampshire, towards another larger, RV business, ‘Campers Inn’.  It was en-route that we experienced our first contact with American law enforcement! In keeping up with the flow of traffic, Simon was pulled over for speeding, along with the female driver he was following behind! Thankfully, by being apologetic and explaining that we were new to US roads the Officer issued Simon with a warning notice rather than any ticket or fine.  There is video footage…. Me being incredulous that Simon had managed to upset the law within barely 24 hours of setting foot in the Country – quite an achievement! Luckily, we still managed to make it to Campers Inn with just enough time to meet salesman Joe, an ex NYPD cop who still can't believe that Police in the U.K don't all carry guns.  Campers Inn had a very large range of brand new trailers for sale, basically oversized caravans, that are extremely popular here.  It appears that the first choice for life on the road is to use your powerful American truck to tow a trailer to your chosen campsite and then you can use your truck for local travel whilst the trailer stays put. We briefly considered this option but it was beyond our price bracket along with the fact we would have to find, register and buy TWO vehicles instead of one.  These trailers must be seen to be believed, if money was no object you could spend hundreds of thousands of dollars.  Slide-outs galore, satellite TV dish, jacuzzi… they looked like mobile 5-star hotel rooms.  But for us, a single RV unit would make more sense if we were moving on every day or so.  We explained our intentions to Joe and he showed us three self-contained campers on or near our price range.  Our earlier research paid off and between us we seemed to realise which one would suit our needs best.  The main problem was that it was out of our price range, and I was also a little nervous about it being 30 feet in length causing us difficulty driving and parking.  But the Countrymen Freelander 29KS we’d found was immaculate inside and only had 3800 miles on the clock despite being two years old. 

We sat down with Joe and had an honest discussion.  In our research before leaving the UK I’d read that you really need to haggle when buying from one of these dealers and you never accept the list price.  We levelled with Joe, we were interested in the Freelander but what money could he get off it to make it affordable for us? He disappeared to talk to his Finance Manager…. he may have just walked round the block, I don’t know.  But when he returned he had sliced $15,000 off the list price!  Still over budget, but it was amazing how much room there was.  We pushed it a bit further, could he round it down to the nearest 10000 dollars?  Two minutes later, yes, they could do that.  Joe wanted to help us out and cut a deal and we had also agreed that on our return from our travels Campers Inn would gladly re-sell the Freelander for us.  As per our agreement at the start of the day Simon and I thanked him, took the paperwork and left, explaining that we needed to go away and do some sums.

Our minds were buzzing on the journey back to Westford. As with all major life decisions, it’s always best to sleep on it, so that’s what we agreed to do.  And to discuss it with Tash and David for second opinions.  Sadly, they’d had a shocker of a day.  Their eldest daughter, Eleri, had been feeling under the weather when we arrived and had been uncharacteristically quiet.  A trip to the doctors that day had confirmed that she had pneumonia and so her parents were understandably concerned.  Our deliberation over which RV we might buy was trivial in comparison, but bless them they still happily listened to our dilemma before we all succumbed to tiredness and called it a night.

Completion to departure.... the chaos continues.

Just a tip - it is far easier to move all your accounts, utilities and mail with you to another house than it is to try and persuade people that you no longer have a home and want to close your account with them! I was trying to achieve this whilst also wishing to avoid a mountain of extra mail going to my in-laws' house. I nearly drowned under a sea of admin this week, eight days between completing on the house and having to sort... everything prior to leaving the country.  My lists went off the scale!
This coincided with all our closest friends and family wanting one last chance to see us before the off. We were social butterflies with at least one, but many days two, commitments every day.  We ate very well! It was lovely to spend time with people in smaller groups and many were very generous and even made financial contributions towards the unemployed bums we had recently become! 

I had started feeling more confident in the healing process of my right foot. I put a shoe on for the first time in 6 weeks (slow news day…) and started putting weight equally on both feet, giving me confidence as my hospital appointment approached.
Returning to my failure to sell anything at all, this was sadly the case with the Audi. No interest at all on Autotrader, gum tree, Facebook, what on earth were we going to do with our beautiful machine?! A couple of friends offered to take over the selling process on our behalf, a very generous suggestion that I hoped to avoid if at all possible, but time was running out.
I managed to download the latest maps for the whole of North America (including Canada) to my SatNav, after managing on the second occasion to buy the correct extra SD storage card!
We had to sort out our mobile phone accounts and get our handsets unlocked to have the potential to use them abroad with new SIM cards. Every day was a logistical nightmare, I was extremely stressed and hoped that this was just temporary and not a panicked reaction to having turned our lives upside down! Despite very cosy accommodation at Simon’s parents’ house, sleep was not my friend again, there was just too much to do!!

Friday 7th October, two days to departure, was critical 'foot' day, the return to hospital. Thankfully everything went to plan, the consultant couldn't get rid of me quickly enough so that they could concentrate on 'proper' patients. The boot went in the bin right there and then, and good riddance! On my return from Southend it was time to make a decision on the Audi. Thankfully, Simon used his contacts to agree a 'sale or return' with a local garage for them to sell the car on our behalf, enabling us to get a decent amount for the car as long as we were not in a mad rush. We took the car straight there and completed the paperwork. It was such a last-minute relief, having had to consider selling it for far below its value to one of those 'we'll buy anything' websites, you know the ones!
Another relief that day was the fact that we had no evening plans... at all. Just to get ahead with some packing and relax, it was heavenly.

Saturday 8th October was Christmas. Seriously. We sorted the packing, actually Simon sorted the vast majority of the packing if I'm honest! We had to reached the conclusion that paying for an extra suitcase in the hold was a necessary evil at an extra financial splurge of 65 quid. This part of the trip was definitely not travelling light, we were taking as much as we could to be able to set up our new mobile home when we arrived. Later some of the Newman clan arrived at the house for Christmas dinner and games.  I even wore my Christmas jumper; these things must be taken seriously. 

Last minute set back of the day was down to our friends at Apple again! Simon had only just got the text confirming his phone was ready to be unlocked. In my role again as slightly less clueless with technology, it fell to me to sort this out via the wonder of iTunes. Starting with the fact that I had to install iTunes onto the computer at Simon's parents' house. Simple enough you'd think. With basic instructions to hand I had to back up the phone to iTunes before deleting it all and re-installing the relevant backup.  You'll recall how we'd managed, with assistance, to get half of our entire music library loaded onto Simon's phone with the other half on his iPad.  Well, how was I supposed to know that a back up to iTunes wouldn't include the music library as standard?! Apple, what the hell?! Why wouldn't I want to keep my music library from my phone?! Half of the iTunes alphabet disappeared before my eyes, importantly the half from M to Z. They'd deleted Pearl Jam, Oasis, Stone Roses.... unbearable to think of a road trip without these.  Thankfully we were heading out for more games and drinks at the Dawson’s, home of Chris who is technologically far more able than Simon and I put together. We wouldn't be able to get back everything, but Chris helped us rescue as much as possible to minimise the damage, phew, we didn’t have to cancel the whole trip!

Sunday 9th October, departure day! Everything went smoothly - from leaving the house having somewhat tearfully said farewell to Ralph to meeting with Simon's Sister and family for an 'all you can eat' breakfast and getting to Heathrow for 1030am. Having said an emotional goodbye to Simon's parents the realisation sank in that it was just the two of us and we were really doing this. The below image basically shows the majority of our Worldly goods, ready to go:

We reacted by going for a large coffee and a social media frenzy whilst we still had the chance, and reliable wi-fi!  

Our flight departed on time with plenty of spare seating available. It was a bumpy flight but we arrived in good time at Boston Logan international airport.  

The last hurdle that could prevent our plans lay ahead - US immigration. Despite having obtained our visitors visas it had been stressed that the final decision on whether we could gain access to the US was down to the immigration officer at point of entry, I felt butterflies in my stomach. But our immigration officer couldn't have been nicer. Apart from expressing his surprise that we planned to live in such close quarters together in an RV for the next 6 months, another person to add to the list who thinks we're a little nuts!
We found our way to the hire car emporium and successfully acquired our hire car. We picked a bright white SUV, a Hyundai Sante Fe, as we felt we needed to practise with a LARGE car before moving on to our potentially LARGER mobile home! We then tested the directions on the freshly loaded SatNav to make the roughly 45-minute journey to Tasha and David’s' house in Westford in torrential rain. In the interest of fairness, I let Simon test the American roads out first. The road conditions were appalling, not a great start to escaping the British weather!  Arriving at Tash's house was impressive - they have invested in a huge character home and though it does need a quantity of work doing, the scope is amazing. The rooms are huge with high ceilings and the building goes on in all directions, even before you take the grounds into consideration. Tasha and David have two little girls and a third baby on the way in the New Year. They are very busy people so we were so grateful for them to make time and space for us in their home. Due to the time difference, we'd had a very long day so elected for an early night in the knowledge that we should then wake up in good time on Monday 10th in order to start RV shopping.


I feel bad for you, reader, that to this point has taken so long and been so 'wordy'. If I've had enough of it, I find it hard to imagine you're still with me so let's move on. The American adventure... much fewer words and with more pictures, guaranteed!

Action stations! From exchange to completion.

After all that waiting and will it/ won't it dilemma.... my lists and planning could finally come into effect en masse! All systems were go, everything that I'd been holding off on 'just in case' could be put into action. By the way, I am not after sympathy, this madness was all created entirely of my own volition. I could try and suggest that Simon didn't pull his weight and take on enough of the organisation, but the truth is that I probably wouldn't have trusted him with half of it anyway! I like to be busy and to be in control of what's happening so the chaos I found myself in was entirely self generated.

First things first, we booked our flights getting very reasonable rates for the date we wanted, 9th October, out of Heathrow Airport arriving in Boston at a reasonable time to rock up at a friend's house. This was happening. What we would do when we got to the US? We didn't actually have much time to consider this, too much going on in the UK.

We continued to gradually rid our house of furniture to not leave it all to the last minute. Family assisted and got some goods for their trouble. The house began to empty and feel transitional instead of the settled home it had been.  The cars went on the market (Audi is still for sale as I write!). I made appointments for every possible check-up you can think of - opticians, dentist, doctors, hairdressers.... I had a full MOT and even went ahead and paid for the advisory items!

I would just like to have a temporary rant about Apple if that's okay? Somewhat ironically, as I am typing this on an iPad, but this is part of my point. I am now tied in to being an Apple product owner. Between Simon and I we have 2 iPhones and the iPad. We have our entire music library on iTunes and our valuable memories backed up to the iCloud. To change all of this is a monstrous administration nightmare. We are suckered in to this thing.  But I put it to you that Apple products are not user-friendly and simple for the likes of me who are stuck somewhere between not being techno-savvy but also not a complete technophobe. I'd put myself in the category of 'a little knowledge can be a dangerous thing'. Hence it fell to me to back up everything from our PC so that it could be reset for my sister to use.  By everything I really only mean our iTunes library and all of our photos with some documents that it may seem a good idea to hang onto. I purchased a stand alone hard drive with plenty of data storage in order to do this and started making sure that all of the pictures from our phones, cameras, discs etc were all in one place for the back up.  The other part was that we would want to take our entire iTunes library with us on the road to be the soundtrack to the whole thing. We're not going on a road trip of the US without copious amounts of Pearl Jam to listen to, c'mon now. But Apple is greedy and selfish so doesn't want to make it easy for you to have copies of your own music that you've paid for and be able to access it on different systems. We drafted in James, Indie-go lead guitarist with superior technological skills, to the rescue! Eventually we ended up with everything backed up and ready for our travels before I nervously deleted everything ready for the new owners.

If it sounds like the summer of 2016 was consumed solely with preparing for our big adventure then I have made a misrepresentation. Let me be clear, if anything we excelled ourselves in the number of events, activities and socials we managed to squeeze in! And each time we saw different friends it was another opportunity to bang on about our plans and seek advice or suggestions of places to add to our ever-expanding itinerary. We had a great summer. Gigs galore including Glastonbury & Southsea festivals, a trip to Portugal (planned pre life-change idea), Silverstone Grand Prix, the list goes on.  

But as our U.K. Tour had to be ditched due to time constraints we also decided to arrange a leaving/ late engagement/ Simon's belated 40th Birthday (still?! He was forty in February!!) party to enable us to invite all our friends, family and colleagues in an attempt to see as many people as possible before our trip. As per usual we were extravagant in what we wanted and it made a dent in our funds but it was well worth it as we both had a great night and even banged out a couple of tracks with the next reincarnation of 'Indie-go!'  The party went back to our house and carried on into the early hours, me still sporting the boot!

The whole process had seemed to drag what with the issues around the sale of the house. But then we had a lovely weekend in Oslo visiting my brother and his wife towards the end of September (which Simon had arranged as a Birthday surprise for me earlier in the year) and suddenly our final week at work and in the house all came at once.  

 

The 27th September was both of our final working days and also my Birthday. I was not sure how I would feel that day, concerned that I may become emotional in front of colleagues. Everyone was lovely as expected but thanks to an incredibly tedious office meeting I was reminded why I would not be missing many of the aspects of my working life! Yes, I may miss the majority of the people but we can all live without boring meetings! As soon as possible it was off to the pub for post work Birthday/leaving drinks whilst not forgetting that the next day was Moving Day number one!

Moving day 28th September appeared and we were still in the position of having some of our largest and most expensive furniture items, the darn dining table, chairs, sideboard and bench, without a buyer and needing to be moved! Last knockings - Simon's boss and his lovely wife came over and we agreed a deal - phew, that was close! And they were happy with their purchase, at one point even nearly getting my beloved Audi TT thrown in for good measure, but sadly it wasn't to be! I keep banging on about my car but as you'll see below it really was a beauty....

Tuesday 29th September came, moving day number two. More clearing, we worked so hard as you have to on moving day, but with additional help from Simon's Dad who was not only great with lugging stuff about but also acted as my chauffeur due to 'the boot' still being around! We had to be out of the house by 130pm as I'd arranged for cleaners to come in and make the house nice for the buyers whilst we turned our attention to finishing emptying the garage and garden. But not satisfied with the list of things to accomplish we also had a meeting that afternoon with the Chief Constable! This was due to Simon's heroics a few weeks previously when he had dragged three people out of a burning car during one of his last shifts at work. We were late of course, for the Chief.... Well, if he's going to demand our company on such a busy day then what should he expect?! We had tea in the Chief's office along with Simon's proud parents and the afternoon became extremely interesting when our esteemed leader took a different view to that of his Human Resources department about our impending departure from his Police Force.... a phone call was made and we were invited to withdraw our resignations in order to re-apply for those career breaks we had been refused .... the saga continues! As long as we withdrew our resignations prior to our last day "which is when?" He asked. Erm.... tomorrow!! As long as we sorted it all out the next day, along with completing on our house sale before 4pm, all would be fine.  Just like any other day really!

That night was our first sleeping at Simon's parents and away from home until..... well, until we had another place to call 'home' I guess. I didn't sleep well, too much worrying about the magnitude of what was to be achieved the next day.

Friday 30th September - completion day.  Not much to say other than it was as hectic as expected. Slogged our way through the morning to have cleared out of the house entirely by 1pm having done the obligatory meter readings as well as two tip runs.  We got desperate... having donated a lot to charity shops I was trying to distract myself from some of the nice things that we just dumped at the tip to get it all gone.  After the second tip run, covered in dust, dirt and probably not smelling too sweet we stopped into the nearest Police station to make the 4pm deadline to withdraw our resignations and seek the 12 month career break that the Chief had offered us.  All in time to get on with the serious matter of... celebrating! 
Here we are leaving our lovely house for the last time. I think we look suitably tired!

The cash was in the bank, the house was sold and we set off to London village to meet my sister and her husband to celebrate the fact that we were finally there.  No jobs, no house and no reason not to go for the trip of a lifetime, everything had changed and all within the last 4 months.

House selling progress

In an ideal world, I had wanted to hand my notice in and clear my desk by the end of August 2016.  I was itching to do it, a couple of times I nearly did and had to be restrained by Simon and told not to be too hasty - for those of you who know Si this will come as a shock. I am always the sensible one, he's always the risk taker.  By the time the end of August was approaching and I'd done my foot in, I guess it did make sense to make another months' wage for doing minimal hours but I was getting increasingly frustrated with the buyers and their Solicitors. We were being told, no, promised that everything was being chased and would be through by a certain date.  That day would come and go and I would be ringing our Solicitors or the Estate agents to chase them up only to be told, again, the damn searches weren't back. We'd told all parties that we needed 30 clear days between exchange and completion to work our notice and we would not be pressured into handing our notice in early, pre-exchange.  Imagine quitting your job only to have the house sale fall through and not have any wage coming in to cover your mortgage. It wasn't worth the risk.  And so the situation continued and I became more arsey with kindly people asking me about when I was actually going to leave! And worried that our buyers were not actually serious about the house after all.  On reflection, just the normal house-selling dramas really.

We'd re-thought our plans, now with a desired 'flying to America' date of Sunday 9th October.  This was cutting it fine with my appointment at the hospital on the 7th but I was going to be very careful with my foot and not risk setting my recovery back at all to hamper our plans any further. We also had to get to Boston on or soon after that date due to plans that my friend, Tasha, and her partner, David, have for October. Tash is a good mate of mine who also attended the best University in the UK, Exeter, and also did the best course you can do at that University, Biological Sciences.  Though I may be biased?! She actually used the skills she acquired at said educational establishment and went and got a job doing science stuff with oncology medicines.  This later led to her moving to the States where she now lives with David and their children.  They kindly offered to put us up in their house in Massachusetts and assist us with the search for our mobile home when we arrive. However, Tash has to go to California for work on Sunday 16th and I feel I do not want us to be a burden on David who I do not know particularly well and who will have his hands full with two young daughters to look after. I hoped that 7 days would be about right for us to find our new 'home' and hit the road.

I know it wouldn't have been the end of the world but we had our hearts set on this date and the longer the house delays went on the more agitated I was becoming. I was stressed.  The sleeping pills were still a necessity for me to get a decent night's sleep but the situation was out of my control so there was no point in being so het up.  I know that now, but at the time it didn't help.

Simon and I both wrote out our resignation forms. I had even drafted the email to attach it to so that when the exchange happened I could quit within a few clicks of a mouse. Finally, last knockings on a Friday afternoon, the 2nd September it happened. We exchanged on the house. There was no going back and the resignations went it that very afternoon meaning that our last effective days with the job would be 30th September giving just over a week between finishing work and leaving the country. It was going to be hectic.