Preparazione - Luglio (versione 2)

Just a short update to let everyone know that the train has not come off the tracks.  This last week has been a bunch of milestones, some major, some minor, including:

• We found renters for our Encinitas home (huge!).  We can't thank Greg P. enough for the work he did on the background check.  I want to add a plug: we went months with only a few responses from the websites we were advertising on.  Broadening the search, we put a free ad on Postlets (https://postlets.com/), run by Zillow, that sends postings to a number of other sites.  We got eight responses within a week, including our tenants-to-be.  The best part:  they want to keep Kazba!  Here is a picture of Kazba with our nephew Michael Jahns.
  
   
• We sold our 2006 Honda Civic and are now operating with one car.
• We got our international driving permits from AAA.
• We made reservations for the night of 1 Sept. at the Sheraton Marina so we only have to go across the street to catch our flight at 0-dark-30 on 2 Sept.
• This morning we moved most of the plants in pots to spots in the garden.
• This may sound silly, but it makes the timescale real:  I bought the small tub of Smart Balance instead of the large one, because we wouldn't finish the big one!

One bump in the road is that Carmen's sore left foot was finally diagnosed as a stress fracture two weeks ago.  She is wearing a post-op boot (but she wasn't operated on) and is determined to stay off of it so it is healed when we go.  She has a knee scooter to get around on.  I take her shopping and I can't keep up with her in the store aisles!

Finally, I found out that our land-line internet phone doesn't care where it is online.  That means we can talk to you as if you were calling us in Encinitas!  Hi-tech scores again.  Just remember the 9 hour time difference;-)

Preparazione - Luglio

It has been four weeks, so what do we have to say for ourselves?  We keep figuring things out, such as what to do if the Italian bureaucracy cannot process our visas in 85 days (answer: go anyway), how to get international driving permits (easy, 15 minutes at AAA), and arranging a rental car to get us from Rome to our new residence. Cid Barrett, our host, has been wonderful in giving us information, such as connecting us with our car and how to get mobile phones.  We still have to sell our cars and find a tenant for our Encinitas place, and we are actively working on that.  Greg Pytanowski has graciously stepped up to be our rental manager - newly retired, we think he needed something to do;-)



I promised photos from our road trip in May, so here we go:

We drove out to visit Carmen's sister Tanya and husband Rich in Colorado.  On the way out, we spent a day at Arches National Park in Utah. It is truly amazing, with different spectacular views at every turn, like this one.

We hit the park at a perfect time, with the wildflowers all in bloom.











I really think Carmen has the eye for photography, seeing both the fine compositions like these hanging flowers at left, or the broad view below.

You might be saying, "what does this have to do with Italy?", and the answer is: it is a warmup of Carmen's photography and Gary's blogging.  I have yet to figure out how to do photo montages as I can do with publishing software.  Look for that in future blogs!

Puffy clouds rolling across the sky made for interesting studies of light and shadow, as in this one.

It is called Arches National Park for a reason. This formation is the North and South Windows.

Carmen did a beautiful job capturing the sky in this one.

This is the Double Arch.

And you all have seen this one, in pictures or at least on the Utah license plate - the Delicate Arch. It is a 2.4 km hike out to it (yes friends, you are going to have to learn metric units to follow our travels;-)  Worth the walk?  No question.








Next we rolled into Tanya and Rich's ranch on Fruitland Mesa (elev. 2560 meters) outside of Crawford, CO.  Tanya led us on a hike around Needle Rock where Carmen spotted this weird orange fungus growing on a tree trunk and more flowers.  Our hike took us to the property line of Mad Dog Ranch, home of transplanted English rocker Joe Cocker.

To finish this post, it seems appropriate to use this sunset picture, taken from the porch of Tanya and Rich's place, and I might add, not photoshopped at all.