July 5th marks the one year anniversary of our trip, and we felt it was time for a short update.
We have not been entirely lazy during this year, and though we didn’t travel as many miles we have had several adventures and are plotting new trips in the future. First a recount:
We settled in San Francisco after finding an apartment in the SoMa (South of Market) neighborhood. Monica was restless and found a temporary jobs right away and fed our household for a number of months. She found a permanent position at a private high school in November working in fund-raising. In the meantime, I was stubborn in my desire to work with smart people doing interesting work and while I was interviewing on an ongoing basis, was not finding anything for months on end. I occupied my time by baking various types of breads and bagels (it takes a lot of time to watch the dough rise)
and by biking around the city exploring different neighborhoods. Eventually I was hired by a small wealth management firm and am enjoying the work and the people since February.
In fact, both of us got into biking (road biking that is) and have taken some picturesque trips in the environs. We rode around the hills in the East Bay that overlook the whole of the San Francisco Bay; have ridden in the Marin Headlands, all around the city conquering a number of steep inclines that are an inherent part of biking around San Francisco. Lastly, over Memorial Day in late May, we took a two day bike ride from San Francisco to Santa Cruz. The photos of that trip can be found here: bike trip to Santa Cruz. En route we Couchsurfed in Moss Beach with an extremely hospitable woman and then in Santa Cruz, with friendly young Texans. We’re planning on taking multi-day bike rides among the giant redwoods in the northern part of California in the future.
Additionally, we’ve been able to enjoy a few great days of snowboarding in the Lake Tahoe region. Monica and I recently purchased new snowboards – getting ready for the next season.
We’ve also been regular (about once a month) hosts to Couchsurfers and have enjoyed the experience a lot. For some odd reason, we’ve been quite popular with French and German travelers. So much so, that one request for a couch from a French couchsurfer mentioned that apparently our “house was not to be missed on a visit to San Francisco.” We have not seen any tour buses on our little dingy street yet, but we’re expecting them any time now. We’ve met some great travelers who have shared their stories and enjoyed some of ours.
Here’s a photo of us on our street in a Ford Mustang rented by one of the couples that was couchsurfing at our place in January:
SiMonica in a Ford Mustang on our street in San Francisco
Last but not least, Monica has started taking classes in landscape architecture and is enjoying it immensely.
We’ve happily rediscovered cooking at home and have been enjoying the bounty of the different types of zesty produce that is grown in California. We now purchase a $25 box of vegetables every other week that is delivered to a different location in the city from a farm about 100 miles south of San Francisco. We don’t know what will arrive in the box and it tends to surprise us every time. Additionally, we recently split a purchase of a quarter of a cow with 3 other couples (so each couple got roughly 20 pounds of different cuts of beef). We were going to do the cruel thing and visit the cow while it was still alive, but then by the time we got around to it, we were informed that it has already been slaughtered and butchered. Now we’re enjoying it slowly.
Our travels this year have mostly taken us around northern California, though we’ve had a chance to visit Boston and New York in the winter and spring, respectively. Simon also had a chance to visit Memphis and enjoyed a visit to Graceland, Elvis Presley’s home, and participated in the International Barbecue Championship (delicious).
This fall we’re going to the Republic of Georgia for a few weeks to visit Monica’s brother and sister-in-law who is going to be conducting research there. We’re both very excited to go to the Caucasus, though Monica has already been.
We still think about our trip often and are see the photos from our adventures on a regular basis as a screensaver on our computer. We’ve had a chance to share our experiences with the new friends that we’ve made in San Francisco and have hopefully inspired others to follow suit in taking some time off from their busy schedules to explore other parts of the world.
This is not the end of this blog and we’ll continue to document our adventures on a more regular basis.
P.S. Check out the separate page (the link is on the sidebar or at the top) detailing some statistics from our trip around the world.
