T Minus 7 days

San Jose, California

After 18-1/2 years, at Intuitive Surgical, I completed my last day three weeks ago. It was a little surreal to be leaving.  A bunch of the mechanical team took me out to lunch at Armadillo Willy's on Friday, and there was a very nice Engineering TGIF/send-off later in the afternoon.

I was given the, now-traditional, complete works of Leonardo da Vinci. It's an awesome book, signed by tons of people at work.  Weighing in at about 15 lbs, it won't be joining us on the trip.

Since then, time has been flying.  The first item up for business was a trip to North Dakota with my two brothers and two sisters. My dad past away in September at eighty-eight after a long slow decline.  As is often the case in these situations, it was a mixed blessing. For Dad, though, North Dakota was "God's country."  Per his request, we spread his ashes on his uncle's farm where he lived after his parents passed away.  To add some levity, we each smoked a cigarette and drank a Keystone light in his honor.

Since then I've been completely preoccupied with trip preparations: getting the house in order to rent, buying last minutes supplies, getting packs and racks set up on the bikes, and a very small amount of actual "trip planning."  There have also been a number of send-off parties, which has been very much appreciated.  Our ex-neighbor, Mike (now retired and living in Santa Cruz) was complaining the other day that he had already attended three! Life's tough all around.

The vast majority of my time has been spent getting the house ready to rent.  It's a little ironic how much time I've been spending given that we actually won't be living here for 15 months.  I guess I'm much more willing to live with disrepairs than to impose them on others.  The short list consisted of: fixing the front sprinklers, repairing the broken gate latch, patching and painting holes in various walls, replacing the broken bathroom mirror and rusting medicine cabinet, repainting the bathroom and part of the front of the house, replacing the attic ducts for the bathroom fans, reattaching backpack hooks on the walls, re-keying the back doors, replacing the broken blinds in Dex's room, and ordering new carpet for the bedrooms. Whew. I thought I was all done when on Thursday night Meg mentioned some oddly shaped holes in Kylie's windowsill.  Yanking off the windowsill, the bad news was clear -- termites.

Yesterday was spent, trying to eliminate the source -- removing the bushes (and more importantly, the dirt) outside the kids' rooms that was up against the wood siding.  

We are fortunate to be renting the house out to friends of our neighbors.  The Sandoz's are moving to the Bay Area from France, and the win-win is that they are leaving most of their stuff behind.  With a six-year-old boy and eight-year-old girl, they can pretty much just take our place. Beds, couches, piano, outdoor furniture, trampoline, kids bikes etc. can stay. Even dishes, pots, and pans, yard tools, kids books, art supplies etc stay put. Nevertheless, I consider this an opportunity not to be squandered to go through every drawer, closet and shelf in the house, purge, and reorganize.  We're making good progress, but even in our modest 1200 sq. ft. house, it's amazing how much crap you collect after 14 years.

You would think that our primary focus would be training for the upcoming ride through Europe and planning the route and other details. You'd be mistaken, however, as we never seem to have much time for those minor details.  On Wednesday, however, to ensure that we had a least one shake-down run, we coaxed all the bags and gear onto the two tandems, picked Dex and Kylie up from school, and rode the grueling seven miles to my work. We all enjoyed a fine lunch at the lunch truck and caught up with the gang.  The night was spent in the backyard, which was pretty uneventful... except for the sprinklers going off at 2 a.m.