We closed up the Pied-a-Mer and started our big trip today. Our first destination? West Seattle! Yes, the first leg of our journey was just a ten-mile bus ride. This may be the best decision we've made so far. Our flight to Minneapolis doesn't leave until tomorrow morning, but we were anxious to get started and this made for a much more relaxed departure from the houseboat. We're spending our first night with friends in West Seattle, who treated us to a wonderful dinner, and we had a fun game of Scrabble.
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| All packed and ready to go |
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| Locking up the boat |
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| Our good friends at the dock gave us a warm send-off |
Before we left, several friends had us over for a meal, and my hiking group gave Les and me a wonderful going-away party. One of the Trekkers wrote this poem for the occasion:
Your bags are all packed.
Your belongings are stacked.
Round the world you will go
Speaking Esperanto.
Just be sure, very sure to come back.
Yesterday we took our car to a friend's place in Bellevue and left it in her garage. We disconnected the battery and put fuel stabilizer in the gas tank. When we went to lock the doors with our remote, we were surprised that it didn't work. Duh, we had disconnected the car's battery, right?
Today we prepared the Pied-a-Mer for leaving it unoccupied for the next four and a half months. We turned off the heat, disconnected the water, shut off the propane, turned off the fridge after giving away all our unused food, serviced the composting toilet, and removed batteries from the smoke alarms (so a possible low battery alarm wouldn't annoy the neighbors).
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The end of our first day, as seen from our friends' house in West Seattle:
the sun setting behind the Olympics in the background, Bremerton ferry in the foreground. |
We're looking forward to the days, weeks, and months to come.
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