It was hard to leave Portland. We were able to connect with so many of our Portland friends of the last few weeks as we counted down the days to our December 11 departure. Nike threw me an awesome retirement party on Thursday November 30, and folks from all of my roles and teams over my 15 years at Nike came out. Thank you! Moovel threw Leena a goodbye party on Friday December 1 at a bar near the office and the whole gang turned out. We had our “Bon Voyage” party at Cardinal Club on Tuesday December 5 and so many of our friends stopped by (primarily from non-work circles). Everyone seemed to love our favorite neighborhood spot – go say hi to Tiare and Tim again sometime soon! Finally, the golf crew came out and played a final game with me on Saturday December 9. That was lots of fun, especially when Andiko and I both hit the flagstick on our approach shots on the last hole (#17 at Ghost Creek because of a shotgun start after a frost delay). Too bad we both missed our birdie putts.
A special thanks to Erik and Catherine, our landlords for the last seven weeks after we sold the house and moved into their ADU. We were their first renters, and it was mutually beneficial for us to help furnish the space with lots of our stuff (that we therefore didn’t have to figure out how to get rid of). Erik’s even going to be sporting plenty of “new-to-him” threads since he’s my clothing size.
I even sold my car the day before we left. I’d posted it on Nike classifieds, nextdoor.com, and our realtor Annette had posted it to her network of real estate professionals and their clients. No nibbles for a month, though I thought I’d priced it fairly. I’d managed to line up a friend to take care of the car and potentially sell it (thanks Eric!). I get an email through nextdoor.com on Saturday night with someone “very interested” in the car. He came by Sunday, test drove it, reviewed the maintenance records, and made an offer. We negotiated a bit and he came back with a cashier’s check a couple of hours later and drove my TSX away. The key to the deal? I had all the maintenance records (all through the dealership), proof of clean title, and repair records from two minor accidents. He said he’d been looking for a while for a car like mine but that NOBODY else could provide all the documentation. Sometimes being a nerd is good.
We got on a plane Monday a bit after 3p at PDX and arrived in Sydney a bit after 9a Wednesday (via Fresno and LAX). Where did Tuesday go?
We took the train to our rental’s neighborhood and killed a couple of hours with food and drink before checking in at 2p. We even found a spot we’d liked on our visit to Sydney in 2008.
It feels like the start of one of our many other travel vacations. I suppose it will take a bit for it to sink in that we’re not going back for quite a while this time!