Hattons Home Page

Once we've had our fill of the highways and byways of North America, we'll buy a sailboat and probably sell the RV. We plan to take some time in the Caribbean to get re-acquainted with living aboard (we've lived aboard before both before and after the kids arrived). After that, who knows?

Why? We've always been more of the 'why not' sort of people. What it comes down to is this...we don't want to wait until we're old to realize our dream of travel and adventure. Life is to be lived here and now. We know that we'll learn what we need to know, as we need to know it. We'll make the right connections at the right time and we'll be in the perfect place at the perfect time.

This site is about sharing the lessons learned while marching to a different drummer. A part of the sharing is about education, but it's also about the threads that bind like minded folk. We hope you will join us by checking back here every so often and sharing our latest exploits. If you've got a story (or a Web Site) of wanderlust, please '

Escrow closed and we needed to vacate the house by Saturday 1/8/05. It's a date that will live in our minds [and backs] for a long time. The last few days were spent feverishly packing for the storage locker, charity; and a dump run. We muscled the last few pieces of large furniture to a consignment dealer on Thursday. That was a real psychological zing! We had no large pieces of furniture left to deal with. We had sold the Jeep to a neighbor and they took possession on Friday. We had put a For Sale sign in the van a few days before and had several inquiries but no takers. Dad, bless his heart (and strong back) worked alongside us all day and evening Saturday in order for us to finish. Friday and Saturday we feverishly cleaned out every single nook and cranny in the house. Saturday was especially crazy because the buyers had scheduled contractors to work on scraping ceilings, etc. What a mess! But the workers tried to be as considerate as possible. By Saturday 6PM the van was full to the brim with dump material that was going to have to wait until Monday. We had rented a UHaul truck and it was full of the last items to go to the storage locker. That would wait until Sunday morning. Oh, we neglected to mention earlier that it poured rain during this entire process! But we were ready for the work involved and resolutely put our backs into accomplishing what needed to be done. We took the time during the very last walk through the house to say goodbye and to thank it for nourishing our family and financing the realization of our dreams. Huntington Beach has been a very good place to live.

It took several days for us to tie up loose ends, emptying the contents of the UHaul into the storage locker and returning the UHaul on Sunday, dump run on Monday, etc. Symbolically, we wanted to get on the road soon so we began our journey northward towards the Bay Area where we visited several friends and made several trips to Fry's, and others for hardware, software and miscellaneous doodads. Once a techie, always a techie...

We still had a couple major details that we needed to work out for the trip -- medical insurance and the kids' next online correspondence school. These were worked out in the next few weeks. Also during this period, Dad, again bless his heart, concluded the sale of the van to a persistent yet amusing gent. We were officially down to one vehicle and that was our home! We had simplified our few bills to be either direct debits from our bank account or a credit card charge to our single credit card. Managing the bank account and credit card was easily done over the web. Dad's address in Orange is our forwarding address so we made sure to notify everyone everywhere of this change. But we weren't finished yet -- we knew we would need to return to Orange County by May because we needed to get a smog check for the RV to renew its registration. Onward and upward!