Homeless

As of this morning, I officially became homeless. The boat has a new owner, a young woman who also happens to work at the univeristy and who is planning to move on board at the end of the month. Hopefully they will get along well. It was a bit strange to hand the boat over and see her go, since she has been my home for the past several years.

I also wrapped up the few remaining things at work, such as making sure all my contact info was updated, dealing with my campus mail, talking to the security folks and having my debrief, cleaning out my email account (which was especially annoying, since I'd already done it once, but had it undone by a disk failure on the server), and the innumerable other little house keeping tasks that I hadn't gotten around to.

So, the current plan is to leave town Wednesday. I'm at my parents' place for the night, but will return to Seattle tomorrow on the bus with the bike and all the gear I'll be taking with me. I'm planning to attend one last bike ride with a slightly crazy group I've been riding with all summer, to see just how much my cycling muscles have atrophied. I haven't really been on the bike at all since Sep. 1. After the ride (well, after I bail, as the "rides" often continue on into the wee hours of the morning), I'll see some other friends, spend the night in Seattle, and head off on Wednesday morning.

In a way, I guess my trip really starts tomorrow -- although I'll be in Seattle, I'll have started living out of my backpack. Tomorrow will be another busy morning as I take care of a bunch of little items that I need to attend to, but all the big stuff is taken care of now. And my bags are packed and the bike is waiting, ready to roll.