buckle-up

  Prospects are looking good that this will be the last time we celebrate the annual foodfest that comes with the back-to-back holidays that start with Thanksgiving and continue on through Christmas and the New Year. Considered a marathon by many, punctuated by a few short-lived sprints, it’s a period that includes time set aside for family, friends, business colleagues and yes, ourselves. Finding time to hit the pause button and catch up over shared experiences, Margo and I found respite in the few moments we were able to set aside for ourselves. It may be the first and the last season we are spending in our rental cottage while our new home is being constructed and amongst our own self-inflicted craziness watching a house grow, it was such a treat to have our family drop by for a week.  Daughter Anna, her husband Erich, and the grandkids Ella, Evan and Aiden, all took time away from the chilly weather of Colorado to spend a week with Mom and me. The weather was distinctl...

  Remind me again why we are taking up residence in Florida? In particular, in the Florida Panhandle alongside the Emerald Coast? Oh … that’s right; fall and winter are mild in comparison to what we experienced in Colorado. Having watched the news and seeing monstrous snowstorms hitting the Rockies and the Sierra Divide, not to mention the more recent bomb cyclone that caused even greater havoc in Washington State, we have become appreciative of the milder conditions fall delivers in this part of North America. In my previous post I wrote of how we were warming to our new location. As yet we have not put our toes in the water, even as we are now the proud owners of our very first pairs of Crocs. That will likely change shortly but for now, even with the mild temperatures we are experiencing, this week we have seen daytime temperatures dive down to the mid 50sF. Ouch … finding the right attire for such chilly conditions saw us pulling out clothing we had tucked away in our closet....

Formula 1 gained an enormous boost to its popularity with the Netflix, made-for-television series: Drive to Survive. It gave insight into what makes an F1 team tick even as it shone a spotlight on some of the drivers. Who could argue that before this program, few would know who the Honey Badger was or how popular celebrating a win with a shoey is. No driver benefited more from all the attention than Australia’s own Daniel Ricciardo. For much of the year, Margo and I couldn’t say we spent time behind the wheel of our car with anywhere near the same level of intensity as an F1 driver or that we tried drinking champagne from our sneakers but then again, there were times when we might have been tempted to do so. Many days driving beyond 600 miles only to see the next couple of days requiring us to drive an additional 500 miles, both days. We can now attest to the fact that the US is a big country. Now that I have made that statement it should come as no surprise to read that we have not ...

  The decision has been made. Our home beginning mid 2025 will be Florida and we will be residing in Latitude Margaritaville Water Sound (LMWS). The decision made included settling on a block of land in the community and paying down for the building of a new construction home. Hopefully, it will be completed mid 2025, so that for now, our plans for the coming twelve months are firmly set. Why LMWS? Why Florida? If you have been following the posts for this year, particularly the most recent posts going back to May, you might recall our decision to move to sea level. Our choice of Florida, as far as it is from Colorado, was influenced by the beach-focused lifestyle and the selection of a location in the Florida panhandle, smack in the middle of Florida’s most hurricane prone coastline, is something we took into consideration but came to the conclusion that the upside greatly offset any negativity or reservation we may have had about moving this far east (and south) in the US....