Van Plan

Ah, my first week of retirement. Some of the insecurities I previously had about squandering my time are creeping back in, but I've been exceptionally busy which helps keep those self-doubts at bay. For months I had been gathering a list of to-dos and now that I am finally allowing myself to do them I still don't have the time! A few of my small projects have been:

• Cheesemaking- I made my first batches of ricotta and mozzarella this week. I also want to try a lemon spreadable cheese, queso blanco, and yogurt, but right now I'm struggling to find uses for the off-putting yellow whey that the production process releases. I'm not willing to drink it plain, as some websites recommend, but I have used it to cook pasta in and it also works as a water replacement in most baking recipes. Which leads me to:
• Baking- This is not a new hobby for me, but having mid-week banana muffins and having a successful first go at homemade bagels is. Although I don't have any qualms about modifying recipes willie-nilly (typically with positive results) it will still be a while until I attempt to rival the Little Twins on their respective specialities (cinnamon roles and sourdough). 
• Website- Since I now am a freelancer, I figured I aught to have my own website as an additional self-marketing tool. Cameron bought me the domain name aishalittle.com and for the past week I have been learning very simple HTML commands (I'm not even sure if I've used the vocabulary in that sentence correctly). I've also signed up for an online "Introduction to Computer Science" course but I haven't quite talked myself into actually starting on the material. 
• Stretching- One of my New Year's resolutions is to stretch at least three times a week and so far I'm keeping that up. I'm just using YouTube videos as my guide, but at least three instructors I've followed talk about how emotion is held in the hips. I'm happy to report that so far, stretching my hips has not led to an emotional breakdown.
• Reading- Another New Year's resolution is to read 50 books in 2021. I finished my first book (Middlesex) last Thursday and I'm about halfway through book 2 (Dryer's English). I am a slow reader, though, and getting through 500+ pages in a week means that I'm dedicating at least half of my day to reading. Please let me know if you have any recommendations for short books that I can add to my reading list. 

That's a pretty hefty list of things to fill the day with, and that doesn't include all of my other standard routines (cooking dinner, grocery shopping, daily Polish practice, weekly Toastmasters meetings). It also does not include my big project that I have been champing at the bit to get started on–Van Life preparation. 

I suppose this is the time to formally share our plans to move back to the US. Everything is still loose, but working through the details is my new job for the next eight months.

The plan is to fly back in August, 2021. Most likely we will start in New Mexico to spend a few weeks with my parents, drive up to Colorado for my sister's wedding, and then continue to Mountain Green, Utah where we will hunker down for 3-6 months. During that time we will buy a van, build it out to be fully livable, and (of course) go skiing.

Once we've built our custom home-on-wheels, we're hitting the road! Since we don't have a particular affinity to any given city (yes, I love Bellingham but it's changing in ways that I'm not fully in agreement with) we want to take the time to check out our options before committing to a forever home. Ideally, we will spend 1-2 weeks at each candidate city so that we can really get a feel for the culture and make sure that we are fairly assessing how that town ranks across all of our assessment criteria.

What those criteria are, and which towns make the list, are the foundations of what I'm trying to figure out now. Whittling down every city in English-speaking North American to a reasonable amount that we could realistically visit in one year is surprisingly tough. I've been taking "what city should you live in" personality quizzes and combing through the last decade of "top places to live" articles that are put out by CNN and Forbes. Plus, we want to visit people along the way and explore the US and Canada National Parks. 

People think that Van Life is an easy-breezy not-a-care-in-the-world sort of lifestyle. Not for us! It will take me at least one month to come up with a decent "want to see" list, and then planning the route to connect all of those spots will be another week or so. But the planning doesn't end there. I also want to pre-plan potential van parking spots and research the ideal venues for us to work from (Cameron will be working remotely, and I also will probably try to work, at least part time). We'll also need a way to fairly compare one town against the others so I'm brainstorming various ranking techniques. 

We're planning on customizing our van, which means that preemptively thinking about the layout, accessories, and budget all get added to my Van Life prep, too. I have to approach this part of the process very carefully, because if I don't the thought of downsizing from a huge three-bedroom flat to a van that's smaller than our bathroom gives me agita (and will likely lead me to a meltdown during my next hip stretch). Speaking of bathrooms, we probably won't have one. Yes, I know that living without a toilet or shower for a year sounds crazy, but plenty of nomad living websites reassure me that it's a much easier sacrifice to make than you might think. 

Like most things in my life, the hesitations I have are outweighed by the bragging rights. I am chuffed that we're jumping straight from one adventure (Poland) to the next, and I'm especially smitten with the idea of sharing our adventure with a van bun. (That is, until I realize that I would get immensely jealous that the rabbit's litter box would be more of a toilet than Cameron and I would have for ourselves.) I keep telling myself that despite my materialistic tendencies, Van Life will at least be more comfortable than living out of a backpack in the Washington wilderness, which I've done plenty of times.

Despite my continued self-reassurance, it's quite likely that we will never actually make it on the road. I might come to my senses during the van build-out process and realize what an absolutely absurd idea this is. More likely, we'll start off on our grand adventure, realize one month in that it's miserable and that going another 11 months is unnecessarily daunting, and decide to turn around and call it quits. Even more likely, we'll go through with the whole crazy scheme only to realize that the best spot for us is someplace that's already well-known to us (*cough cough, Bellingham, cough cough*). We shall see. 

On another note, we woke up to a light layer of snow on Saturday morning. 

Unfortunately, even with a little snow it's been quite smoggy. There have been a few days where the city enacts free public transportation as a reaction to bad air quality. The smog does make for pretty sunsets, though. 

My first attempt at bagel making was a success. I made two plain, two with nutritional yeast, two salted, and two sesame seed bagels. 

Ricotta and mozzarella balls. The ricotta was really really easy; it only took about 30 minutes and didn't call for any weird ingredients. The mozzarella, on the other hand, was a little tricky and the rennet in it has a weird lingering smell. 

Even though I'm only now starting to get serious about Van Life planning, the idea has been there for a while now. This photo is from our trip to Prague in July and I had took a photo of these vans as potential styles we would consider purchasing.