It almost seems like yesterday that I was sitting here in the office writing about what a shit-show 2020 was and yet here I am again talking about the year that was 2021. Like last year, it was just the two of us for New Year's Eve, home alone thanks to COVID. I made salmon cakes from some of the silver salmon we caught in Alaska. We paired that with awesome Champagne and were asleep well before were were awakened at midnight by the locals and their fireworks.
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| New Year's Dinner: Salmon Cakes |
The tail end of 2021 has been a blur for Ann and me, witnessed by the dearth of blog posts on my part, and has gone a wholly unpredictable direction for us. If you had told me a year ago that we would be where we are today, I would have thought you crazy. And yet here we are.
From the end of October, a rough timeline will suffice to show where we are and how we got here.
October 28: On a lark, after our dog Charlie died, we visited Bend, Oregon with our dog Grace, to see some friends who had relocated there and just to get out of McMinnville. We loved our briefest of brief visit to Bend and I summarized the trip as "we may have found our tribe."
November 9: I found a real estate agent in Bend; I wasn't joking about finding our tribe. All Ann and I have been able to talk about is how Bend seems to align with where we want to live, now that I no longer need to be in close proximity to the Oregon wine industry for employment. I checked in with our financial manager to determine what kind of monthly income we can take from our portfolio, because that will drive what price house we can buy. Bend is one of the most desirable places to live on the West Coast and real estate is commensurately expensive.
November 19-21: We decided, just before Thanksgiving and the major snows coming to the Cascades, to go back to Bend, this time for two nights, with two goals. We wanted to scout the town for neighborhoods in which to live and also to put some due diligence behind our gut feel that Bend might be right for us. We spent half a day touring all four quadrants of the city, before meeting with a real estate agent the first evening. The following morning, having narrowed in on an area to focus our search, we drove through every subdivision in our target area to get a feel for houses in the SW part of town. Mentally, I set of goal of moving during the spring to early summer.
November 23-25: Hurrying back from Bend to get ready for Thanksgiving, I started in on the three-day prep for our Thanksgiving lasagne, which was possibly even better than the one I made last year. Taking a break from prepping, I started looking into financing for our move while Ann started looking at properties for sale in Bend.
November 27: Holy crap! Ann found her house; it has just come back on the market after being taken off, relisted at a lower price. She was certain about the house from the get-to; I can't make up my mind like that sight unseen, but it seemed to tick 8 and a half boxes out of 10 for me without looking at it in person. We started making inquiries, but it seemed premature to me. We haven't seen the house and we will need to sell our house to use the equity as a downpayment on the Bend house, a minor detail, much sarcasm intended. Moreover, our agent has gone to Costa Rica for the next three weeks. Ann is deterred by no obstacle.
December 2-5: My girls flew into PDX from Philly at 10:30pm on December 2 and we went to fetch them. It was December 3 by the time we got home. In the midst of having a great time with the two of them, we went back and forth with our Bend real estate agent and loan guy, gazillions of texts, phone calls, and emails. We also met with a local real estate agent to talk about putting our house on the market. We set a target date to list our house just before Christmas and talk about what we need to do to stage the house for sale. I started by attacking the outside, pressure washing the unsightly algae and moss off all our patios and walks, the inevitable result of our rainy season here in the Willamette Valley. I would have much rather spent the time with my girls, whom I had not seen since pre-COVID 2018.
December 5: The girls must return home on an early morning flight from PDX. Knowing that Ann would be in New York for eight days starting on the 6th, we decided that it was now or never. After making the 90-minute drive to PDX, we drove 3.5 hours to Bend, had lunch and a beer, and walked through the house. On the long drive back home, Ann waxed poetic about the house. Given that we still needed to sell our house, I did not see how we could find ourselves in a position to make an offer before the Bend house came off the market.
December 6: I headed back to PDX to drop Ann at a hotel; her flight was at oh-dark-thirty the following morning and I am not one to spend two or three hours in rush hour traffic trying to get there. She had long planned to visit her great aunt on Long Island and to help celebrate her 94th birthday. The timing of her trip proved to be suboptimal, much sarcasm implied.
December 6-9: Having located a house in Bend that we wanted to purchase, we found that our timeline collapsed on itself. No longer would our house get listed just before Christmas, but ASAP. For four straight days, I worked 16 hours a day to clean and stage the house, as well as to pack a lot of the smaller items that I removed during staging. The house, day by day, started to look fabulous, which it needed to be by December 8 when the photographer showed up. Ann admonished me to not work so hard during our phone conversations. I ended up promising her that the house would be sold before she returned from New York and restating that time was of the essence. Somebody at the real estate office jumped the gun and put a for sale sign in our yard on the 8th, causing much consternation among our neighbors before we could break the news to them.
December 9: In late afternoon, the photographer delivered some amazing photos and the house was listed at about dinner time. I continued to scrub and pack. I hoped that I could pack and clean more on the 10th as well and the weather seemed to cooperate. We were in the midst of a Pineapple Express coming off the Pacific, vast torrents of rain slashing almost horizontally in the 30+ mph winds. During the day, the showings for the 11th started to book.
December 11-12: The first visitor in the door indicated that she would be making an offer, and sure enough, very late in the day, the above-asking-price offer came in. That ultimately scared away all the showings for the 12th and we accepted the contract about noon on the 12th. Meanwhile, with Ann in New York, our Bend agent in Costa Rica, and the sellers of the Bend house in Mississippi and Louisiana respectively, we made an offer on the 11th and accepted the sellers' counter on the 12th. What did we do before the internet and DocuSign? That was a hell of a weekend, buying and selling a house on the same day! I was exhausted.
December 13: I made yet another trip to PDX, this time to fetch Ann. I didn't even say "I told you so" about the house selling while she was away.
December 18-19: Donald and Terry came down from Seattle and we went wine tasting with them out on Ribbon Ridge at Trisaetum, followed by dinner at Recipe in Newberg where we had a phenomenal 2014 McKinlay Pinot. On the 19th, they came over for a quasi-Christmas dinner for which Ann made a delicious sun-dried tomato and chicken pasta. Much wine was drunk in an effort to lighten up the cellar a bit for moving! We planned to tell the guys that we were moving on the 18th at dinner, but Donald saw our house listed on MLS on the 9th. He has his fingers on the pulse of McMinnville real estate because he and Terry are looking into where they want to retire to. Somewhere near us has always seemed to be their plan and here we are throwing a wrench into that plan.
December 20: After a week of packing at a steady rate and selling off excess furniture (our house is set to close on January 13), we headed back to the airport to get Carter, who is coming in until the 26th to visit during his break from the Army. It did not feel very Christmasy in that we decided not to unpack all the Christmas decorations just to pack them right away. While Christmas was very much anticlimactic, it was so great to have Carter here for it.
December 28: Our house in McMinnville is set to close on January 13 and the house in Bend is to close on January 21. The big catch for us is that in this hyper-competitive real estate market, we had to offer the seller in Bend a rent-back option through the end of February. Because he is on holiday until sometime in early January back east, he cannot even start packing and thinking about moving until then. As the days tick by with no definitive word on a move-out date from him, it seems clear that there is a high likelihood that he will be in the house into February and we are staring temporary housing and storing our belongings right in the face. Fortunately, we were able to arrive at a deal with our buyer in which we will rent back from her until the end of February, although it meant that we will convey our beloved island work table to her as part of the deal. We're sad about that, but finally the breakneck pace of packing slowed and we were able to plan for and enjoy our final New Year's Eve in our house, even though it means navigating stacks of boxes of our goods, trying to find a place to sit.
So, on New Year's Day 2022, we find ourselves in a position we could not have imagined even 90 days ago. In the span of just seven weeks, we have uprooted our lives in McMinnville to relocate to Bend. We have done some crazy things in our lives, but this may top them all.
We have loved our time in McMinnville, but we are really looking forward excitedly to the new adventure in Bend. Truly, we have some awesome neighbors whom we are sad to leave behind and without a doubt, we are going to miss our current house with its outstanding gardens and outdoor living spaces. Proximity to wineries, sure, we are going to miss from time to time, but truth be told, we have evolved more into brewery people and Bend is built largely around breweries.
For us and our lifestyle, Bend offers us the ability to live within an easy drive (or walk or bike or snowshoe) of amazing outdoor activities. McMinnville is a very long way from any really decent hiking and backpacking. Dogs are a huge part of our lives and Bend is the single most dog friendly place we've ever been.
We are four-season people as well and frankly, we miss winter and snow. In McMinnville, we have two seasons, wet and construction. Not that the rain really bothers us, but being in an area that abounds in snow sport activities is key.
And while McMinnville is a small urban area in the midst of farm country, it doesn't offer much in the way of dining or shopping opportunities. Living in an area where it takes a 45-minute drive to visit Costco or buy a bottle of fish sauce, we so look forward to living in a town that has a Costco, Chef Store, World Market, and Trader Joe's. And though transplants and visitors from San Francisco, Portland, and Seattle find the restaurant offerings in Bend a little scanty, the selection looks amazing to the two of us relocating from farm country.
We're very excited by the prospect of what 2022 will bring. This may be my last post for a very good while, until we get the move behind us. Happy New Year!
