Now Arizona would b e where we came from....rather than home.

It was Monday, April 9^th and our plane to Puerto Rico left on Wednesday.  All we had left to do on Tuesday was sell the truck, pack everything we intended to keep, clean the condo, have all the left over stuff picked up, cancel our mail, cable and cell phones, donate the scanner (just finished scanning the last of the photos, whew!) and move to a hotel for an evening. 

We had decided to stay at the Twin Palms Hotel in Tempe for our final night in town (thanks so much Pat!).  That way we did not have to worry about getting to the airport in the early morning, the shuttle would take us.  We are not big on extended good-byes so it would be easier than having friends or family take us to the airport, we could enjoy their company on Tuesday night in the hotel bar and avoid any early morning drama at the airport.

Tuesday was a little less crazy than we thought it would be, we concluded a deal with a friend to sell the truck after listing it for a couple of weeks, unsuccessfully on Craigslist.  Resurrection Ministries came first thing in the morning so we were able to get everything out of the condo that wasn’t going with us.  We had been packing our bags for a week so there were just a few things left to pack.  We successfully checked the weight of the bags on the bathroom scale to be sure we would be okay at the airport, cleaned the condo and headed out to run the last few errands before checking into the hotel.

Marilyn went into the post office in person while I fielded a client call and waited in the parking lot.  Our purpose was to cancel our mail because any correspondence we needed to receive had been either changed to our permanent address or was being received electronically, successfully.  After about twenty minutes, Marilyn came out obviously suppressing laughter and when I terminated my call and asked why she told me what had happened.  Apparently, postal clerks are unprepared for a person who wishes to cancel their mail, permanently, with no forwarding address.  The clerk had to call a supervisor in order to determine if this could be done, which, after several minutes of confusion turned out to be possible.  There was no way we could explain why and the incident still provides a good laugh for us.

We made a quick stop at the Salon to have my hair cut very short, by our friend who has been cutting it for years, and were given a great going away gift, an electric hair clipper to take with us (this requires an understanding that Marilyn would be cutting my  hair in the future, very scary).  A quick stop at the Cox store to drop off the cable box and a run next door to the Verizon store to cancel our cell phone contracts and we were all wrapped up. 

As the beautiful Arizona sun began to set our family and a few close friends came by the hotel.  We commandeered half the bar and spent our time just chatting and enjoying each other, knowing that it would be an extended time before we would be back here for any length of time.  Some tears were shed as we said good-bye, especially to our girls, who we knew we would miss tremendously, but the anticipation of the journey to come was a great offset for them.

Ok, we have to admit, there was something we just couldn’t part with; our golf clubs, we left them with some very good friends (thanks Guy and Dee Dee) whom we did make time to have dinner with a couple of nights before we left.  We did however, get rid of substantially everything else and the feeling of liberation was incredible; and still is.

We do not have to pay property taxes, car insurance, homeowners insurance, or rent a place for our things.  We don’t have to register vehicles and our income taxes are very simple.  We only have to pay utilities in the small apartments or houses that we rent and make arrangements for health insurance wherever we stay.  We really don’t worry about theft because we don’t have anything worth more than a few hundred dollars.

80% of the stress in our lives had been eliminated and the rest was rapidly changing.

It was still pitch black outside when we got up in the morning to head out to the airport, the shuttle got us there in plenty of time and surprise, surprise the flight was leaving on time.  As we taxied down the runway the Arizona sun was just touching the valley.  We could not have asked for a more beautiful departure.