Los Angeles - home sweet home. If you can get beyond the traffic and crowds it really is a fantastic place - how many places can you surf and snowboard in the same weekend? Beautiful weather, the ocean in your backyard and great state parks in your front yard. If you spend a little time figuring it out you can live in this city and almost forget its a city - night mountain bike rides and hikes, morning surf rides, beach walks and farmer's markets almost every day. Of course what really makes your "home" is people and we are blessed beyond belief with great friends, family and neighbors - many of which opened their homes to us during our stay in LA for which we are unbelievably thankful.
Our pit stop to LA was to undertake that dreaded deed of every American - taxes. So why is it we call the government Uncle Sam? Since when do you pay your Uncle 30 to 50 percent of your income? Oh, and by the way, please do it electronically because I don't want to deal with you handwritten correspondence. Well, our goal of getting back on the road in 3 weeks was quickly squashed. Taxes became a nightmare as we were missing several documents and things that were now buried deep somewhere in some box either in our garage, or maybe the shed, or ...
And then came the van issues - somehow a simply warranty service to fix a transmission leak turned into a week event. Not only is the campervan our means of transportation it is also our temporary home while in LA since we rented our house while we are traveling. So this little repair was quite inconvenient. And it gets better, 2 hours after we pick the van up it dies on the freeway headed to Santa Barbara. Luckily Ford paid for the towtruck to push us into a spot to sleep and then tow us the next day to yet another dealer. Four more days later we are finally back on the road.
Ok enough whining. Reality is that although it was a pain, we got to spend time hanging out with friends and family and that was fantastic. We also were able to go waterskiing at the Colorado River, rock climbing at New Jack, and surfing at San O. John got a few Wednesday Night Mountain Bike rides in and I even got back on my bike a few times. We spent some significant time with John's niece and nephew where John got lots of practice doing backflips on the trampoline and John was able to play pilot in a small plane when we flew up to San Luis Obispo with my cuz and her hubby. Over 6 weeks flew by before we were scheduled to head south - COSTA RICA here we come. We have a one way ticket to surfer's paradise. We will have to figure out the rest when we get there.
About Us
- Lisa Priestley
- Having spent the last 20+ years in "Corporate America" it was time for a break - and more than a 3 week vacation. It did not take much convincing to get John on board with the plan. Little did we know the U.S. economy would crater just as we had decided to embark on a year long travel adventure. But we had set the plan in motion and were determined to continue. As it turns out it would be a good time to be traveling abroad in countries where living on less than $50 a day (for 2) was fairly easy. First SouthEast Asia and then Central and South America - let the journey unfold.