catching up to the 21st century, part 1: Los Angeles, to northern CA

1999: In August, my wife and I moved to a nice condo in Redondo Beach, CA.

2000: My wife's repetitive strain injury reached a breaking point. She was concerned about the future of a “career” if she could not type. She changed jobs in August to work for a former colleague who understood her need to take it easy on the arms. I was very concerned for her health.

Late 2000/early 2001: The early rumblings of a change in lifestyle. As we were cleaning our 2000 sq-ft condo one day, we realized it had too much space and we had too much “stuff”.

2000: My father died, 2001: 9/11. Two unrelated events that changed my views towards life forever.

April 2002: My wife and I decided to go on a 10-day road trip up the California coast. I was starting to think about other places in CA I may want to eventually live/settle/”retire” to. I read a book on coastal CA cities and fell in love on paper with Santa Barbara and Santa Cruz (foreshadowing). These cities became the bookends of the trip. I mapped out farmer’s markets, parks, libraries, whole foods stores and vegetarian restaurants. The idea was to get a quick feel for the cities and real estate markets during the visit and see if the places were a fit for our lifestyle. The plan was to go up as far North as Santa Cruz and stop in Santa Barbara on the return home. We saw good friends along the way at Hearst Castle. These friends like visiting Big Sur every summer - a good reason to settle in Santa Cruz since Big Sur is only about 1 hr away.

I read “Cannery Row” to get a feel for the wharf in Monterey and watched “Citizen Kane” to get a feel for Hearst castle.

Stops along the way:

Buellton/Solvang (of “Sideways” fame)
Santa Maria
Arroyo Grande
Pismo Beach
San Louis Obispo
Atascadero, Paso Robles (wine country)
Morro Bay
Cambria
San Simeon (Hearst Castle)
Pfeiffer Big Sur state park
Carmel
Monterey Bay Aquarium
Seaside
Watsonville (artichokes)
Aptos
Capitola
Santa Cruz
Felton
Ben Lomond,
Boulder Creek
Scotts Valley

We stayed at Henry Cowell Redwoods State Park near Felton in the Santa Cruz mountains. I hiked among redwoods for the first time. I enjoyed the beauty of the area and the higher green space and more limited development compared to Los Angeles. I ate a delicious veggie meal at Dharma’s, yum!

The return drive was on Easter weekend, so all of the places to stay in Santa Barbara were booked. We had to check out Santa Barbara one weekend later. We looked at apartments within the rent budget limit at the time, but no places were appealing. I was left with a longing for Santa Cruz and places to the north.

May, 2002: My wife's company decided to close their Los Angeles office and offered to move us to the Bay area. Coincidence?...I think not.

June, 2002: We began to pack up the house. We had a multi-day yard sale to unload much of our excess stuff. We met many interesting people, and even sold some items which were headed for the trash can. We had tearful goodbyes with longtime friends, then we drove north to our future.

July, 2002: We moved to a nice rental home near downtown Palo Alto, CA. The city has an awesome library system. We started reading “simplicity” books. We read “Your Money or your Life”. I didn't find work immediately, so I volunteered at Hidden Villa for the Community Sponsored Agriculture (CSA). It was a really powerful experience, with amazingly cool people. I started seriously thinking about early “retirement”. My wife was not happy with her work environment. Like most companies during the dot bomb years, layoffs and bad morale were as rampant as the irrational exuberance leading up to the bust. Also, repetitive strain was still nagging her, preventing her from doing one of her favorite hobbies – quilting.

I started working at Space Systems Loral (arch enemy of my former employer, Boeing Satellite Systems) in late October, 2002. I began crunching monthly budget numbers. I shifted investments to Government Agency bonds (Fannie Mae/Freddie Mac) to capture a known income stream. I arrived at a reasonable monthly budget funded by the bond investments leaving a chunk of cash available to buy land and build a small home somewhere in Northern California. I started reading about natural homes/building a home/living rural off the grid/green building/gardening. Some of the best:

How to Find Your Ideal Country Home: A Comprehensive Guide - a terrific source of information even if you are not planning to live in the country

The Art of Natural Building - the place to start for reading about natural building

The Strawbale Home - what gets most folks excited about strawbale homes

Golden Gate Gardening - awesome source even if you don't garden next to the Golden Gate Bridge

2002: Searching for a place to settle. We love backpacking in the Sierra Nevada mountains so we would love to live close by on the eastern slope in either Bishop, Lone Pine or Mammoth Lakes. Unfortunately, the climate is extremely dry so there is little water for farming. I could not find organic foods in Bishop or Lone Pine. Mammoth has a natural foods store, but it also has a significant winter - hence the great skiing. I shoveled my share of snow growing up in Wisconsin, so I will pass on a retirement filled with white Christmases.

We took a road trip up Interstate 5 from the San Francisco Bay area to Redding. The central valley is either too barren for my tastes (Stockton), too hot for my tastes (Redding) or too dirty from agriculture blowoff and 5 freeway traffic (Visalia/Three Rivers).

We took road trip up highway 101. Heading north over the Golden Gate bridge from San Francisco takes you through Marin and Sonoma counties. These are very beautiful areas. However, being fairly developed, they lack in raw land within our price range.

North of Santa Rosa, highway 101 opens up to, for the most part, relatively undeveloped land for the remainder of the state. Ukiah and Eureka being the 2 major exceptions. This is in stark contrast to Southern California, which will someday be one long suburb along the coast. It is understandable that people continue to flock to Southern CA given the superb climate. The question is, how sustainable is the development? Mendocino county saw its share of the “back to the land movement" in the 60’s/70's. The hills to the east of Willits became home for many off-the-grid dwellers creating a need for PV and wind power systems. This movement combined with the desire to smoke a doobie combined to form the beginnings of the solar and wind power industry in America. The marijuana growers had money and needed power for their homes.

We visited Hopland, home of the Solar Living Institute and Real Goods retail store for the first time in September, 2002. We were jazzed about the strawbale store being cool without air conditioning on the 100+ degree Fahrenheit day. We toured the grounds and enjoyed the pond and organic garden that the interns tended. We spoke with 2 of the interns about their experiences and started to consider interning as an opportunity to gain experience in building an alternative home.

Just north of Hopland is the soaring metropolis of Ukiah ;-). Ukiah has an awesome grocery store called, imagine that, “Ukiah Natural Foods”. Rents in Ukiah were a bit too high for our "early retirement" budget. The city of Willits sits a little further "up the hill" like a suburb of Ukiah. Willits (of “Seabiscuit” fame) is a great town:

- nice library
- Purple Thistle - a great organic restaurant
- Shanachie Pub - a must stop on the 101 for an organic beer or wine

A pub is a good place to stop a post that is too long already.