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Once we decided to do another vacation and the destination was picked, the next step was to rent out the house. This turned out to be fairly easy because a couple of months or so earlier a couple had knocked on the door and asked if we were interested in renting out our house. The couple, now our renters, had heard that we had rented out our house in the past and really wanted to rent ours. The couple is Canadian and is working on a visa. They loved the architecture (we live in a Eichler Home), they wanted their two kids in our school district, and they had rented one of our neighbor’s houses earlier and loved it.
We had originally turned these same renters down because they wanted the house completely unfurnished and we wanted to rent it the way we had set it up before – with our furniture, linens, kitchen stuff and art in place but with our personal stuff in a storage unit in the garage. Before we went to Camano, I built an six-foot wide, sixteen-foot deep modular storage unit for our garage that could be disassembled and stored when we got home. We did come to some compromises: we could use the garage storage unit; the kitchen stuff, linens and artwork had to go in storage; the bulkier furniture could remain or be moved south to our flat in Morro Bay and we had to let them have it for a full year. A full year commitment was not a problem, because Morro Bay’s best weather is during the winter and the only problem with summer is the number of tourist. Nancy wanted her weaving loom moved to Morro Bay – A weaving loom can be the size of a Volkswagen but Nancy’s is only the size of a baby grand piano. Looms are big but not heavy. The bottom line was that we had to rent a twelve-foot enclosed trailer for the move. The trailer wasn’t just for the loom, but since we were renting a trailer anyway why not take a few other things. Nancy also requested that a good supply of her fiber material be taken so that she could continue her spinning and weaving hobby and her teaching. We had to find a place to store our RV anyway and Morro Bay area has cheaper storage. Plus, it has a trailer hitch that can handle a twelve-foot trailer. By the time we were ready to move we had three vehicles and only two drivers. Our renters were scheduled to move on the fifteenth of September. We took possession of the flat in Morro Bay on the fifth of September. It is now that I must confess that although we had made a fairly extensive scouting trip and looked at a lot of possible houses, we hadn’t done any more than a really brief walk-though of the unit we rented. When we were there on the scouting trip, the place was rented to a man who had been there for a year. He had given permission for us to see the place but hadn’t gone out of his way to make it presentable. The renter had his personal stuff scattered all over the place – this discouraged us from looking very deeply into drawers and closets. Other than the bigger pieces of furniture we weren’t sure what was going to be left. Even the TV was missing – turns out it was in the armoire in the bedroom. We weren’t too worried about being disappointed with the flat because we hadn’t signed the lease yet and if the flat, once empty, turned out to have problems; we could always refuse to take possession. Since we had to move three vehicles south and because we really didn’t know what the flat looked like empty, we decided to make the move in two trips. The first trip, on the fifth of September, we traveled light. We loaded up Nancy’s car, the Honda CRV, with whatever fit and hung the bicycles on the back and loaded my car, the Corvette, with our golf clubs and other sports equipment and caravanned south. We got most of the way down and were within a couple of miles of Morro Bay and the Vette broke a fanbelt. Most of the remaining way to the new flat was downhill and my only problem was that without the fanbelt the power steering and the air-conditioner don’t work. The air-conditioner wasn’t a concern because I was within the marine air of the coast. Once I was to the bottom of the hill and on the coast highway, I only had six miles to the flat. By watching the temperature gauge, and stopping when the engine got to warm – when the fanbelt breaks the cooling system stops working – I got the Vette to our flat and into the garage. I just left the broken car in the garage until we finished moving south and figure I would take care of it then. |
| Moving South |
| We got to the flat and were a little disappointed with a couple of problems that hadn’t been fixed. The microwave didn’t work, only one door key actually worked, the kitchen faucet leaked and the storage room smelled moldy. We submitted a list of problems to the property manage with the understanding that we expected to move in the following week and expected to have everything fixed. Except for the microwave that took a little bit longer they had everything straightened up by the next week when we did move in.
We spent our first night in the flat and the following morning returned home for the final load. After having surveyed the flat we decided that there were several things that we had moved into our storage unit that we would like to have at our rental. The dishes provided were adequate to a short vacation but were not good for an extended stay. So, we decided that we would push the unit’s pots, pans, dishes and utensils to one side and use our own stuff. The bed in the guest bedroom had been advertised as a queen size but was only a double. We were storing a good queen size bed, so we chose to bring it and store the double. The art and wall decorations were dreary so we exchanged it with some of our own stored art. This meant that when we got home I had to unpack the storage unit and pull out the things that we wanted for the flat. On the eleventh, I rented a covered trailer and attached it to the RV. We spent the day stuffing everything into the camper, the trailer and Nancy’s car. The rest of the day was spent doing a final cleaning of the house for the renters and doing a walk-through for our renter’s acceptance. The next morning, we got up and headed south. Everything was fine on the trip south until I cleared the last summit on the small mountain range that separates the main highway (Highway 101 at Atascadero) from the coast. Then the RV’s transmission blew its fluid all over the highway. Being at the summit had that advantage that I could coast the 6-8 miles down the hill to the town limits of Morro Bay. At the bottom of the hill, I put the truck in gear and was able to nurse it another mile, to within five blocks of our new abode. Then I got to a stop sign that had several cars backed up and had to pull off the road and pronounce the RV dead. I walked a little less that half a block to the local trailer rental shop and explained my problem – I might not be able to return the trailer later that afternoon because I had blown the transmission. The trailer lot attendant said that things were a little slow and that I could return the trailer to him whenever possible. He also let me use his phone to call a tow truck. The tow truck was busy and they were afraid that he could get to me for about five hours. The trailer was full of all our worldly goods or at least the stuff we had brought south and we were only five blocks to our new home base. Out of desperation, I walked back to the RV, started the engine and put it in gear. It moved and once it started to move, I didn’t stop, ran a couple of stop signs, and got to within a couple of hundred feet of our new flat. I could unload and carry our stuff from there. I called the tow truck company and told them that I had moved the truck and they admitted that they knew something had happened because things had changed and they had been able to get their truck to my breakdown site within fifteen minutes of my call. I asked if they could wait until I could unload the RV and the trailer. They said they wanted to go home for the day and asked it they could pick up the RV in the morning – that worked fine with me! I now had all evening to unload everything into the garage of the new flat. I then unloaded everything in to the garage before it got dark, got everything cleaned up, and had everything ready for the pick up in the morning. This wasn’t the kind of arrival for our new adventure that I would have planned, but at least we had reached your destination. The next morning the tow truck showed up and towed the RV to the repair shop, two doors down from the trailer rental place. They then disconnected the trailer from the RV and returned it. A new transmission for the RV was about $3000 dollars and took about three weeks. The time was no problem since the RV was going into storage anyway but the $3K will be missed. Once we got in and settled, I checked out the broken fanbelt on the Corvette. The fanbelt had broken because the compressor for the air-conditioner had frozen. Once the compressor froze, the belt had to break. The repair for that required the compressor be replace and the air-conditioner system cleaned of broken pieces and while they were at it, the seals and fluid had to be updated to the new refrigerant. The bill on this ran about $1500. This on top of the RV transmission kind of took some of the fun out of the move south. The good news was that all the people who were involve during these trying times were just super. They went out of their way to help and at no time did I feel that we were being taken advantage of. |
| A view of the Coastal Mountain Range seperating Morro Bay from the desert interior A little piece of Highway 1 can be seen in the lower left of the picture |
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