A fresh start

If the name of this blog didn't clue you in, this blog is an updated version of my old one, "Jimspeak". You may be wondering why the upgrade? Why not continue with the old? Because I wanted a fresh start, a new tone and feel to this public exposure to which I'm subjecting myself. It's true that there was much travel talk in the last one, but also a lot of fluff that I'd rather not re-read.

So here we are. Page 1.

And here I am, Day 3 in Hawaii.

Hawaii? How did I end up here? The short of it: I was laid off nearly a year ago. This past summer I worked for 3-4 months and then rekindled my affair with Unemployment. Jobs are not prolific in Portland and a change was needed. With offers to house sit, and previous employers willing to bring us on for short periods of time, The C and I decided that we might as well head here to make a subsistence living rather than dwell in agony in the dark months of Oregon with no reliable income. Some work + sun > no work + gray/wet.

Our work life begins tomorrow when we head off to our first gig which will last 2-4 weeks. Maybe 2000 feet up on the mountain, we'll be out in the bush doing assorted farm/planting work in exchange for a place to live. Our host is an awesome woman, and I'm excited that we'll get a chance to hang out with her. Her place is where I first tasted the joy of meditation, many years ago when first she hired us.

Today, however, comes first. What have we planned? Not much: returning the rental car and heading off to the beach in the car we bought yesterday. You are reading correctly, we bought a car amazingly enough. In less than a day we were reminded how tough/impossible it is to get around here without a car. When I first came here in 2005, hitch hiking was still fairly common. Getting rides was fairly easy, and extended thumbs were a common sight on the road. Now, however, that seems to have fallen off and no one has been able to tell us why. Coupling this with the remoteness of our work sites, we would have been stranded (and impeded from obtaining more work in our off time) if all we had for conveyance was our feet. It's been 2 years at least since we had a car, so this feels odd. If all goes well, I'll find a decent bike that I can buy with the money I've made here, and I can spice things up by riding the oh-so-unsafe roads. Portland, OR this is not. Carlessness, an extremely hard proposition.

But first things first. The sun is out, it's gorgeous, and the beaches are calling.