The Great Wander

We headed out for a 15-mile bike ride this morning.  In retrospect, it might have been a might much for the first ride of the season, but it was fun.  As we were riding, we were reminiscing about when we bought our youngest son his current bike, easily 5 years ago.  He’s loved that bike, covered it in stickers, and put many miles on it.  Given that he’s grown 4 inches this year school year alone, it’s a safe bet to say he’s outgrown it.  We’ve been gifted some other very nice bikes, but there isn’t one in our collection that is really his and that he is comfortable on. 

That got Sandy to thinking, we should buy him a new bike.  I’ll admit my gut reaction was, what?!  But after thinking about it, it does make sense.  He’s getting to be as tall me, we’ll be riding a lot this summer and boating and bikes are not mutually exclusive, so yeah, we should get a new bike.

But it also got me to thinking.  We’re selling stuff, slowly, but we are selling stuff.  Furniture, artwork, stuff for hobbies, tools, etc.  Things aren’t flying out the door, but they are migrating to new homes.  Just because we are selling things doesn’t mean we don’t want to still enjoy our other hobbies while we are here.  Biking as a family is something that we enjoy, so let’s continue to live, and not deprive ourselves of all enjoyment.  Ben and Ashley from Sailing Nahoa  talked about that in one of their videos.  Ashley pointed out that she loved yoga, so even once they made the decision to sell everything and set sail, she kept her yoga studio membership.  Sure, that’s potentially $100 a month.  In our case, dropping Crossfit would save us $125 a month, not buying a new bike would save us quite a bit.  But then life becomes more of a drudgery than enjoyment. 

Even as we are downsizing, we’re still going to be buying things that we need or want for life on land.  It’s just a function of still living life.  I’ll buy new running shoes when mine get close to the 400 mile mark.  I’m being a little more picky about when I buy them, and how close to that mark I am going be, but yeah, I’ll get new shoes.

Selling things right now is funky.  What I mean by that is, we have a 4000 sq ft house.  We have two living room sets.  One probably could be sold, but then if we move the other into the main living room, where does anyone sit in the other living room.  Do we wait and have a fire sale just before we go, or just let things sit on Facebook Marketplace.  It’s a hard call.

As we’ve been listing things, I’ve determined some rock bottom prices.  For example, my grill.  It’s older, but it’s in excellent condition, so I’ll let it sit for the next year at the current asking price because I can.  Once we are ready to go, sure, if it’s still here… I’ll have to take what I can get.  But at the same time, starting to sell things early gives us time to say, yeah, here’s what I’d like to get, and I can wait.

My mom recently asked me for gift ideas.  She pointed out that with us downsizing, it’s hard to know what gifts to get us, other than money.  The truth is, there are still things we need and want.  We adore good coffee, we love to read, we still eat out on occasion, and we still have hobbies.  Her questions did get us thinking, so we started an Amazon Wishlist of things that we think we might want or need for the boat.  Like a really large filet knife for the tuna I hope to catch 😊.  What do we keep?  What do we get rid of?  And what do want to enjoy life on land while we are here?  Those are all questions we get to wrestle with now that we’ve made this decision.

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