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Tallahassee,
Fl and Georgia
Week Ending 5 May 2007 |
eBay and PayPal - For these last 2 1/2 weeks we have
been photographing and listing around 100 items that we
removed from
Long Passages - and that were now surplus to our
land travels and plans for the next few years. It took a
lot of time to take photos, list them, answer questions,
and finally pack and ship them. And there are
quite a few more where they came from! In the process we
ran afoul of one of PayPal's security filters (they
probably don't like sudden surges of stuff for sale) and
that took 6 days and 15-20 hours of our time to
straighten out. If anyone is interested in the
results look at the completed auctions for our
ID: OURBOATSTUFF on eBay. |
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Week
Ending 12 May 2007 |
Walks in the woods - As part of our 'fitness' program we
joined Denis and his girlfriend on a walk in the woods around
Tallahassee. There is quite a lot of beautiful woodlands
around with huge oak trees draped with Spanish Moss and graceful
Magnolias laden with blossoms. This area is a great bird
watching place as well with many gorgeous cardinals, bluejays.
mockingbirds (the state bird), and the woods are filled with the
songs of the thrush and so many others. Judi has had to purchase a
bird book to identify them all.Medical visits galore - We spent a couple
of days visiting doctors for routine checks, mammograms, and
soliciting advice on treatment options - our experience with US
doctors has not been as bad as we feared from the horror stories
that we had heard when we were overseas.
Experience with eBay/PayPal - After 3 weeks
of photographing boat equipment, answering inquires, and fighting
PayPal's staff, we finally found new homes for 91 items. This
is really the best type of 'recycling', finding new users for items
that still are useful. Our experiences and thoughts:
- It cost us about 20-25% of the value
of the items to list, pack, drive to Post Office, ship, and pay
commissions
- It takes about 3-4 weeks to take photos,
write up the listing and upload, wait for the auction to run its
course, wait for the slowest person to pay, ship the items, and
leave feedback for all buyers.
- If a person does not pay within 24 hours,
send an invoice, some people only respond to the invoice.
- Make accurate calculations of shipping costs;
this is a place you can lose money - use
www.usps.com to calculate
Domestic and Overseas postage.
- US Postal Service Priority Mail was generally
the cheapest way to ship, and all items made it OK.
- In the end, this added about 3% to the value
of the sale of Long Passages.
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Week
Ending 19 May 2007
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Bowling
and Kayaking - Son Denis has taken as his task to keep us in
shape, so the weekend was occupied with bowling at the college lanes
(we had not been on a lane for 6 years) and a day of kayaking on
nearby Lake Lafayette. The lake is shallow and somewhat
clogged with water lilies, but quite pretty. The cedars rise
directly from the water and many of them are capped with osprey
nests - and this time of year the nests have young ospreys who peer
over the side as we invaded their space. Moorhens prance about on
the lily pads, lifting them to hunt for insects and alligators slide
into the water from the banks as we approach - a fun place to spend
the day.Moffitt in Tampa - As part of the quest to
find definitive recommendations regarding melanoma, we sought a 2d
(or 3rd) opinion at Moffitt Cancer Center in Tampa. We drove
down for a day laden with records to talk with an oncologist. The
recommendation was to undergo a treatment that may offer temporary
help or join in a couple of experimental treatments. In the end, we
have decided not to undergo any radical treatment at the moment, and
change our lifestyle a little to bolster the immune system since a
healthy immune system seems to be the best way to fight this
disease.
Preparing to move on - And now we are tying
up loose ends in Tallahassee with the intention to move on next
week. We have added towing gear to a cute little yellow Ford
Focus and our loose plan is to head north and west, either directly
to the Pacific Northwest as a possible place to settle, or to Alaska
to see some wilderness - we will see how it goes.
New Web Plans - As we start our land
travels in the USA, we consider this to be a new chapter of our
lives, and so we will try to capture this chapter on a new website:
WWW.LANDPASSAGES.COM -
this will document our travels as well as our new plans, musings,
hot-buttons, and anything else that strikes our whimsy - hope you
can keep up with us there!
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Wee k
Ending 27 May 2007
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This was the week we
finally broke loose from Tallahassee and headed north!
F D Roosevelt State Park - Our
first stop was a delightful campground within walking
distance of a pretty lake with lots of wildlife that
stopped by to beg for a handout. The most brazen
was a Canadian Goose that honked its way from site to
site, checking out anything within reach for taste and
texture - including Bob's arm! Unfortunately Memorial
Day weekend was coming and they were full, so we moved
on to:
Amicalola Falls State Park -
When we called the Georgia State Park reservation
system, they told us that there were only 2 campsites
left in the whole state for our RV for Memorial
Weekend, and one turned out to be in a beautiful park in
the Chattahoochee National Forest at the southern
terminus of the Appalachian Trail. We limbered up
on a 3-mile walk the first day and then struggled to
keep up with Denis on a 9-mile hike from the Appalachian
Trail to the visitor's center. We didn't see much
wildlife, but the park is beautiful and the 700'
Amicalola Falls was very impressive. After 2 days our
muscles really felt the pain of disuse, but we're sure
it did us some good!
Towing - We really did not want
to do it, but broke down a few weeks ago and bought our
little yellow Ford Focus to tow behind 'Sunny',
our motorhome. This week was the first time
actually towed it, and it wasn't too bad - a little
hassle to connect and disconnect, but almost un-noticed
as it faithfully followed us. |
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