Week Ending 21 Oct. 2007

Sunrise from our balcony

We arrived in Homer on a dreary, rainy day, but driving down from the ridge, we could see that this place was very special.  Incredible vistas lay before us - mountains, glaciers, a beautiful bay, and a 4 mile long ribbon of land gently curving out into the bay - called Homer Spit or just The Spit.  We were mesmerized by the scene.  With the sun brightly shining the next day, we could not wait to have a look around.  And what we saw was one of the most amazing places we could have imagined.  Snowcapped mountains and glaciers in the background with red, pink and fuchsia fireweed flowers in the foreground.

Judi was captivated and was trying to imagine what it would be to live here when, literally, came a bolt from the blue.  A real bolt of lightning from a clear sky landed not more than 100 ft. away causing her, literally, to try to jump into Bob's arms.  She took this as a sign that we were meant to stay.

Settling In -After about 2 weeks of looking at available properties, we settled on a lovely home on a slight rise overlooking Kachemak Bay, with mountains and glaciers on the far side and the Homer Spit.  The house is a little larger than we wanted, but, just like a boat, I'm sure we will fill the spaces.  The big bonus of this place was that it came partially furnished and since we were coming off a boat with no furniture this was a big plus.  We signed the contract, plunked down our money and waited for things to happen.  Five weeks went by very slowly as the paperwork, assessment and home inspections were finally completed.  During that time we decided we needed a proper Alaskan car so we traded our cute Ford Focus in on a 2003 Honda 4WD CRV.  We were sorry to see our Focus go as it got great mileage, but the Honda is also pretty good.  We would have loved a Toyota Prius if they made a 4WD.

We closed on a Friday, hoping that the sailing superstition about leaving on a Friday did not apply.  All went very well until we were set to get our keys.  "Oh, that is a problem as we cannot turn over the keys until we record the deed.  The person who does that is on jury duty and we won't be able to do record it until Monday."  This is what it is like living in a small town.  After a call to the owners, who had already vacated, they said that they had no problem with us moving in over the weekend prior to the deed being recorded.  So we drove our RV complete with all of our possessions up the drive.  Good thing as the RV Park we were in was closing for the season that day.  Judi decided not to have Bob carry her over the threshold, so we both carried the dog over.  After a toast or 2 of bubbly, we spent the first night together in our own house - our first house owned together.  We were amazed at how much stuff was in that RV.  It seemed to take the whole weekend to get everything out.

A New Routine:  Homer, while being a wonderful, vibrant place is small.  And even though they have wonderful shops, they do not have everything, so once or twice a week we drive to Soldotna, about 70 miles north, to go to the BIG Fred Meyers, Home Depot and a couple of furniture stores.  Sadly, most of the furniture in this area is pretty traditional design or appropriate for cabins, so we decided to drive 250 miles up to the big smoke - Anchorage.  This was like going from a small Pacific Island to Australia - WOW we could find everything and found 2 furniture stores that had wonderful contemporary pieces.  The only problem was the prices.  But wait!  Alaska has a unique answer - the PFD (Permanent Fund).  This is an amount of money provided to all Alaskans so that they may share in the oil profits generated by the state.   This year it was over $1,650. to every man, woman, child.  Even though we were not eligible for this money, all stores were vying to get some, so they were running terrific sales.  We were able to take advantage of this and so purchased a beautiful bedroom set, a chair and a couple of living room tables.  We are pretty well set now for furniture and since Bob has just purchased a miter saw, he has promised to make the rest of the things we need.

Our new Passion - One of the things we love about Homer is the people.  They are very involved in everything and did not take us long to join in.  We are most active in 2 causes, Impeachment of Bush and Cheney and a group tackling the huge problem of Global Warming. 

In the past month, we have attended a 2-day conference on Global Warming problem in Alaska.  Alaska is ground zero for this problem as the ice cap is melting which means less sun being reflected away by the white ice.  Therefore more sun is being absorbed which raises the temperatures which melts more ice.  While the average temperature in the rest of the world has risen 1° F, the Artic and Alaska temperatures have risen 4° - a huge amount!  Homer has established a Global Warming Task Force to tackle the problem and is committed to reducing carbon emissions by 70% by 2015.  We have gotten involved in helping to establish a website which will be a resource available to the community to help the residents meet that goal.  Additionally, the Electric company here is a cooperative, so we are members and are active in that.  They are actively seeking renewable energy sources such as tidal, wind and geothermal to reduce their dependency on coal.

We are also working with many of the citizens to urge the city council here to draft a resolution to impeach Bush and Cheney and last Saturday spend 3 hours carry signs and asking people to sign a petition of impeachment.  Many, many communities in the US have done the same thing and we are hoping Homer will join them in urging Congress to bring impeachment proceedings.

As winter draws near, we have already had a light dusting of snow and the daytime temps are in the 40s.  Now we have about only about 8 hours of daylight and we are bracing ourselves for Dec/Jan when we only get about 4 hours of daylight.  We plan to use these months to sort photos, edit video and paint the interior of the house.  Bob also has many projects planned.

Currently he is in Oregon, liberating all of our "stuff" from the storage locker to have it shipped up here.  It will be like Christmas, when it all arrives.

Faizel reports - Well, just when I thought I was sentenced to a life of wandering in an RV, my owners picked me up and let me loose in a big house.  I love this place.  It has a balcony that I can run around on and a big yard with lots of wonderful smells.  Sometimes a big animal called a Moose comes into the yard to eat.  I've never seen it, but I've rolled in it's droppings and that was great, but for some reason Bob didn't think so.  Everyday we go for a walk and I've met lots of other dogs that live in the neighborhood.  Some of them I'm not so sure of so I give them a little growl, but they are mostly friendly.