A Requiem Motivation Lost

It has occurred to me that I should bring the blog up to date with our plans. We have moved out of our home and have a vacation house to ourselves for the time being. There is still lots of work to do, not the least of which involves the logistics of moving our 8500lb van across the pacific. Unfortunately I am suffering from a severe lack of motivation currently. Probably a side affect of working too hard. Hopefully it clears up fairly quickly.

The move out was fairly uneventful in and of itself. However we managed to get robbed/burgled on two separate occasions. This succeeded in adding some undesired and unexpected dramatic flair. First off some ingrate nicked my tool bag out of the back of the van. There goes $500 worth of tools. Then, only a few days later, when we had about 90% of our stuff moved out some brain damaged fools broke into our house. Finding little of value they actually took the sinks, ripped out half the cabinetry, and stole appliances fixtures etc. Running out of room in their van, they continued to rip out cabinets, and just left them sitting in the halls. They got less than $1,000 of stuff (resale value), but they did many thousands in damage. 8 months of remodeling trashed in less than two hours!

Anyways, one can understand my lack of motivation after completing a move out, driving about 2500 miles, and having been burgled twice, all in one month! So I am going to enjoy being retired for the time being.

Our plans are roughly as follows. We need to organize the van, and pack our gear into it. Jen and I need to finish a few minor van projects, nothing serious thankfully. While we are working on these items, we will be working out the details of shipping the the van. We have reevaluated our options, and are considering a 40ft high cube container. With a set of shipping wheels the van will fit into the 8ft 6in door opening. If anyone out there wants to split a container let us know, as we will have about 19ft of the container unused. Once the shipping is worked out and scheduled we will get our visas and carnet de passages. Of course the shipping is the biggest unknown. The logistics of loading, transporting, unloading, and clearing customs is very new to us. Not wanting to pay an enormous sum for someone to “take care of it” means we need to educate ourselves.

The most unpleasant thing to look forward to is cleaning the van. Australia has a notoriously strict zoological cleanliness policy on imported vehicles. A single insect wing, or a bit of dirt can result in a $400 mandatory steam cleaning. This means we will likely need to spend a few days crawling around the underside of the van to remove a decade of road grime, soot, and insect splatter.

Finally I can say, we are free and clear.  The clock is ticking a bit on our vacation clock, but at this point its slow enough that I don't mind.