In Transit — a New Life Explained

I thought I might do a brief blog on our current life in terms of scheduling our stays and getting to where we need to be, etc. I will try not to venture into TMI, but you can let me know via e-mail or comments whether I need to work on my editing skills and/or if I’ve neglected a topic of interest.

As you may know, we use the website http://www.trustedhousesitters.com to look for house sits. This is a membership-based website, so you pay an annual fee to either post a listing looking for house sitters or create a profile as house sitters or both. Everyday we receive 2 e-mails with the latest house sit opportunities. We can look at these or logon to the website or app and filter by dates, locations, pet types, etc to identify potential house sits. When we see something that catches our interest, we open the full posting, note the number of applications already received (We tend not to apply to those who have already received 7 or more replies, as we feel like home owners are likely to do the most thorough reviews on the first few respondents.), and read through the posting to see number and types of animals requiring care and other home care duties required. We also always review whether the sitters need a car since we do not have one and would only want to rent one for a very short sit in an area that we were very interested in. Sometimes the sit requires a car, and if the home owners provide one, we apply for those as well.

Once we’ve applied, if the home owner is interested, we may be confirmed right away but usually we will have an interview with the home owners via phone or Skype so that we can all see if we might be a good fit. These arrangements are all trust-based, so it’s good to get a sense of each other before committing formally on the website. The website also provides a contract template, and we have signed a few of those for home owners as well when asked. We recently had a phone interview with a home owner in Virginia while we were doing our San Francisco house sit and did a Skype session with a home owner in DC while we were en route to Iowa from Austin.

We currently have our schedule complete through 3/25/20 and then a commitment for a return to Oakland in late May/ early June next year as well as a return to Scotland next August.

Here’s our house-sitting itinerary as it stands today:

July 2019. Auckland, New Zealand

Aug 2019. Auckland, New Zealand/Hamburg, Germany

Sep 2019 Hamburg, Germany/Derby, England/Little Hampton, England

Oct 2019. Denver, CO

Nov 2019. Sun Prairie, WI/Atlanta, GA

Dec 2019. Atlanta, GA/Winchester, VA/Incheon, South Korea

Jan 2020. Incheon, South Korea/Walmer, England

Feb 2020. Walmer, England/Austin, TX/Washington, DC/Tubac, AZ

Mar 2020. Tubac, AZ

Late May- Early June. Oakland, CA

Aug 2020. Thornhill, Scotland

As you might surmise, there is a great deal of travel planning that is needed to make this work. There are often air flights needed to get us to the right country or state but for house sits in smaller towns there may also be additional bus or train trips needed to get us from the airport to the correct cities. Then if we can’t walk from where we land to the house, there may be a taxi or Uber ride as well. Bob is the go-to person for our travel planning. He could create a job for himself in the travel field should we ever stop traveling and land somewhere.

We are planners, so we have our flight or other modes of transportation purchased months in advance; however, nothing can prevent the occasional curve ball. We got dealt one of those, as we were preparing to leave San Francisco. On the morning of our departure, we learned that our flight on American was cancelled due to storms the prior day in Dallas. None of the offered alternatives (all red-eyes that would get us in the morning after the time we were to pick up a rental car in Austin for a drive to Iowa) were going to work, so he got us on a Southwest flight and got the American flights refunded. We were to have flown through Phoenix on the way to Austin but ended up flying through Denver and got a lovely shot of the snow-covered mountains on the way in.

We had a very fast one day in Austin before we picked up our remaining belongings from friends who had stored them in their garage for a month. Thank you Bobby and Margaret! I was amazed we got everything in our rented Chevrolet Equinox, but Bob packed well.

I was excited to be traveling by car for a bit so we wouldn’t be at the mercy of airlines, but it seems to be road construction season on I35 so we didn’t have quite as much control of our time as I thought we might.

We have been in Iowa for the past few days enjoying time with relatives, celebrating a retirement, and imposing on family now to store our stuff until we decide our next official steps. Much thanks to Bob’s sister and brother-in-law, Cheryl and Jody, for once again letting us keep our stuff at their house!