October 26, 2025
Here's the Song You Wanted to Hear
Dear little friends,
Oh yes, the mad scramble. We really haven’t talked much about that, maybe because we’ve been too busy mad scrambling. But wait.
First I want to give you a little taste of just what the song of a koel sounds like:
Okay, back to the mad scramble.
Bruce and I both have old houses, gardens, electric vehicles that we’ve never stored for months before, three little grandkids that we are going to miss like crazy, and just a lot of other details that we have been swotting away on for weeks, months, really.
When I say old houses I really mean old houses. My little bungalow was built in 1906, Bruce’s bigger one in 1908. Why do we have two houses? Because I didn’t want to be a landlord anymore. These two old houses are just a few blocks away from each other, too, so there’s a lot of back and forth. It’s rather a good deal, actually.
Anyway, they have elderly furnaces, janky wiring, surrounded by foliage and downspouts and so on. We stay busy. Gardens in Portland jump out of the ground and gardening work is machete work here. Tomatoes and beans and onions and whatnot go to town and neighbors start to avoid us during zucchini season.
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Electric vehicles! We love love love our Chevy Bolts but what to do with them when there is no garage? Garages are very rare in our old neighborhood, there are more intact ancient horse rings on the curb than garages. We do have driveways though. The last few days before our flight were forecast for solid rain. So on went the covers and plugged in went the trickle chargers and we’ve been shank’s mare for a few days now. Yes, it has rained. The best thing about the rain and wind is that the noisy ICE helicopters trying to antagonize Portlanders every night until the wee hours have been grounded. Blackhawks, people. Your tax dollars at work.
And our little grandkids who are getting bigger every day. Two are in kindergarten and one in preschool every weekday, so there is less need for occasional Oma and Bruce daycare, although we do have fun on the weekends. They are awesome and we love them to bits.
The past week has let us finally put all the piles of things we’ve been collecting, contemplating, sorting, tweaking into panniers and then into IKEA bags. The bikes are tucked into the same boxes we bought in Bangkok in February 2024. We have our ride sorted for zero dark thirty tomorrow morning. And then? Well then, we put our feet up, try to sleep, watch movies we’d never watch on our own, eat bibimbap all the way to Seoul, land in Chiang Mai late at night, and from there? Who knows.
We have the concept of a plan, to borrow a phrase from the Detestable One. We have to leave Thailand at some point, and that will most likely be to Laos. Thailand at the moment has a sixty-day visa exemption which is incredible and makes our lives sooooo much easier. There is a lot of new territory to cover and we’re champing at the bit to cover it. Are we in shape? Uh, sadly, not at all. So you’ll get to read about our moaning and groaning and using alternate transport because that’s what we do and we’re not ashamed to do it.
The scramble ends in a few hours. And then, some other sort of scramble begins.
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