July 31st, 2018
It was two years ago today that we packed up our Coal Harbour apartment in Vancouver, filled up a storage unit and headed for the ferry to Vancouver Island. The 730 days have just flown by and we have not regretted the choice for a second, not even one. So it must have been the right choice, and we plan to keep on movin’. The actual logistics have ranged from a 10 day run in 10 different hotels, to our current stay in a furnished apartment in Hinton, Alberta. We have been here (and no where else) since July 1st. It’s weird. Not packing. We don’t like it. So we have a whole bunch of trips, small and large, planned for the rest of the year!
Pros and Cons
We love the ‘no fixed address’ lifestyle. The only con at this point is the cost of our storage space. It hurts to even think about it. We have investigated several options (a smaller space, selling it all, storage wars and a liquidator) but nothing concrete has resulted. This is something that we need to make a decision about.
Our family would also say that not having a mailbox is troublesome when they are trying to send Birthday cards but we are very happy with a phone call!
Pros include the actual lack of stuff we need to worry about, never cleaning a bathroom and being able to focus on our work time. But absolutely the amount of new things we have been able to try and the number of new places we have been able to visit would not have been possible otherwise.
We wrote a one year blog that included 41 Cities we had slept in the first year. We have now added 23 more as well as visited some of our favorites again. In order of appearance the new cities are:
42. Saskatoon, SK
43. Souix City, IW
44. Kansas City, KA
45. St. Louis, MO
46. Memphis, TN
47. Crossville, TN
48. Chattanooga, TN
49. Atlanta, GA
50. Birmingham, AL
51. Mobile, AL
52. Jacksonville, FL
53. Lafayette, LO
54. Houston, TX
55. Marfa, TX
56. Tucson, AZ
57. Glendale, AZ
58. Lake Havasu, AZ
59. Flagstaff, AZ
60. Albuquerque, NM
61. Santa Fe, NM
62. Denver, CO
63. Keystone, SD
64. Deadwood, SD
65. Sidney, MT
We have now driven almost 80,000 kilometres in 2 years. We have also added two more airports to our two year list – Las Vegas and Winnipeg bringing the total to 10.
We also were lucky enough to visit Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras and Belize on a cruise from New Orleans. Our tour up the Rio Dulce to Livingston and Ak’tenmit is one of those unforgettable memories now in the bank.
We have visited so many unexpected places and have accumulated so many great memories! Maybe one day we will be able to sit down and write blogs about them all!
The Next List
As mentioned above, we are ready to move again. We have several work trips in August so will be back and forth between BC and Alberta. We are also going to be visiting our niece several times once she moves into the dorms at the University of Calgary and hopefully catching some of her divisional Rugby games. But the big plans start December 1st!
We have booked a flight to Sydney, Australia with a 4-day stopover in Auckland. We will be gone from December 1st to February 7th. This will be the first time that our location independence does not involve a car so we will be 10 weeks with a suitcase only! We also still need to work (except between Christmas and New Years) and this will be the first time working with our clients when the time change has been more than 3 hours. A whopping 18 hours ahead. At least we should be able to get everything done on time 😉
We are excited about this next phase of location independence. We’re packing our sunnies! G’day Mate!
We, Jeff and Tara Ciecko of CK Golf write two blogs, one is our 19th Hole Blog where we share personal experiences and the other an Industry Blog where we comment on general business and internet marketing best practices, sales strategies and give golf industry related opinions. We have owned CK Golf for 9 years and provide marketing, social media and business services to the golf and other industries. As of August 2016 our life and our business will be ‘location independent’. Our 19th Hole Blog is about the places we visit and the things we do. If you have any questions or comments, or happen to be in the same location as us please reach out and contact us anytime.
This post has 2 Comments