No Fixed Address

Day 1,615 and Still Counting
January 1, 2021 marks day 1,615 of having no permanent residence, and yes, we still love it! When we posted our year-end blog last year we were just about to board a cruise ship in Cape Canaveral, Florida heading to Mexico. We had also made the decision to make 2020 a year of longer stays, 30 to 40 days, to really get to know a place. Who knew that our long stays would be forced and basically limited to British Columbia.

36 States in 4.5 Years
Pre-March 17th (which we call ‘The day the lights went out in Vegas’) we had already visited the states of Georgia, Florida, Arkansas, Oklahoma, Texas, New Mexico and Nevada in 2020, bringing our total state count up to 36 in 4.5 years. One of the surprising highlights and new cities for us was Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. The downtown area and River Walk reminded us of a more modern San Antonio and are on our list for a repeat, someday. We are not sure when we will return to the U.S. but it will not be soon (and not only because of the pandemic 🙄 ).

As the lock downs started, we heading for Winnipeg so we could quarantine and figure out what to do next. On April 25th we returned to BC and have not have left since.

Family, Friends and Food
It has been a year of family, friends and food. Oh, and lots of wine! We are very lucky to work in an industry that expanded during the pandemic, while so many others did not, and we are grateful to have terrific people to share our happy hours with, even though we have had to go back to Zoom.

We are thankful that many BC restaurants were able to stay open and we have been very supportive  😉   but also cooking more at home, sometimes on Zoom. We even started playing more golf!!

Still Homeless
It has been challenging being location independent during a pandemic but luckily we are planners (one of us anyway) and the extra time spent finding places to live was also fun.

We both agree strongly that we are not ready to give up on the plan to be location independent, we still love it. Actually being ‘grounded’ in BC has made us see more of it, stay longer in the places we like, and made our future planning more exciting and open to new ideas. We are lucky to call the beautiful province of BC ‘home’ and have enjoyed our longer time spent in Kelowna, Vancouver, Whistler and Victoria with side trips to Osoyoos, Shuswap Lake, Kamloops, Mabel Lake, Nanaimo, Courtenay and Sooke.

We are recording all of our stays under the blog category #explorebc, but we are a very behind so keep watching for more.

Key Counts
Surprisingly, we had already stayed in 29 different hotels (and earned 43 Marriott nights) before we crossed the border into Canada on March 25th.  We also had another 17 hotel nights driving from Manitoba to BC and throughout the summer, so our key stack has actually continued to grow. We are also happy that Marriott (and all other hotel loyalty programs) gave us bonus nights (25 this year) to keep us over 75 per year and in the Titanium Elite category.

Future Travel
We have rented an apartment in Kelowna until April 6 (yes Brrr) and then heading to Vancouver and Whistler. We’ll be back in Kelowna for 6 more weeks before hopefully taking a road trip. We do not yet know what our future travel plans outside of Canada will look like, but there is definitely too many places we still want to see to list them here. We’re hoping to mark the 5th anniversary of our homelessness, which takes place on July 31, 2021, with trip planning for some epic future adventures!

Happy New Year Everyone! Cheers to 2021!

 

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 recently started a Zoom call video series of Golf Industry Conversations. We have owned CK Golf  for 12 years and provide business services to the golf and other industries. As of July 31, 2016 our life and our business became ‘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.