Well, here we are....

It was, as always, a rush to get out the door on time. We were finishing loading the car just as our guest family arrived on time to move in to our house. They graciously offered to finish the mopping that we had not finished.

We're excited to have a young family in our house while we're gone. The kids looked thrilled with the yard, the paths, the play house and sandbox, and Ben's old toys. It's at its best with kids around.

Vicky the cat was not so happy about her part in this adventure, and gave a fine show of bad manners when she joined the Suits family. Wandering around the host's house hissing and yowling till you snort is not very Emily Post. Poor Griffy, the resident cat, seemed a bit stunned.

It was a busy few weeks cleaning out cabinets and closets, deciding what to store and what to bring. And an exercise in the maintenance of a 15 year old house before that. The furnace gave out last winter, we replaced the dishwasher soon before when it began redistributing food rather than removing it, and the clothes washer sprang yet another leak that would be hard to fix from Pennsylvania if it recurred. Oh, and the igniter for the hot water heater failed the week before we left. Was the house feeling betrayed by our leaving?

Did I mention loading the car? We decided to make this a 9 month experiment in living smaller - everything had to fit in, or on, the Subaru. Including Ben and his stuff for college. Four bikes (one laying in the pile on the roof), two 3x3 roof bags, a ski coffin, and whatever we could stuff inside with us. And we cheated, but just a little, sending some stuff to Ann Arbor with George and Helen for Ben when he resumes at Michigan.

The Subaru slowly settled into a lowrider stance - we were watching the tires pretty closely on the way down state. And other folks were watching us. Heads swiveling all along I-75 seemed to wonder if we were modern day Joads or the Beverly Hillbillies, lacking only granny tied in her rocker on the roof. We'd had to replace the battery only the weekend before and have the exhaust welded the week before that, but another 1,000 miles on top of 160,000 didn't seem to matter.



Part of our experiment is a 1 bedroom furnished apartment in downtown State College. Right across the main drag from campus, 2 floors above a Subway restaurant, and overlooking the 767 Lounge - that's going to be interesting on home football weekends. But Ann's psyched about the Starbucks next door, and more so about the dozen other local coffee establishments, including The Cheese Shop which offers a dozen varieties of brew every morning - self serve and leave your dollar on the counter thank you. We had to stop in when we saw a fair contingent of the State College police force out front hanging with the locals.



We're really happy with the apartment. The kitchen is a bit small, but very functional and includes the laundry, the bedroom is huge, offering plenty of room for the folks in the bed and Ben and all his college gear on the floor, and the living room has a beautiful view of the sycamore trees out front through a bumped out window wall. If only the air conditioner worked properly - that hopefully will be resolved tomorrow. Can't really leave the windows open at night with the 767 busy till late.

It's extremely convenient to downtown, which parallels campus and is very walkable, has one covered parking space across the street in a parking garage (we left the other car at home), and a 4x8 basement cage for each unit. For us it's a bike garage and tool shop. Still getting used to riding an elevator to my basement and always having my keys along to get into my shop or check the mail.

Ann can ride to work in 5 minutes across campus, and has easily settled into work at the Penn State IT department, with many friends and acquaintances met through her work with Internet2 around her. With roles both here and continuing with Internet2, time management is going to be a challenge. Ben is being a good sport about being stuck in a small apartment for 2 weeks with his parents, and has resorted to long walks (it was a tough couple days till we got internet service). And I've made preliminary contacts with the local trail folks, but for now I'm focused on exploring - by bike.