Things I Will Miss: Homeschooling in D.C. By Windy

Eleanor and her friend Ally
at the Kennedy Center

Our decision for me to quit working two years before leaving was one of the best decisions we've ever made. Even though it was an unneeded strain on our money-saving ambitions, it gave me a new perspective of D.C. and introduced me to a group of other homeschooling parents whose company, support, and inspiration I have enjoyed immensely.

I wouldn't know the city like I now do had I stayed in the workaday world. The girls and I have explored it together during the past two years, all of its nooks and crannies. As a die-hard Californian, I have come to appreciate D.C. because it's a truly international city, because of the fantastic museums, because the local government doesn't meddle too much in the affairs of homeschoolers, because of the excellent (and forgiving) public library system, because we can trek down and watch the inauguration of the first African American president, because we can walk a few blocks and stand on the mound where Lincoln came under fire, because of great public transportation, because the great outdoors runs through the middle of the city (Rock Creek Park), because it's a short drive to family-run farms, the beach, and the mountains.



Our D.C. homeschooling co-op

To top it all off, so much of what we do here is FREE (or very inexpensive, American taxpayers, I am deeply grateful). Last year I took Eleanor and her good friend Ally out for an elegant evening at the Kennedy Center to see They Might Be Giants. Total cost: $5 for the train ride, round trip.   We regularly cavort in the shadow of Teddy Roosevelt's Stalinesque statue on Roosevelt Island. (Aside from the monument, Roosevelt Island is a green pocket of wildness, surrounded by the waters of the Potomac River. We love Roosevelt Island). Total cost of each trip: $2 in fuel. When our homeschooling co-op met at the National Zoo, the cost was $5 for the the train. The museums, the monuments, the Supreme Court, the Capitol: all free. These things I will miss.

Eleanor at Calvert Cliffs State Park

Finally, we enjoy all of this in the company of a growing population of homeschoolers, many of whom, over the last couple of years, have become close friends to my daughters and me. Though these families came to homeschooling for a variety of reasons, they remind me of the cruising community in their pursuit of a lifestyle that bucks convention and sacrifices monetary gain (which is really another way of bucking convention, I suppose). Lately I find myself imagining, not wishing, but imagining our life continuing as it is today. I imagine the girls growing up with these amazing kids who are their friends. I imagine years down the line, sitting with the same parents I sat with today, sharing our misgivings and our triumphs. It would be a good life. The problem is that it doesn't include Mike, not enough of him at least. And we can't have both because D.C., aside from all of the recreational opportunities I mentioned, is a costly place to live. Most families here live on two incomes. We are fortunate that we can live on Mike's income alone.

I'm painfully aware that the decision to move onto a boat with our kids is a compromise. We hope to gain much, but we will lose much in the process. In all likelihood, we will leave D.C. and not return. We have a lot to miss.

--WR

P.S. Here are two articles written by a friend and fellow D.C. homeschooler about homeschooling in D.C.: Part 1 and Part 2 (I'm quoted in this one)

Winter at Roosevelt Island



Boat Cards! By Michael

Two big steps this week: boat cards and a mailing address.

Hoping to get carded

I didn't get the whole boat card thing before we left on our first trip. We had cards on board the first Del Viento only because someone gave them to us as a goodbye gift (thank you Larry). We were soon glad we had them. Cruising is a very socially transient lifestyle. Boat cards were a way for us to remember the folks we ran into. I can thumb through our collection from 15 years ago and recall people and events I may have well forgotten.

Rather than a photo on our cards this time, I commisioned a nautical artist in Washington state to sketch our boat. I heard  about Jeff Orlando from a post by Andiamo III, about how he drew the picture of their boat on their cards. When I got to Jeff's site, I liked his gallery of drawings and boat cards he's done for others. Using just a few pictures of our boat and a description of the scene I wanted, he did an outstanding job. He was generous with his time and just a nice guy.

Of course, before we could get our cards, we needed a mailing address to put on them. We ended up using St.Brendan's Isle. While I like the folksy, mom-and-pop quality of their competitor, Voyagers Mail Forwarding Service, SBI's reputation is stellar and they offer a mail scanning service that may alleviate the need for most physical mail forwarding. Though, given that all of our banking and billing has been paperless and online for years, we don't get a lot of mail that will have to be forwarded. But they also offer a service whereby they will acquire a boat part for you at their discounted rate and ship it out right away.

In either case, it is going to cost us about a quarter-boat-buck per year, and both companies will take care of renewing our USCG documentation each year (why isn't that online yet?!). We considered asking family to handle our mail, but the knowledge these cruiser-oriented companies have in getting shipments to far flung places in the least time, with the least hassle, and at the least expense, is worth the expense, I hope. I've heard countless stories of cruisers waiting months for a package, never getting a package, extorted by customs officials, or all of the above.

It's pretty exciting to have a new address (though Florida doesn't feel like us, neither of us has any association with the place--and I meant to put our boat's Washington, D.C. hailing port on the cards and forgot). It is one more bit of tangible evidence that this huge thing is actually coming to pass.

--MR

Thread Bare and Hanging in There By Michael

A very cold walk home from the bus stop tonight, and the winter wool coat I wear to work is thread bare, long over due for being replaced. I walked in the front door, greeted my girls, and headed straight for the back of the house to check the thermometer on the back porch. It lay broken on the ground, fallen off its mount. Crap, another thing busted.

The work sock of a soon-to-be cruiser

I returned to the living room to hang up my work bag in the coat closet; I do so carefully because the spine of the bag is broken and hanging it by the shoulder strap causes the bag to collapse on itself. I removed my shoes, no longer comfortable as they were before the insoles wore away at the toes and heel. I can feel the cool wood floors through the hole in the sole of my right sock.

This past weekend, I noticed that the squirrels chewed a large hole in the thick plastic wall of our backyard composter. Untouched by them for 10 years, we probably could have gotten $50 for the thing at our moving sale, now it is nearly worthless.

It goes on. We regularly hand-wash our motley collection of soup and cereal bowls because the few that remain don't get us through dishwasher cycles; seven of the original set of eight busted one-by-one over the past five years. Lately, we've been repurposing ramikins and our dainty collection of Chinese soup bowls--both also dwindling in numbers as they slip, one by one, through tiny, milk-slick hands. Windy's reporting a strange knock from the rear of the car and our living room furniture is cat-clawed. The finish on the dining room table is worn through and we used up the last of our firewood over the holidays. Frances's knees nearly touch her chin as she pedals her bicycle .

It feels as though everything around us is falling apart, disappearing, or begging to be replaced. We've maintained our house and ourselves, but our personal property that isn't going with us to the boat, is taxed, much of it used up or used beyond the point of donating it to the thrift store. It's hard to go out and buy new work clothes or cereal bowls when we know we'll only be using those things for a few more months (hopefully). We start a lot of sentences with, "If we weren't going cruising, we'd get a new..."

In this way, the Robertsons began austerity measures long before they were The Thing. And while this has been good for the cruising kitty, the side effects are not pretty. We've become a rag-tag bunch. Only eighty days remain before the house goes up for sale...

--MR

Inspiration By Windy



Paul and Oli at Koh Samui

My brother just sent this picture from Thailand of himself and my nephew Oliver playing in the water in Koh Samui. Paul and his wife Pao are there now visiting family and showing off Oliver and Pao's belly bulge. They lived on the island for years and still own a home there. They've since moved back to the Bay Area.

Our cruising plans have never been about a circumnavigation, maybe because I insert my fingers in my ears and sing "la la la la" as soon as the subject arises. It's just so far from where I am right now--literally sitting in our house in Washington, DC looking out at the gray trees and piles of dirty snow. Still, seeing this photo I admit to a tickle of inspiration and, for a moment, sailing half way around the world to play on the beach with family seems like a completely reasonable, obvious thing to do. Who knows, maybe that tickle will someday grow enough to propel us around the globe.

--WR

Digitize Me By Michael

All to be turned into ones and zeroes...

Tonight, all of my life in pictures, about 2000 prints, are in a USPS truck, somewhere between Washington, D.C. and West Berlin, New Jersey.

These include prints of model planes taken by the 10-year-old me with 110 film. Prints of family vacations, parachute jumps, my first motorcycle, my second motorcycle, cars I've loved, and women who were part of my life. Prints of scuba diving trips and waterski trips and friends with whom I've lost contact. Prints of the first Del Viento and the cruising adventure that inspires us today. Prints of Windy when she was still a relative stranger, our early life together, our Humboldt apartment, and our Mexico engagement. Prints of our first house and our early efforts to fix it up...prints of my life up until 2001 when we bought our first digital camera.

For about 11 cents a print, a company called FotoBridge is going to scan them and send them back to me with a DVD containing the digital files. I think I will destroy or give away all but a very few of the prints I get back. It's much easier to view and share digital photos. Once I get these uploaded as digital albums on our Kodak Gallery site, I look forward to sending links to folks who have forgotten these photos exist, folks who shared all of these experiences with me. Isn't that what they're for?

Of course, the point of all this is the 9 bulky, empty photo albums Windy and the girls brought to the Goodwill today. Spring feels like it is around the corner and we're deep into down-sizing mode. Windy's on a tear with her Craigslist app. A framing nailer, computer armoire, maple table, and two fire wood racks are gone. Hundreds of books sold and given away. All of our CDs are digitized and gone.

If the FotoBridge experiment with my life's memories is successful, Windy says her pictures can go too. That's about 9 more albums gone, less stuff to sell, give away, or move. We are indeed getting lighter and it feels like progress.

--MR