Last Week in Ohio – Tying Up Loose Ends

Our departure is in sight as we finish up our last week in Ohio. Hard to believe we’ve been here for almost one month!

Our schedule has been pretty crazy lately.

We have been trying to fit in as many visits with friends and family as possible since we won’t be back for a long time. And on top of that, we still have travel preparations that need dialing in!

Family + Friends + Food + Frequency = Stretch Pants

I’ve lost count of the number of get-togethers we’ve had with family and friends in recent days. These typically involve meeting up over lunch or dinner, eating way too much food, drinking too much alcohol, then coming back home and going into a food coma.

Wash, rinse, repeat.

Sometimes twice per day.

We shudder to consider the impact on our waistlines, especially this last week in Ohio. But we know the upcoming month will give us a chance to get back on the caloric and macronutrient wagon.

Or at least this is what we tell ourselves.

And if this challenge proves insurmountable, we always have stretch pants as a plan B.

Goodbye, Old Friend…

We overcame one important travel hurdle this week that had a surprising emotional impact, the salvaging of our old 2005 Subaru Forester X. Our manual transmission car of 17 years allowed us to be independent during our stay in Ohio. But with us leaving the USA for an extended period it was time to part ways.

The car served us well. I kept our Subaru limping along for the last four years at minimal cost thanks to my auto repair education at YouTube University. Aside from head gasket issues at 80,000 miles (which this model year Subaru was notorious for), it required little attention aside from maintenance.

We drove it until the wheels were falling off, but salvaging it still felt like we were selling our child to organ harvesters.

Planning for Florida

Another travel hurdle that needed to be addressed was gathering all of the necessary paperwork for us to change our state of residency from New York to Florida. Since we no longer have any physical or financial presence in New York state, the transition should be pretty easy since we left no traces that the tax collectors can object to.

And Florida is more than eager to accept us as residents with open arms and a minimum of bureaucratic hoops. Thanks, Florida!

No wonder so many people retire there. Well, that, and the tax benefits. More on this process in an upcoming post.

We Have Baggage

Last, we think we have finally gathered all of the gear we need to successfully travel Latin America for the next year or so.

For those unaware, we will only have one carry-on bag each and one personal item each as our luggage during our travels. No checked bags. Seriously.

It’s actually much better this way. No extra expense, no lost luggage, and our belongings will be with us at all times.

We also made final purchases on travel clothes, luggage, and some tech for Rhonda’s photography hobby. So now we think we have everything we absolutely need.

We have gone through some practice packing drills so we know we can fit everything we need into our bags. But we’ll still likely have to offload a few items each to meet international flight carry-on bag weight limits (22 lbs/10 kg). So we’ll need to make a few important packing decisions over the next month. But we have time as domestic flights have more generous carry-on weight limits.

Needless to say, our style of travel means we have to be careful in our gear selection. Every item needs to have a clear purpose, be indispensable, and preferably have multiple uses.

Exception: our travel mascot and spirit animal, Road Monkey.

We understand that our mascot should probably be a turtle.

But this little fella fell into our lives (literally) and has been our travel companion for the last 22 years, so he’s coming along. Grandfather clause, and all of that.

Thank You, Ohio!

This will likely be the last Ohio-specific post we make for a very long time.

So to our family and friends in Ohio, thank you all so much for taking us in for the last four weeks! Hopefully, we entertained you. It was wonderful catching up and reconnecting. We truly have missed being part of your lives since we left the area in 1999.

Next challenge…flying to Florida on the 4th of July! What could possibly go wrong?

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