She Says - Less than 4 weeks to go!

Amazingly, it’s somehow now the start of June and we’ve barely got a month till we leave the house and hit the road! And just as I was writing that, I’ve heard the joyous strains of “It’s alive!” (to quote old Frankenstein movies) from Xander as he’s fired up Anubis for the first time in months!! It’s been an ongoing torment, one thing going wrong after another, down to finally putting petrol into the new tank yesterday only to find a leak! That got repaired but had to sit for 24 hours, so now Xander has finally got the whole bike together again! Now it’s tense test of the electrical system, making sure all the repairs and adjustments that have taken place over the last few months have worked and the whole thing isn’t just going to catch fire!!

So now we’ve both officially finished work – Xander a week ago, and me yesterday as I was running my favourite event about how to track and identify signs of mammals at our site at Muckley Corner Common. A rather sad and momentous occasion, where we trapped mammals for the first time (2 wood mice) and I had to say goodbye to some of the wonderful volunteers that I’ve worked with over the last 18 months at the site, plus others I have been involved with over the last 2 years. After saying goodbyes for the last few weeks, I’ve been very good at holding back tears, but not yesterday. Leaving Muckley Corner Common behind is the hardest thing about leaving, as it’s a site I’ve worked hard on, with a brilliant Friends Group and wonderful people to work with. More than that, it’s a site where we’ve seen real change, how people can make a difference with just a few hours of hard work, how good partnerships create excellent results. It’s the one thing I can really pick out of my 2 years at the council and say I’m absolutely proud of, that I made a difference to. I only wish I could have stayed to see the next 2 years of planned works, to see how the site evolves and how the Friends Group evolves too.

So I’ve finished work? Well, sort of. I still have to pop in for a couple of hours tomorrow to finish up some filing that didn’t get done, and return a heap of equipment. But do I feel like I’ve finished? No, absolutely not. The hardest part has been disconnecting from everything and handing over my projects to my boss. I’m very lucky to love my job and believe in what I’m doing, and that’s a hard thing to walk away from. As much as I’ve tried over the last two weeks to drop actual work and focus on filing, sorting, writing lists of useful things to know & how I’ve done certain things (like running an event or a contract), and getting rid of the thousands of emails (saving only what’s really needed!), I’ve still been working. I guess it didn’t help that my final act was an event too! But letting go when you don’t want to is a very difficult thing to do. I’ve not reached the point that I usually reach where I just get annoyed and want to really get away from the job – only a few times have I thought “I’m glad I’ll not have to deal with that anymore”, and of course the lure and excitement for the travel sometimes overrides wanting to deal with work! But I know that once I finally walk away tomorrow that it will be over. I’m trying not to be sad, but it’s not easy.

We’re into full pack-up mode now. Furniture and bits & pieces have been sold so far through sending lists around friends and work. We’ve got rid of a few things, but not big items like the bed and sofabed/couch. Next step is to start advertising properly. We did 2 car boot sales last weekend that netted us £193.40 in profit. We were pretty amazed. Half of that was from £20-30 items, but a fair bit was from £3 or less junk! It’s a fascinating study of human behaviour and psychology, the car boot sale. People buy or look at stuff that surprise you, people don’t buy what would seem to be perfect for them, the search pattern that seems to run through people’s assessment of what’s on your stall and what they are willing to pay for items is very interesting. Our own behaviour of reducing prices on things that aren’t going, and trying to disconnect from our possessions and flog them cheaply is also fascinating! Another aspect to the psychology is weather – tons of people out last weekend because we’ve had at least a week of warm sunny weather – I know, in Britain!!! We were very lucky that our planned double-boot-sale weekend was granted such nice weather, as this weekend has been absolutely dismal and the car boot crowds drop in bad weather. I think someone could do a really interesting PhD on car boot sale psychology...

So the last month has been absorbed by things like ‘what can we get rid of now?’ and getting all our vaccinations sorted out. We started a test yesterday on the anti-malarial tablets we’ve decided to go with – mefloquine or Lariam. You take it once a week, so a lot less to carry and less expensive than Malarone, which has pretty much no side effects and we used for our world trip 10 years ago. Other options have been completely discounted – chloroquine suffers massive resistance everywhere, which is a shame because it’s very cheap! The only other option is doxycycline, an antibiotic, which for various reasons neither of us wants to touch, certainly not for 2 years of constant use! Mefloquine is reported to have bad psychological effects, which is why we’re testing it for a few weeks. However, it’s going to be difficult to know what is a side effect and what is just due to the trip! Direct from the patient information leaflet:
“unusual changes in your mood or behaviour, including: feeling worried or anxious, feeling depressed; feeling that people are against you; crying or wanting to cry for no reason; restlessness; new or worsening feelings of anger (aggression), forgetfulness, agitation, confusion, panic attacks; seeing or hearing things that aren’t really there (hallucinations); feeling that you want to kill yourself.”
OK, so a few don’t really count like wanting to kill ourselves, but we’ve both been going through a variety of these feelings lately and several are going to just get worse! Building up to a big trip like this leaves you feeling restless, agitated, worried and anxious - impatient to get everything dealt with and just hit the road, so you don’t have to keep dealing with the rubbish of packing up or work (or the feeling that your boss is out to get you like poor Xander!); worried that something is going to go wrong with the bike and it’s so close to departure date will we be able to get it all dealt with in time?; anger when something DOES go wrong; agitated because certain things can’t move forward till others are done. I’m feeling very down about leaving work and friends and people I know here and have worked with, I’m getting teary all the time, I’m worried we won’t have enough money for the trip, and I can’t seem to remember what I need to do, where I left something, or where I filed things at work! So as the next few weeks progress and we desperately try to get everything ready on the bike and everything else out of the house, make the last payments and receive last bits of money, we’re going to experience increasing amounts of certain behaviours noted as side effects!! It’s going to be interesting…

Preparation-wise, we’re getting closer. We’ve bought almost all the gear that we need e.g. new toiletry bag, hiking/everyday shoes, and things to turn out sleeping mats into rather comfy chairs, which will be much appreciated after days on the road when trying to keep this blog up-to-date! Xander has made a third attempt this week at making hard panniers to go on the tank, after concerns over size and safety of the last versions. These are converted jerry cans and seem to be coming along very well. He’s had to re-make the tent pannier after our current one suddenly decided to split. We still don’t know if we have enough room to put a pannier on the bike to carry our lovely new tripod, so it might be we have to stick with the brilliant but short Gorillapods (if you haven’t seen these, you’ve got to check them out! They grip onto anything and are nice and small, even the SLR cameras ones we’re using). Xander’s finally finished the very groovy tank box, or tank pod as he calls it, which gives us another lockable piece of luggage for everyday bits & pieces and food. We’ve also sewn a tarp to give us in-camp protection from either heat or rain, or just to make things feel a little more ‘homely’. Now if we can just be certain the bike is OK…..

We’ve had our shipping boxes delivered, which will be going home to my mum. Oh what fun it will be to pack those! Almost all our clothing is already in boxes or on the floor due to selling the clothes drawers, and same with a chunk of the DVDs. In some ways, it’s going to be very liberating – everything time I’ve packed before, I know I’m coming back or need to use things again straight away. This time we can get rid of so many things – why ship home socks and underwear you don’t need for 2 years? We’ll just buy new ones. While I’ll end up shipping back more than I really want to, between clothes that actually fit and books and things that aren’t worth throwing away and getting again, I’ll certainly be having a big clear out!

Speaking of which, I think it’s time I got started on some clearing out. We’re having the first of 2 leaving parties next weekend, the second just being drinks in Lichfield for all and sundry at the end of June. The first party will be an open house/BBQ/take-what-you-want event. We’ve known several people while we’ve been over here who have left. They have an evening where they just get people to take leftover food and alcohol and stuff to help empty the house. Thanks to these, we have things like vermouth, mulled wine spices, and a futon mattress! In our case, we’re also getting rid of a lot of household stuff, and hoping we might make some more money by either selling a few larger items or people leaving a donation if they wish for what they take. We’re at the point where we’re not sure if we have enough decent stuff to have another car boot sale (will decide after next weekend!) and whether to bother! So then it will be off to the charity shop to get of it all. While it feels a little early, we need to think about selling the car and that will limit our mobility, so the sooner stuff goes, the better!