I just have to say, Eric, that I had a chuckle about your description of Hawaii being “a pig eatin’, beer drinkin’, wave ridin’ culture”. One of my close friends is in the Army and is stationed in Hawaii. She was just home for a 2 week visit and said the exact same thing. She loves living there, she’s learned to surf, she purchased a motorcycle to ride around on, she has a great job at the local hospital (she’s a medic). The one thing she doesn’t like is the food. She says that they eat pork in EVERYTHING. After being back here for 2 weeks, she was more than ready to return to Hawaii, though. She loves it.

One other thing I took note of was your recommendation of Australia and New Zealand. Those are both places that top my list of places to visit. It’s nice to hear someone recommend them.

I love everyone’s interpretation of the “perfect” place. Truth is, there is no such place. But there has to be that place that suits us to a “T” and that we feel the most at peace with. For me, that is what I want to seek and find. That place that creates the greatest peace within me by living there. That coupled with the inner peace that I have should prove to be the closest thing to “perfect”.

The goal of this trip has always been to find an ideal place to settle down. But Ari, you’re right; we have often thought to ourselves . . . why settle? Well, for starters, I often miss my sewing room, and just the space in general. Jim missed his garage and tools. Also, we do have a storage unit full of furniture that we need to decide what to do with in a year. We can keep paying the rent on that, or we can find a new place for our stuff. Or we can sell it all and keep traveling. The truth is, we are no closer now to deciding than we were before we left. Like Vinnie Barbarino used to say, “I’m so confused!”

Lee is absolutely right; it’s hard to know that were you currently live is what you should stick with, if you’ve never seen much else. Being California natives who hadn’t seen much, we had to find out for ourselves what “ideal” means to us. We still don’t know. We now have the wonderful dilemma of having too many options to think about!

Awesome stuff Jeremy, Susan, Em, Lee, AKC and Rudy, you folks sound too cool, it would be great to hold an annual festival for those looking for greener pastures. Something like a Greener Pasture Folk Festival with beer, polka, and shaggy tales to be shared around a fire.

True confession folks, Berkeley is an awesome place with some really fine people as many of my neighbors were some of the most interesting people I’ve ever met, but alas, Hawaii was calling and after Hawaii it’s just so hard to slip back into a scene that can be a bit unruly at times. There was way too much pisstivity in the air as well and that’s not cool no matter what’s going on personally and professionally.

Susan, you brought up quite a few exotic ports, I can offer some insights into many of those places you’ve mentioned as I’ve lived in France, Germany, New York, and Hawaii (my family is from Germany). I’ve visited quite a few other locals and if you were ever to consider living outside the US I would suggest/urge that you consider Australia and New Zealand. Europe is fantastic on many levels but the cost of living and language skills needed might trip you up on occasion. The cultures are many but it takes a while to get into the Euro groove, I would say two to three years before you get it and it gets you. Awesome all around and I wouldn’t say no if you have the means but Europe is quite the nut to crack.

Hawaii is wonderful but be prepared to drive with your intellectual brakes on for while until you find like or semi-like minded people. The folks on the islands are focused less on their subscriptions to the New Yorker than to cooking the new porker. It’s a pig eatin’, beer drinkin’, wave ridin’ culture that just thrives freely on family and friends. I love it there and would still be on Kauai were it not for having sold my business and found myself committed to a wonderful lady whose got so much towering aloha and good will that I couldn’t say no to such a prize. She’s like the star on a Mercedes whose qualities are summed up by the very symbol alone; I think I’ll go give her kiss in a moment.

Anyway, progressive minded and considerate people have an open door wherever they go but I find the people of the southern hemisphere amazingly easy to spend time with.

Best regards to all,
Eric

….and it is easier to be more successful where people know you, love you and trust you.

happy traveling

Rudy

Jeremy’s point is well taken, why settle back down again at all? Seems like you have a great life now and you are building one hell of a community as you meet people along the way.

Just a matter of creating a way to make a good living regardless of where you are located at the time. Hell you don’t want to be tied down to a desk, look at me working here at the bay. I have lunch Al-Desk-O and read about your leisurely life.

Man I am looking forward to my sabbatical next year!!!
//A

I’ve seen most regions of America and, you know what, every time in the end we’ve come to the conclusion that while there are a lot of great places to live, nowhere, for us, beats Humboldt County. We love the weather, the art scene, the beaches and forests, the fact that we are less than six hours away from one of the greatest cities in the world, San Francisco and one of the most entertaining, Berkeley.

Compared to what we have seen and heard about what has happened in other areas when serious growth hits, like Walnut Creek, Healdsburg and the like, “stagnation” starts to look more like a stability that preserves a very special quality of life.

Factions exist everywhere. No place is perfect, whatever “perfect” is. A true utopia, however one chooses to define that, doesn’t exist any more than the perfect person and would probably be a bore if it or they did. Where to live and put down roots is kind of like choosing a life partner. The trick isn’t to find someone who is “perfect”, but whose normal human traits and twitches are ones that you believe you can live with over the long haul.

Humboldt County certainly has its “twitches” and some of them are things that would drive me crazy if I let them, but what is important to me is the healthy environment, support for the arts, how much the community cares about animals and the wonderful community of people, many of whom, like yourselves, came here from elsewhere and have immeasurably enriched our county. So many exciting things are happening on the “Green” front, too.

Frankly, I was bummed when I found out you’d sold up and left and I hope you come back. Clam Beach is calling you.

So sit up on Eric’s knee for a spell as I love this topic. I just moved from Hawaii back to the mainland back in March and in doing so have had to keep an open mind about the cultural shift that comes with such move. For some Hawaii is the only place on Earth to live in this life and quite possibly the next if there is a next and I don’t blame them as it’s an especially nice place. Golf, surfing, friends, Barbi-Ques, there were many reasons to stay, but the question still looms, where is the ideal place to live?

Right now I’m scratching my bearded chin whose salt and pepper hairs do much to make it look like I’m in deep thought, so here’s what I think, move towhere the people are least angry and have a smooth and easy perspective on matters while taking serious those things that are serious but who favor reason over reactivity. What you said about the SC town and the Virginia community rings true in so many communities within our borders (and beyond).

Before Kauai I owned a house in Berkeley, California, for some this was utopia but for those of us who paid the inordinately high property taxes, assessments, and other cult fees as so generously apportioned by city government it was like fighting locusts off of your life’s work. Homeowners were rough riding capitalists who have no regard for the environment and women’s rights and animal rights and Chinese factory workers who many times are children just slightly older than fetus. I get it, I get it, I get it – but back off as I have rights as well.

Some people within our edgy community keenly knew exactly how everyone else should behave and that they were the self-appointed standard bearers of the moral high ground. The very much grizzled and weary being I call me took great exception to such harsh damnation that I elected to sell my home and wave a dry-eyed good bye to such a colorful patch of California.

The wholesale endorsement of living up to its radical image took precedence over the needs of those who paid generously to maintain city coffers. Too often articles were written in the local paper bad-mouthing land-lords and home-owners as exploitive and insensitive capitalists. One person’s definition of exploitive and insensitive capitalism is sometimes so off the mark that they’re not even close to being wrong. The cost of owning and maintaining a house in Berkeley is prohibitive, couple that with needing a permit to rebuild a common fence that pre-existed I had said enough and when I say enough, well, hopefully someone is listening. But that’s my greivance and someone else will have their own, again, this was my issue so I took action and sold.

My girlfriend just had a friend visit us from MO. She told us they built a house, a barn, a deck and so on with no permits? The county doesn’t require permits? Nope not a one, you just have to be willing to live in MO. As you’ve both probably discovered, smaller communities can be a whole lot more tolerant in certain ways, in others they can be a bit harsh as well but if you can buy land you can sure make a whole lot more decisions without the approval of so many and this is a great thing.

Sometimes living among folks whose breezy hemp and “it’s all good” ways can be enticing especially if you’ve still got a bit of that dance still in you, but many times these same folks are just passing through and are not quite committed to the team (just yet), and this is OK. However, sounds like some of the communities you’ve visited and bore witness to their active pursuits to given projects speaks volumes, this should be your first hint as to whether people can get along. Less lip service and more lift service does much to make for a strong community.

On tiny Kauai you couldn’t help but get involved in some community project and or fund-raiser and besides, that was the best way to get to know your neighbors and the town at large. Sounds like a postcard laced with a protestant work ethic doesn’t it? No way and yes way as Kauai has many social ills but the local community is and was always ready to pitch in when needed.

You might miss certain aspects of Eureka living but if you’re on the fence then there must be something in your craw about the local culture that has you wondering if that truly is or isn’t the place?

The bottom line from my perspective is that you, Jim, and your hop-along Shepherd just need a place where the living is easy and the people equal to that way of being.

Over and out – Eric.