Time To Leave the Waiting Room

Five years later, and Emily's work at Santa Barbara is finished. Congratulations to her, both on completion of the Ph.D. and the visiting professor job she is headed toward at Texas A&M International University!

We have had so much fun on the many visits to beautiful Santa Barbara between 2016 and 2020, which often served as a launching pad to explore the fantastic state of California. Because of its range of geographical features, I truly do feel California is the most beautiful state: you pretty much have it all here! A few special highlights have been:

Experiencing being among the Redwoods

Can you find "Waldo" in each picture?

Santa Barbara Harbor Sails and Cruises

We toured with Santa Barbara Sailing twice, such a nice crew and experience!

Whale watching! Click here if you'd like to see a 5 minute video.

Touring the Charles Schulz Museum

This is a must for any Peanuts fan. I would definitely love to return.

Cruising from the West Coast and Staying on the Queen Mary

Mexican Riviera

The Queen Mary

Sail to Catalina Island and Ensenada. Emily and I enjoy tea time and trivia.

Little did we know at the beginning of 2020, when we were off to start our scouting trip to Europe to check out our possible retirement homes, that we would end up spending most of 2020 and half of 2021 living in Santa Barbara! I always said I would love to live here! Many different friends have also told us that we 'belong' in California, it fits. I do so love this area and would definitely like to live here if we were planning to stay in the States. As of now, our desire remains to live abroad.

Back in 2016, when we learned that Emily would live here and that we would be visiting often, we compiled a very large bucket list. We've had so many fun trips and experiences, but there are a few items we are disappointed to not have achieved:

• Visiting Channel Islands National Park. Technically, we have visited the Channel Islands, as we had the cruise stop at Catalina Island, which is the southernmost island in the chain. However, we had hoped to take the ferry to one of the islands that make up the park. We certainly have enjoyed views of the Channel Islands off in the distance!
• Visit the Coppola Winery and rent a cabina by the pool. This sounded like the perfect winery experience, where you don't have to worry about drinking too much, since you lounge around all day! There is also a good bit of memorabilia from the Godfather films, and we like many of Coppola's wines. I read recently that the pool just re-opened, but now we are too far away. Maybe some day!
• Completing the Mission Mission. We had as a goal to visit all of California's 21 missions during the time Emily was here working on her degree. The final 6 that we had reserved for this last year were closed and some may still be, I'm not sure! 

In our larger scheme for 20/21, we had planned to be back from Christmas 2020 through Emily's graduation. During that time, we had planned to spend a month in Hawaii (bucket list) and 1-2 months in Puerto Vallarta, another potential retirement destination. While both of these places were open at some point during our stay, we didn't feel it was safe or ethical to travel to either place during the pandemic.

Please don't interpret my discussion above as complaining or regrets. I simply want to give an idea of how our plans shifted. In fact, we had a pretty awesome first year of retirement and consider ourselves extremely fortunate to have spent the pandemic lockdown / restriction time in what for many is a prime vacation destination! It was a wonderful 'waiting room,' and we made and enhanced treasured friendships here during this time, as well.

Socially-distanced tailgating picnic with friends Sev and Joel

Hanging out with friends Maddie, Kristen, and Nancy

Celebratory sweets and coffee for Dr. Munk

Van Dosen - Williams descendants meet-up

Meeting our cousins Shannon and Megyn

Visiting our friend Ann in Chico

During the 'restricted' time, we also were able to check off a few more items from the bucket list.

See the Animals at the Santa Barbara Zoo. I especially enjoyed seeing the growth of the babies born during our stay. 

Visit the Queen of the Missions. Although we had seen the Mission on a previous visit with Emily, we enjoyed popping by (it was in our neighborhood for 2 Airbnbs) to check it out at different seasons, as well as visiting the rose garden.

Visit the Andree Clark Bird Refuge. While researching the bird sanctuary, I came to learn about Bellosguardo and its original owner Huguette Clark. Cousin GG told me about a book called Empty Mansions that tells the fascinating story of Huguette. Bellosguardo was one of her mansions, always kept in the ready for a visit, that she never visited. It is a place frozen in time. The property, which sits on a bluff overlooking the Santa Barbara bay, is now owned by a non-profit. After reading the book, I wanted to get a peek at the property, which is difficult to see. However, I discovered you can see it fairly well from the Santa Barbara Cemetery. (While there, we also explored the cemetery. It has a view "to die for.") Bellosguardo overlooks the Bird Sanctuary, which honors Huguette's sister Andree. We went here several times for walks. 

At the Bird Refuge

Bellosguardo and its approximate view

Speaking of cemeteries, a little digression ... I had been working on resolving one of John's DNA matches, Elizabeth Flores, in his Ragona line (this is the line of his maternal grandfather Giovanni Impellizzeri's mother).

Elizbeth Flores and her siblings Mamie Rose Ann (d), Frank (d), and Maria (d)

As I built that portion of the tree, I discovered that the sister, Mamie Rose Ann Flores, was buried near here, right down the road from one of our favorite wineries. So, on a trip to Buttonwood, we decided to try and find Mamie ... and we did! We paid our respects, and I uploaded photos of hers and her husband's graves to findagrave. 

Rose Ann lived for a time in Solvang, where she owned an art gallery. When I was filling out her information a bit more, I had a sad discovery: her daughter and granddaughter had died at a young age on the same day. I thought perhaps a car accident? When I looked up the obituary, I was sad to see that the spouse also died; they had been in a boating accident. I also realized that I had seen the surname at the same cemetery, near Mamie's plot. So, back again to Ballard, California. We again paid our respects, and I uploaded the photos and requested the memorials be linked so the family could be 'reunited' on findagrave. 

Rose Ann is John's 5th cousin, and her daughter Lynn and granddaughter Nicole his 5x1 and 5x2. They have the shared ancestors Pietro Sclafani and Girolama Mangiapane, of Cinisi, Palermo, Sicily. Like many Sicilians who came to America, they immigrated to the central California coast. Although the majority who did this came to work in the fishing industry, Mamie's father was the eventual owner of a butcher shop in Monterey, as indicated in the 1930 census. Mamie's mother, Girolama Ventimiglia (4x1) immigrated from San Vito lo Capo, Trapani, Sicily in 1929. History is all around! While our exploration had a sad tinge to it, we had a little chuckle at another headstone in the cemetery. I think it must be the best headstone ever!

Back to the waiting room...

A major highlight of pandemic year living has been living at the coast. I've gone to the beach multiple days a week, and on the days I haven't gone, I enjoyed its beauty while driving around. I truly believe that the sea air provides health benefits, and having access to this beautiful environment that brings me such pleasure and peacefulness has been a true blessing. Here are some of my favorite beach photos.

The natural beauty is awe-inspiring!

Now, all of that seems, and mostly was, like a 'vacation,' but we've still had to deal with the regular aspects of life. For example, John and I needed a barber, and I needed a massage therapist.  We were grateful to find great ones of both. We voted and did our taxes. We all needed eye exams and new glasses. Marina needed a couple of rounds of maintenance, as well as new tires.

Zenni rocks, 5 pairs of glasses (including 2 with progressive lenses) for $340!

Marina looking spiffy with her new shoes.

Speaking of Marina, we discovered that she had many twins in Santa Barbara. These are just a couple of the many we saw. Fun! Honda Fits are very popular in Santa Barbara. We were sad to hear that 2020 is the last year for US production. It's such a great car, I don't understand this decision. Maybe we will get to buy one when we live abroad?

John was taking a piccie of me with the two cars when the owners came up, so we decided to get everyone in the shot. On the road, when we pulled up next to the twin, the owner said, "You have good taste in cars." We responded, "You too!" and we all laughed together before the light changed.

We had managed to escape interacting with the health care system until April, when I experienced a bad episode of vertigo, followed by a very painful earache. After a useless trip to a walk-in clinic (that doc was cray-cray!), I secured an appointment with a fabulous ENT. After a long diagnostic consultation, her conclusion is that I have migraine! Now, I don't get the typical headaches (at least I thought I didn't - I was thinking I had sinus headache problems, a common misdiagnosis with migraine), but I have had problems with other symptoms - sinus, dizziness, earaches, etc. - which can be expressions of migraine. Dr. Tylor did want me to go for some tests to rule out other potential explanations. Since I would be leaving Santa Barbara shortly, she also felt it would be good to have all of those diagnostic test results to take with me to the next place. 

My first assessment was a hearing test to rule out any physical problems in my ears. I learned that I have some hearing loss, a smidge more than normal. Boo. Interestingly, I found that my hearing for high pitches is quite above normal, described as hyper. This finally explains why many sopranos, violins, and crystal bowls hurt my ears! Secondly, I was off to the physical therapist to assess whether I had TMJ. Fortunately, that was ruled out, and I got some great therapy that helped with chronic problems in my head and neck. Additionally, after telling the PT about a previous shoulder injury, he sent me to the pool for two sessions to learn a whole series of exercises I can take with me to do in the pool. Yay! The final test was an MRI. I really struggled with deciding to do this one. I have very bad claustrophobia (like panic attack territory), and with our high deductible health care plan, the test was going to be very expensive. After consultation and with support from John and dear friend Tamar, as well as talking with the technician about an open MRI, I braved up and had the test. 

The MRI machine

Now, I won't say it was a great experience, but with the machine being open and a little help from Valium the doc gave me, I made it through. The cool aspect was being given the 376 generated images!

My Brain!

Happily, all of the tests ruled out alternate causes for my presenting issue, so my focus now is on identifying and avoiding triggers for migraine symptoms. I learned that migraine sufferers have unique sets of triggers that, when accumulating to the individual's threshold, will trigger the symptoms. Some triggers (like barometric pressure for me) you cannot do anything about, while others (for example, particular foods and stress) you have more control over. If you want to learn more about this, just drop me a note and I'll send you an excellent article on the topic by a doctor at UC Irvine.

So, what's next for the Vagabonds? I know the answer to that for the immediate future. 

On June 10, the movers came to pack up the cube, while we packed up Marina. Everything fit!

We then headed down to Mission Viejo, where we've been staying with my cousin Gerlyn for a couple of weeks. I had wanted to spend a bit more time with her, as well as to connect with another cousin in Irvine, and a friend in LA, before we leave California, which we did, in addition to a few other fun activities!

So excited to finally meet cousin Shannon, and her cute daughter Megyn, after several years of chatting over email. Shannon and I share 3rd great grand-parents (4th for Emily and Megyn) Jonathan Wright + Mary Sackett. Jonathan, whose family were immigrants from the Yorkshire region of England, died somewhat young, as a POW in Kentucky during the Civil War. Mary's family was also from England, but many, many generations further back. Shannon and Megyn descend from their son Edward, and Emily and I descend from their daughter Mary Jane. We are 4th cousins and Emily and Megyn 5th cousins.

Riding the Pacific Surfliner ... Bucket List! We rode to and fro Irvine - San Diego and spent the afternoon in San Diego meandering around.

Happy Father's Day to John!

Cool sculpture in a park near the waterfront: Arbre de Serpents. I thought it looked like Mike's girlfriend in Monsters, Inc.! John finally made it to Italy ... Little Italy, that is.

Visit to the Pacific Marine Mammal Center, where they rescue, rehabilitate and release sea lions and seals. Here our docents show us the plastics removed from the stomach of one mammal. 

Meeting up with our friend Charlie in Long Beach. The Queen Mary and Carnival Miracle docked in the background. I look forward to when we can get back to cruising. I've been in dry dock too long!

Happy Anniversary to Us! Happy Birthday to Emily!

Enjoyed our extra time with cousin Gerlyn, cheers!

When we depart here on June 25, we are off for a 4-day drive to Laredo, Texas. Upon arrival, we'll stay in an AirBnB while Emily apartment hunts and gets her new home set up. She starts her new job in August. 

Beyond that, as a friend once said ... Who the Hell Knows! The world, or at least the U.S., is our oyster for the next time period. There is still too much uncertainty and confusion about getting to Europe, despite the media's promotion of "Europe opening for summer." We will just keep watching and adjusting plans accordingly. However, we do know that it is time to emerge from our pandemic cocoon and leave our waiting room. Onward!

Vagabond Outtake: This is the downside of Santa Barbara County Beaches. Bring on the Goo Gone!