Being unemployed in Kent is actually not that bad a gig, as gigs go. I was having a good time geocaching - visiting my friends the sentinel steers, finding Napoleonic area forts and such, driving and traipsing around the beautiful countryside. But getting a job to support myself and the family did not appear to be on the horizon. Not that I wasn't trying. There just were not that many openinigs, and I was not quite ready to start my own company there (or anywhere, for that matter). So when my wife said she was going back to the U.S. in August and asked if I wanted to do so as well, the decision to "go home" was a rather easy one to make. But go where?
Pfizer's repatriation package would take us back to our point of origin, Ann Arbor, MI, or anywhere less expensive. Ann Arbor is not exactly a hot-bed of employment opportunity. In fact, the only hot-bed of opportunity for a wandering enzymologist that fits the "less expensive than going back to Ann Arbor" description is probably Boston, MA. I had an interview (via Skype) with a small company there, but it did not lead to anything. So we weighed our options - move to Boston directly, or go "back home" to Ann Arbor.
In the end, Ann Arbor won out because my wife was able to re-capture her part-time teaching job at Washtenaw Community College, teaching general chemistry to nursing students, and her part-time clerk position at a local knitting supply store. I got back in touch with my former colleagues at the University of Michigan and was invited to drop by when I got to town. I also secured an interview with a medical writing company, so the decision was made. We're going home.
The logistics of going home are, in the abstract, quite simple. I am the advance party, carrying some clohtes and a laptop computer. I leave the UK on mid-July, rent a car and stay with friends in Ann Arbor. I know the drill. First, establish communications (get a cell phone number, establish a fresh Skype account). Next, get a car and return the rental (2000 Honda Accord knick-named Swamp Critter). Finally, find a place to live that is large enough to house everyone and stash our stuff. Then there are the amenities of getting the home fitted with internet and cable television. Skip the home phone. While this is going on in the U.S., my wife ships the household goods , sells our little VW Golf (my Shuttle Craft) installs our daughter in the home of friends who will keep her while she finishes her last year of high school, and then flies back to the US to join me. Simples.
But we are still not home, entirely. It will be hard to say we are home until we have steady jobs (I'm working temporarily with my former University colleagues, and my wife is on a quarter-to-quarter basis with the community college), and our daughter is home, and I have planted my first geocache. Its taking so long because I want to build a fake birdhouse cache, and I just haven't gotten around to it. Lets hope it doesn't become another parting gift....
Monday 4 April 2011
Leaving a little gift
One more English geocaching post. Every geocacher should set out their own caches. That's how the game works! The ideal time to do this is when you first arrive at a place that you will call home, because you should be there to take care of this. Of course, that is not what I have done. With my departure from the UK imminent, and knowing that I was leaving a geocaching friend behind, I decided to establish a cache on Thanet as a parting gift, although this is a bit strong - there is still a possibility I will return.
But where? So many of the caches I had encountered were clever as caches, or in interesting places, or both. My friend and I finally decided that a great place to put the cache would be at a particularly interesting pub that we visited from time to time - The Brown Jug. Evidence of the existence of the Brown Jug goes back to 1725, and it probably served as a farm cottage well before then. There is further evidence that the Inn served as a mess hall and rallying point for militia at the turn of the 18th century and as a halfway house on the road between Ramsgate and Broadstairs in the 19th century. We also liked the owner/operator (she had been there for 50 years!) and the beer! So I got some stuff together and we stuffed the cache into some bushes across the street. It was published on June 27th of 2010 and has, at this point, been found by 37 geocachers (and missed by 3). I hope it has brought the place some business. Drop by if you are in the neighborhood. They say there is a ghost that lives in the garden (the cache is called "Re-routing Ramsgate" http://www.geocaching.com/seek/cache_details.aspx?guid=78cca772-33dd-4018-b74a-cdb3e2e7f239)
But where? So many of the caches I had encountered were clever as caches, or in interesting places, or both. My friend and I finally decided that a great place to put the cache would be at a particularly interesting pub that we visited from time to time - The Brown Jug. Evidence of the existence of the Brown Jug goes back to 1725, and it probably served as a farm cottage well before then. There is further evidence that the Inn served as a mess hall and rallying point for militia at the turn of the 18th century and as a halfway house on the road between Ramsgate and Broadstairs in the 19th century. We also liked the owner/operator (she had been there for 50 years!) and the beer! So I got some stuff together and we stuffed the cache into some bushes across the street. It was published on June 27th of 2010 and has, at this point, been found by 37 geocachers (and missed by 3). I hope it has brought the place some business. Drop by if you are in the neighborhood. They say there is a ghost that lives in the garden (the cache is called "Re-routing Ramsgate" http://www.geocaching.com/seek/cache_details.aspx?guid=78cca772-33dd-4018-b74a-cdb3e2e7f239)
The Spiritual Side
This post was originally written many months ago and for reasons beyond my recollection, never posted. It may be the last time I will post about geocaching adventure in Kent for quite a while, so I'll go ahead and post it for posterity.
We started the geocaching stories with the goal of finding all the geocaches in Thanet - a goal filled with good intentions and guided by a spreadsheet, but with a vague time constraint. I described the first cache, then a couple of multicaches in Ramsgate, and then jumped off to other places and topics. So anywhay, lets get back to finding all the geocaches in Thanet.
With three found and 40 to go, there was a range of possibilities - where next? It reminded me of my first solo trip to Sandwich, where I was to begin working at the Pfizer Ltd. research facility. The objective of the trip was to meet some of my future co-workers, and to find a place for my family to live when we first arrived. It didn't take long to realize that real estate in England is a totally different experience than anything I had ever encountered. Where to start ? The questions started reasonable enough - how many rooms do you need? I figured they meant bedrooms, but as it turns out, the numbers and types of rooms are the keys to finding a place. Nowhere in any concersation about finding, buying, or selling a house or apartment in the UK have I heard anyone mention the size (as in square feet or square meters) of a property.
With two teenage daughters and in-laws that visit frequently, we wanted 4 bedroons, so that ruled out the typical flat (apartment) in this area. It also ruled out a typical bungalo which, being a single story, perhpas with an attic extension, never has 4 bedrooms of significant size. The next up were the terraced houses. They remind me of the brownstones in the Back Bay of Boston. These three-story buildings have three or four units that can be quite large inside. The end units tend to be a bit bigger than the center units, but the center unit costs less to heat. Next up the housing ladder are the semi-detatched houses, which can be very much like terraced houses, but have only two units per structure. Finally come the detatched houses, which can be relatively small (like the bungalo) or quite large. As it turns out, at any one time there are relatively few four-plus bedroom places available for rent, so I went to see as many of them as I could. The lack of certain amenities was a bit disconcerting. Getting the four bedrooms plus more than one bathroom plus off-street parking put us in a price range beyond my expectations, so I decided to forgo the off-street parking. There were a few places to visit, but the one that really caught my attention was in the town of Birchington-on-sea. Parking on the street would have been tricky, but there was a 3 story detached house with everything else one could want, including a back yard (garden) that went back for 150 feet or so and was beautifully landscaped. I registered with the estate agent (realtor) handling the property and left at the end of the week expecting to live in Birchington-on-sea for about 1050 pounds per month ($2,100 at that time). As it turns out, the landlord decided not to rent the place after all, and we had to settle for a mid-terrace with five bedrooms, but just one bathroom and no off-street parking in Ramsgate; at a cost of 850 ppcm (pounds per calendar month) or about $1700. Alls well that ends well, because although I liked Birchington, the girls hated the "small, isolated place full of old people".
Anyway, with three geocaches in hand, I looked to Birchington-on-sea and found - no geocaches. That's right, the old folks of Birchington apparently have no idea what geocaching is, and to this day there are no caches within the confines of either Birchington or Birchington-on-sea. So I looked for the closest cache and found "The spiritual side of me". I was intrigued by what my British cousins would consider spiritual, so I went to visit. It was by the side of the sea: a small cahe stashed in a hedge with a view of the sea. It took me a llittle while to find the cache, as I had to dig around in the trash that had been tossed in the hedge, and it was hard to be inconspicuous, but after a little bit it was mine.
The longer I think about it, the less I want to lump my British cousins together as a single entity. Apparently this person found sitting by the sea a spiritual experience. There were others who found their spiritual experiences in other ways and places. You might want to look up "ZonePet2 - Silver Machine", a cache along Thanet way that marks the grave of the man who wrote the song "Silver Machine" (Robert Calvert). Apparently Rober's freind "PetZone" thought his gravesite lonely and in need of visitors.
We started the geocaching stories with the goal of finding all the geocaches in Thanet - a goal filled with good intentions and guided by a spreadsheet, but with a vague time constraint. I described the first cache, then a couple of multicaches in Ramsgate, and then jumped off to other places and topics. So anywhay, lets get back to finding all the geocaches in Thanet.
With three found and 40 to go, there was a range of possibilities - where next? It reminded me of my first solo trip to Sandwich, where I was to begin working at the Pfizer Ltd. research facility. The objective of the trip was to meet some of my future co-workers, and to find a place for my family to live when we first arrived. It didn't take long to realize that real estate in England is a totally different experience than anything I had ever encountered. Where to start ? The questions started reasonable enough - how many rooms do you need? I figured they meant bedrooms, but as it turns out, the numbers and types of rooms are the keys to finding a place. Nowhere in any concersation about finding, buying, or selling a house or apartment in the UK have I heard anyone mention the size (as in square feet or square meters) of a property.
With two teenage daughters and in-laws that visit frequently, we wanted 4 bedroons, so that ruled out the typical flat (apartment) in this area. It also ruled out a typical bungalo which, being a single story, perhpas with an attic extension, never has 4 bedrooms of significant size. The next up were the terraced houses. They remind me of the brownstones in the Back Bay of Boston. These three-story buildings have three or four units that can be quite large inside. The end units tend to be a bit bigger than the center units, but the center unit costs less to heat. Next up the housing ladder are the semi-detatched houses, which can be very much like terraced houses, but have only two units per structure. Finally come the detatched houses, which can be relatively small (like the bungalo) or quite large. As it turns out, at any one time there are relatively few four-plus bedroom places available for rent, so I went to see as many of them as I could. The lack of certain amenities was a bit disconcerting. Getting the four bedrooms plus more than one bathroom plus off-street parking put us in a price range beyond my expectations, so I decided to forgo the off-street parking. There were a few places to visit, but the one that really caught my attention was in the town of Birchington-on-sea. Parking on the street would have been tricky, but there was a 3 story detached house with everything else one could want, including a back yard (garden) that went back for 150 feet or so and was beautifully landscaped. I registered with the estate agent (realtor) handling the property and left at the end of the week expecting to live in Birchington-on-sea for about 1050 pounds per month ($2,100 at that time). As it turns out, the landlord decided not to rent the place after all, and we had to settle for a mid-terrace with five bedrooms, but just one bathroom and no off-street parking in Ramsgate; at a cost of 850 ppcm (pounds per calendar month) or about $1700. Alls well that ends well, because although I liked Birchington, the girls hated the "small, isolated place full of old people".
Anyway, with three geocaches in hand, I looked to Birchington-on-sea and found - no geocaches. That's right, the old folks of Birchington apparently have no idea what geocaching is, and to this day there are no caches within the confines of either Birchington or Birchington-on-sea. So I looked for the closest cache and found "The spiritual side of me". I was intrigued by what my British cousins would consider spiritual, so I went to visit. It was by the side of the sea: a small cahe stashed in a hedge with a view of the sea. It took me a llittle while to find the cache, as I had to dig around in the trash that had been tossed in the hedge, and it was hard to be inconspicuous, but after a little bit it was mine.
The longer I think about it, the less I want to lump my British cousins together as a single entity. Apparently this person found sitting by the sea a spiritual experience. There were others who found their spiritual experiences in other ways and places. You might want to look up "ZonePet2 - Silver Machine", a cache along Thanet way that marks the grave of the man who wrote the song "Silver Machine" (Robert Calvert). Apparently Rober's freind "PetZone" thought his gravesite lonely and in need of visitors.
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