Day 1. May 06, 2019. Tacoma Washington. The Adventure Begins

Hey there...my names Craig...and this is my podcast. ...Life out There.

So....ahh....so lets just cut to the chase and address those just address those burning questions of yours right out of the gate!

Craig? Who the hell am I? And a podcast??

Yea...good questions!

Who the hell am I? I'm just a guy....I'm a guy like you! A guy that spent his entire life just following the rules.

You know....be a good kid....respect your elders...do unto others....be seen and not heard yep...I'm a boomer! get good grades, better your education, get a job, make good money get a better job, make more money...just followin the rules....playin from the playbook....you know....societal norms.....until....wait wait wait.....except for that whole "meet someone, fall in love, get married, have babies...babies have babies....holidays at the inlaws....nah nah nah.....skipped all that......talk more about that later maybe!

But in all other aspects....just following the rules! Until one day when I thought....Nah! I don't want to follow the rules! This is stupid!

Remember it like it was yesterday.....17th day straight without a day off.....draggin my ass outta bed at 4:30 in the mornin.....and all the way to work thinking....."What are you doin?" Why?....Is this...really your plan? You're going to do this...for the next 20 some years.... So you can stuff a bunch of money in the bank, retire, live out your golden years and have fun??

Assuming in 20 years your even able....willing....have the energy...have the want to....hell.....assuming your even still alive? THEN your gonna go have fun??

Nah....

I'm gonna go have fun NOW. Sell everything...buy an old RV....pack the dog...the cat....all my worldly possessions into the old RV and hit the road! I had decided that I not longer wanted to have stuff.....I wanted to do stuff! see stuff....experience stuff

And this is that story....it's basically me reading my journal and blog. As I record the first episode of this podcast...I am 1,692 days in. Coming on 5 years into this adventure I've seen 34 states....some 148 blog entries....countless random thoughts and clocked over 33 thousand miles on the old RV......I feel like I'm just gettin started!

Why a podcast? Probably just me thinking ahead....maybe even being a little lazy. I was recently introduced to podcasts by friends at work. They (wait wait wait....I knew about podcasts....I knew they existed.....I just hadn't paid any attention to them....certainly had not listened to any)....but as I listened to recommendations...and discovering my own....I began thinking....wait a minute! This is way easier! Way easier than the journaling and blogging I had been doing.

I can pick up my phone...or plug a microphone into my laptop and start recording

The reality is....I am picturing older me....20 some odd years from now when I want to remember....reminisce about where I was....what I was doin....who I was doin it with and why I was doin it......what was in my head.....and in the world.....

WAY easier to just open this thing up and let ME....tell ME....about where I was, what I was doin....who I was doin it with and why I was doin it.....what was in head ..... and in the world.

Certainly easier than old me gruntin up out of my recliner to find the damn pair of glasses or magnifying glass I lost again...and try to read some blog post I wrote 20 years ago!

So there ya have it....Craig has a podcast.....TADA!!

Oh,,,,Oh....and one other thing.....did I mention that there is a dog and a cat in here with me? ....interruptions and strange noises... They are not just likely....they are probable. Damn little chatter box Billie (that's the cat) has impeccable timing when deciding it is time for him to be the center of the universes....so there is that!

All that said.....I guess I should probably start at the beginning....where this whole adventure started

Tacoma Washington

I almost can't believe I've done it....handed the keys to the house over to the new owner....introduced him to the neighbors.....now sittin here in the driveway contemplating what direction we will go....

Preparing to leave this place ...it's sorta hard not to start reflecting back on the fact that I have spent the last 23 years of my life here.

And I should put that in perspective.....For many....maybe even most....spending half your life in the same place is not big deal...maybe even the norm....I dunno...but for me...not so normal. A little while back I was having a conversation with a friend...we were talking about how much we had moved around in life. We decided to sit down and make a list of all the places we had lived from birth to present. My buddy had grown up as a "navy brat" so his family moved around a lot. A couple minutes in he had written down 12 places! Wow... a lot....pretty impressive actually....he had lived in 4 different countries and 5 different states. Me....I was still writing a couple minutes later and counted 22 different places! Dang.....I've moved around a lot! I also thought....wow....for a guy like me to spend 23 years in the same place.....that's gotta be a pretty special place.....and you know what? It is!

Let's just start with the Puget Sound in general. A incredibly beautiful geological wonder formed, depending on where you read...some 10 to 50 million years ago. The result of land mass...or plates shifting and crunching into one another...combined with prehistoric glacial activity cutting deep into the North American continent where what is now Washington State. The result is a saltwater inlet that spans over 1000 square miles of water surface, 1300 miles of coastline. Spanning over 100 miles from Deception Pass at the north end to Olympia, the state capital...at the southern tip. And it is stunning. The area was first discovered by the British in the late 1700's...and named for a British naval officer. The Brits...as they did back in the day..."Claimed it as their own. It remained a British territory until the mid 1800's when the Oregon Treaty was signed, making it a territory of the United States. A few decades later Washington was granted statehood. We now know that some 5000 years prior to the arrival of the British...the area had been inhabited by multiple Native American tribes.

As beautiful as it is to view from any of the coastline...one of my favorite adventures will always be hoppin on the boat for a day....a weekend...or even a week for a trip to the San Juan's and back...it just doesn't get much better than a day on the Puget Sound....Oh,,,,and fun fact...The Puget Sound is the second largest estuary in the US...second only to Chesapeake Bay on the East Coast.

My adventure in Washington state began in1996 when I transferred to the area with a job and bought a home in Lakebay Washington.

Lakebay is a sleepy little rural community on the southern end of the Key Peninsula. 17 miles southwest I think of Gig Harbor. On a map...its just two miles across the water from the Key Peninsula to Olympia. If you want to get to Olympia...and you don't have a boat...you have to get in a car and drive for an hour or so...around the water.

I had no idea the adventure this place would offer...not to mention the lifelong friends I would make here.

Like so many areas in this part of the country....Lakebay was born out of a thriving logging industry In the 1800's. But unique to this area....it began to transition in the 1900s into a small resort community for Seattle and Tacoma residents seeking a getaway. At the time, the only access to the area was via boat, making it exclusive and attractive to the affluent. In fact...the property I had purchased had been a cabin retreat for one of those Seattle couples throughout the 60's and 70's.

Things in the area would begin a transition again when the state built the first Tacoma Narrows bridge. Sadly....Less than 5 months after it opened it would be nicknamed Galloping Gertie....you can check out online footage of the bridge being pummeled by an 80 mph storm and crashing down into the Puget Sound. The area would have to wait nearly a decade for its replacement to open. But that bridge literally opened up a whole new era of growth for the entire peninsula.

It was 2002 when I decided I needed to cut the commute time so I rented the place out in Lakebay and moved to Gig Harbor.

Not unlike Lakebay...Gig Harbor came with a rich history of its own. The harbor itself was discovered in the mid 1800s by the Wilkes Expedition...the expedition was looking for shelter during a storm when they came across the well hidden entrance to the harbor....the harbor would later be named after the type of vessel being used by the expedition, which at the time, was called a "captains gig" Upon their arrival the expedition encountered member of the Puyallup tribe who had maintained a base camp at the head of the harbor for literally centuries....relying on the waters of the harbor for transportation and fishing.

There is a super cool museum in Gig Harbor called the Harbor History Museum that details the steady growth and activity in the area from its discovery...to present day. The entire area's popularity has grown out of the combination of seclusion and beauty...combined with the fact that Tacoma and Seattle are well within reach....thanks to the Tacoma Narrows Bridge...well...now there is two of them....and multiple access points via the Washington State Ferry System.

For me....the popularity of the area is obvious in the population numbers. When I moved to Washington...Gig harbor had a population of just over 5k and only two exits off of hiway 16....any other access had be be via water or a few backroads. As I leave Washington...the population of Gig Harbor is nearing 11k....a major freeway expansion done during the building of the second Narrows bridge...well...technically third I guess....but the first one is still under water...so...but that freeway expansion with two bridges now provides 4 exits from the freeway and doubling the towns growth in just the last decade. It is clear that folks wanna live here...and it takes little more than a walk around the harbor to figure out why!

Speaking of the second Narrows Bridge...the bridge is actually what spurred my move to Tacoma. The bridge was scheduled to open in July 2007....and it was going to be a toll bridge. Did some quick math in my head and quickly decided I had little desire to spend a grand a year to drive across a bridge and go to work...so rented out the house in Gig harbor and found the little house in which I would begin my Tacoma adventure....ahhh....that house on B street!

The house I would never "finish"! Another one of those great life lessons that it took this thick headed nutball three shots at to learn....."If I ever walk into a house and think...."this would be really cool if....." I should really just turn around and walk out....in my experience...achieving that "IF" is a tough thing to do when living in....working in....and trying to create the perfect home.

I'm not gonna lie....I was pretty anxious....even skeptical about the move to Tacoma. I had spent my time in Washington focusing on staying away from big cities. My time in California and Hawaii had taught me that I hadn't appreciated growing up in small town America. I was that stereotypical kid that spent his entire life waiting for the day I could leave home....which I did the day after I graduated high school....and head for the big city. By the time I got to Washington...I had spent 14 years in nothing but big cities. Starting in Eugene....they only got bigger! Honolulu....Los Angeles...San Francisco...work trips to Chicago....Phoenix....vacations to New York....big cities were everywhere...and I was big citied out! So the thought of moving to a city of just over 180k? Granted...it was no Los Angeles....but it was big enough to be a little scary.

But I gotta say....my little house on B Street....and the "Emerald City" (Tacoma's nick name) quickly put those concerns to rest. Tacoma at the time...for me....had managed to strike the perfect balance between small community life...and just enough big city to put most everything within reach! If Tacoma didn't have it....30 or 40 miles up the road....Seattle probably did. The internet was just taking off....so If I needed a mall....I had several to choose from! Want to go see a comedy club....check. Want to go to a movie...take your pick! Want to go antique shopping and have dozens of shops to choose from....check! Want to take walk down the hill on a summer morning for a cup of coffee and a walk along the pier and check out the glass museum....check! Want to check out an awesome meal in a restaurant with incredible views of the city....or on the waterfront....check! Want to throw a kayak on the car and hit the water 5 minutes away?....and a personal favorite....that ten-minute bike ride to the neighborhood tavern....it's called Top of Tacoma ....and their appetizers are amazing!....check! I could sit on my back deck and watch the barges come in and out of the Port of Tacoma...the nations 8th busiest seaport....I could also see the Top of the Tacoma Dome from that same deck....one of the Largest wooden domed structures in the world....150ft tall with a seating capacity of over 23k. Can't count the number of concerts....car shows and home shows I went to at the Tdome. I could also walk to the LeMay Car Museum....one of the worlds largest, 4 stories of cars stacked up in that place. Finally...the countless hours I spent walking around the hood with my little four legged buddy Dougie! We explored nearly every nook and cranny of our little piece of Tacoma. It was literally all there....and more. I lived in that house on B street in for nearly 14 years and I know there is still a ton I haven't seen.

All this in a town that sprung up in the 1870s as a major player in the logging industry as well as the development of the Northern Pacific Railroad. The town grew rapidly because of abundant natural resources as well as its strategic location at the southern end of the Puget Sound. I think my affinity for Tacoma began almost subliminally...during a tour in Seattle called the "Underground City" Tour. It was a favorite when friends from around the country would visit the PNW...and my little piece of it for the first time. The tour does a great job of telling the story of Seattle...and even Tacoma's past. For many years...there was a fierce rivalry between Tacoma and Seattle...who would win out in a contest to win the business and traffic of a rapidly growing shipping trade. The shipping lanes between Alaska and California were growing exponentially. At times...Tacoma almost won out and became Seattle....not in name...but in economic dominance. Until a colorful turn of events. A group of creative thinkers in Seattle...decided, through aggressive taxation policies around a thriving new trade in the area....that they would call Seamstresses. I guess....all those sailors cruising through Elliot Bay...had a great deal of "sewing" that they needed done during their brief stop. This sudden burst in taxation revenue....in the end....helped push Seattle over the hump...and the rest is history. What I took from the tale...was that Tacoma....was like a scrappy little brother. Big bro...constantly sluggin him in the arm...smackin him up along side the head....and kickin him when he was down....and mom wasn't lookin. But little bro...never gave up...he was a determined little go getter.... Fast forward some 100 years and you have the place I got to experience.

So....from late night walks with Dougie, to countless funfilled boating days on the Sound...ski trips to Crystal Mountain and Baker Pass...Whistler...throw in a zipline while your there for even more fun...all the way to another one of my favorites...a hot bowl of Pho' on a cold winter day at Pho'Tai 38th...ahhh....Tacoma. Tacoma will always be home...Tacoma will always be me.

So here I am in this RV, Billie tucked into his spot below the driver seat...and Dougie planted firmly in the co pilot position to my right...I can’t help but feel excited about the adventures that lie ahead. I'm leaving a lot behind....I would be lying if I didn't admit to a tug at the heartstrings as we pulled out of that driveway on B Street for the last time....but somehow I know...there is so much more in front of us. Who knows what the future...what the road holds, but one thing is for sure - We are ready for it.

Ready for Life out there...