Getting to the boat

Our Road Scholar group left Reykjavik yesterday afternoon, taking a chartered Icelandair flight to meet our boat, the Ocean Diamond, in Kangerlussuaq. There's an airport there, but no town. I'm accustomed to getting myself to the airport, checking myself in and finding my gate. Instead, we followed our guide through the airport, obedient as fourth graders. Trust the process, I told myself.

The plane landed. My travel companion Terra and I were seated near the back of the plan, so we were nearly the last to disembark. We descended the stairway, walked across the tarmac and entered the terminal building. None of our group members were in sight. An Ocean Diamond t-shirted person greeted us and said, "Get on a bus outside." I said, "What about our luggage?" They said, "It will be delivered to you."

Four buses waited in the parking lot to the rear of the terminal. We still did not see any of our group members. An Ocean Diamond person said, "You can get on the bus and they will come." At this point I was not trusting the process. What if everyone was still inside the terminal someplace, waiting for us?" Still, all the buses were going to the ship.

Our vehicle was an old yellow school bus with deteriorated stairs. And the road was bumpy for the whole 20-minute ride to the pier. There were some hills on the way, and I was reminded of the time years ago when we had six kids in a used motorhome going over the mountains. The engine overheated and we had to pull over to the side of the road until it cooled down. This time, though, the bus groaned over the top of the hill and descended to the water.

And there we found the rest of our group.

Our guide put on our life jackets for us. We waited until it was our turn to join another eight people to board a Zodiac, which would take us to the Ocean Diamond.

We were welcomed by the ship staff and it felt wonderful to be aboard at last.

Flying away again - to Iceland and Greenland

I should have written this a few days ago, because we've been in Iceland for three days and we're leaving for Greenland today. Now I don't have time. But in Greenland I won't have access to the internet, so I'll be offline. Stay tuned.

What I'm leaving behind

I quit my last paying job just about nine years ago. Here's what I've done since then:

• Became a certified mediator, mediating about 100 cases at my county's dispute resolution center and in small claims court
• Joined a very liberal church community
• Became a snowbird, spending two months in Tucson in 2013 and increasing the amount of time to seven months in 2019
• Volunteered five times at a refugee camp in Greece
• Volunteered at an asylum-seekers' shelter in Arizona
• Set up and maintained the accounting for a nonprofit with a 500,000 annual budget
• Took 72 trips of three days or longer
• Wrote 630 blog posts

I've always liked to be busy and to keep my mind engaged. That is still the case. But this summer I've shifted:

• I've only done one small claims court mediation, and no family disputes, since I got home from Tucson, where we spend our snowbird months. I've realized the activities no longer "call" me. I use my mediation skills nearly every day in my ordinary life, and I love that. But I've moved on. I didn't actually acknowledge it until last month - and last week I notified the dispute resolution center and the small claims team that I wanted to be taken off their lists.

• I haven't attended a church service all summer. I have had multiple conversations with church people - the pastor and people involved in social justice programs - but that was about the possibility of facilitating opportunities for congregation members to volunteer with one of the immigration programs in Tucson. Not sure why I'm not going on Sundays.

• Except for my trip to London last month, I'm not doing much walking.  And I'm not swimming. I don't like that about myself, but there it is. Once we get to Tucson it will become part of my routine again.

Here's what I AM doing at home:

• Having good conversations with my closest friends.
• Catching up on reading the magazines I subscribe to.
• Checking books out of the library.
• Going through drawers and closets and photo albums.
• Finishing up the accounting work for the nonprofit.
• Clearing out emails.
• Being a helpmate, as needed, to my husband recovering from thumb surgery with his arm in a cast. That means a lot of errand running, which he usually does.
• Hiring people to maintain the lawn and clean the carpets.
• Getting the house ready for Art's son Jason and his family to be living here for a year.

Early next month we leave for Tucson, and we will be there for a year. It wasn't in our plan until Father's Day, when it came up in a phone conversation between Jason and Art. It just happened into our lives. That's actually how things usually work out for me, anyway. We've been considering a permanent move for several years - me more seriously than Art - but this year is a perfect time to see if it's what we want, without having to sell the house first.

Here's what I'm doing to prepare for Arizona:

• Researching e-bikes. We've found what we want, and we'll buy it on September 8 in Phoenix.
• Researching OLLI (Osher) classes in Green Valley, half an hour from our Arizona place. We'll arrive early enough and stay long enough to take advantage of all the course offerings.
• Thinking about carpet colors.
• Deciding which three decorative pieces I want to have in Arizona.
• Getting my car ready to drive down. We'll need both cars if we're there for a year.

The changes - what I'm leaving behind - are not sacrifices. They're more like evolutions. I'm not ripping myself away from home. I'm sliding into something new.