Interests

GETTING THERE Remodeling the House

First we had to get there. In between getting the house and vehicles ready to sell, finding new homes for animals, getting innoculations, buying global cell phones and stocking up on enough daily essentials to last one year, we continued to work for Stillwater Mining Company up until 3 weeks before our departure date. Unfortunately, the three weeks "off" were anything but time off. The house got a major renovation, with 3 rooms being remodeled complete with new flooring. Wow....why didn't we do this sooner?

The kitchen was the most work, starting with the demolition of the "Denny's Booth" that was built in, then removal of the old flooring. Taking out the old flooring was something like an archeological dig. After two layers of linoleum, one layer of subflooring, and another two layers of linoleum, we were able to find the original wood floor (installed in 1910).

panty

Honey and Leo moved to Idaho with friends who used to live and work here in Montana. They have two small kids, who have met and love our dogs, and we are very grateful to them for adopting our "kids".

MOVING

In anticipation of not being able to just hop in the car and drive to the mall....we bought a lot of clothes (in Montana, not only does one need cold weather clothing, but one rarely needs fancy clothes....in Indonesia, we need both hot weather clothing as well as clothing a little nicer than jeans, T-shirts and sweatshirts....). We also bought toiletries, vitamins, golf clubs (one of the favorite weekend activities on the Island), squash raquets (like raquetball played with small tennis raquets), and cooking utensils (think rice, fish, curry and noodles....not steak, potatoes or pasta).

We have three methods of getting our belongings to Indonesia....

Sea Freight, which takes up to 5 months to arrive in Indonesia....we can put as much stuff on sea freight as we want....we just have to be able to get by without it for a while. Furniture, non-essentual kitchen items, skinny clothes (we are both planning on taking advantage of the excellent athletic facilities provided by Freeport to get into shape and loose some of those rural Montana-induced pounds), as well as pictures, books and other miscellanous items that we think we need to live in Indonesia, but can survive without for a while....
Air Freight, which arrived in Indonesia within a month of us getting here. We were limited to 1,000 pounds of air freight, the freight can't be over a certain size, no aerosols, chemicals etc... We put a lot of clothing, essential kitchen items (such as an espresso maker), electronic devices, golf clubs, and everything else that we thought we would want sooner rather than later. Obviously, the trick is to put as much on air freight as possible....no point in waiting 5 months for something if you can get it in one month.....we did a pretty good job in estimating....and ended up with almost 900 pounds in air freight. Since the air freight has to clear customs, we had to make a very detailed list of what we put in it....down to the single spoon, its' weight, value and country of origin (you would be surprised to know how much of EVERYTHING is made in China!)
Luggage. Try fitting one months worth of shoes and clothing (work, dress, excersize and casual), toiletries, documents, etc....in bags that meet the airlines guidelines for size, weight and the number of bags. We had 4 bags, all jam packed to the max (50 pounds) to put into the airline luggage, as well as a computer, camera, electronic gadgets (cell phones, cords, cables) AND a carry on suitcase with a few clothes and other necessities that makes 48 hours of flying/airports a little more bearable).

All of our other belongings that we didn't take are in long-term storage or were placed in strategic locations....winter wear to Canada, hunting equipment to South Dakota. That meant that every belonging that we had needed to be sorted into one of 5 categories. The movers came to pack, and in one day, everything was packed and labeled as to where it was going. Talk about a whirlwind day! The remodelling was put on hold (the carpendry was complete, just some painting and cleaning left) for organizing and moving. We were both exhausted, and the remodelling, packing and moving has become a distant bad memory.

FLYING TO TIMIKA

On the way here we made it through all the long flights to Bali, where we were supposed to use the 8 hour layover to sleep and freshen up. Unfortunately our tickets to Timika had gotten "lost" (or never arrived at the hotel for us to pick them up), so we spent all but two hours making phone calls, and trusting complete strangers with a large amount of American dollars to go to the airport to buy us new tickets. Thank goodness we actually had cash or who knows when we could have gotten here. Once at the airport, Eric realized our tickets were for the right flight but for the wrong stop (Timika is on the way to Jayapura, and the tickets were for the whole way through), so he spent almost an hour trying to get that changed. Eventually we got here, and things are slowly falling into place.

Now that it's May, we finally have internet access, so we can update our site for you all to read.