Life
in Prescott Arizona Before We Left on March 30, 2002
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Life in Prescott was fun and comfortable. Tim
spent nearly ten years in Prescott, Arizona and Cindie lived there for almost six
years. We own a little house near downtown
that is now rented out. Cindie had the same Hydrogeology job the entire time that
she was in Prescott and Tim had various Special Education teaching jobs in local school
districts.
Tim initially chose to live in Prescott because of the excellent
Road and Mountain Biking. The charming town
and near perfect weather were convincing as well but the quality of cycling has always
been on top of the priority list.
We also chose Arizona because of the excellent outdoor opportunities. We
have been on several day and multi night backpacking
(trekking) hikes. Within a two hour drive from our house you can backpack any
time of year. You have sunny comfortable weather during the winter for spectacular
desert trekking in the lower desert locations and cool relaxing summer weather in the high
Pine and Aspen country. We have done dozens of such overnight trips over several
years but Arizona holds several lifetimes worth of backcountry adventure. Just make
sure you know how to find the waterholes and springs.
We like to collect bike movies and
use to own all the major American movies concerning cycling. Tim grew up in Indiana
and attend Indiana University where the famous movie Breaking Away took place and was
filmed. When Tim was at Indiana University he rode in the Little 500 for four
years. Tim was about twelve when Breaking Away was made and was present at the road
race scene. "I was not even close to being old enough to drive but several of
my racing friends were going down to be extras in the road race scene. The director
has all of us ride around a big parking lot so he could get a look at us. I was told
that I looked to young and had to watch them film on the sideline next to a guy who they
said looked to old. When I see that movie I can recognize several of my old friends
in the race scene."
We both like European Professional Road Racing. We started watching road
racing when Jan Urlich won the Tour de France at the tender age of 23. Then Lance
Armstrong hit the scene in 1999 and became my hero after the first prologue.
Needless to say we have been Postal ever since.
We had a good dog named Zorr for the year
before we left. We never planned on having a dog especially just twelve months
before we were planning on leaving but his owner got into trouble and was going to be away
for a year. Since we were going to be around that long we took him
temporarily. We had no idea how much we would become attached to him.
We moved out in the RV and made all the
final arrangements to hit the road. Tim had owned the RV for 6 years by then and it
was pretty old the day he bought it. To be exact our RV is a class C 1976 Ford with
a 460 engine. We lived in it for a few months before we left and because of it's
general state of disrepair we sold it for only $500 the day before we left.
The plan was formulated and we lived off as
little money as possible while stashing the rest in mutual funds. At first the
months crept by but as our departure date got closer and our various preparations got more
and more behind schedule the time moved much to quickly as it seemed that we were running
out of time.
We wrote all of our friends a good-bye
email and few weeks later and left. |
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