After getting off the Green Tortoise in the Autumn of 1989, living in one place in San Francisco seemed very slow and unexciting, but that was exactly what I was looking for. To be free of ties and traveling all the time had been a goal of mine for many years and now I had lived it, but from the mountaintop all paths lead downward.

Joint Resolution

Once again, it was time to make a plan — only this time I was making it with someone else. I got a retail job selling power tools to get myself off the road while Jules worked at a restaurant in San Francisco. We talked a lot about what to do next and both agreed that San Francisco was too expensive for us to live in comfortably on service jobs, let alone get enough financial breathing room to pursue school or other interests.

Jules had recently left The Midwest and wasn't looking to go back. I had left the East Coast and wasn't looking to move back either. We both liked The West Coast, but would need to move north or south from San Francisco to find a place that had what we wanted.

The Best of East and West

After seeing the whole country I had thought for a long time that the Pacific Northwest was the area that I liked the most. It combined the more open, 'alternative' West Coast spirit; but without being so 'off the deep end' as California could be. There was some respect for tradition and sense of the value of the past, but not to the confining extreme that I saw in New England. This seemed like the place that combined what I liked about the various places that I lived. It had beautiful neighborhoods, inexpensive housing (compared to San Francisco) and a growing economy. It was also in a beautiful corner of the country with ocean, mountains all around.

I had rented a room there while I was driving The Tortoise, had felt very at home, and had taken Jules to visit once. That visit, combined with wanting to leave San Francisco, was enough to convince her that we should give Seattle a try.

Jules & I

1^st & Virginia

Seattle, WA

We worked in San Francisco for 6 months to save money, then we bid our 6 roommates goodbye, we loaded up her '73 Toyota Corolla, put the rest of our things in the basement of our rented house, and headed north to Seattle. We had a couple of connections there, but neither of us had jobs and we had no place to live. On arrival in April of 1990 we stayed first with friends of friends from the Bay Area on Whidbey Island, driving down to spend long days looking at apartments in the pouring rain getting lost on Seattle's winding streets and crazy hills.

Finding a Home

After days and days of looking at horrible boxes of apartments built in the 1970's we stopped by the Buckaroo Tavern on Fremont Avenue to visit someone Jules knew via a friend that went to school with him in Milwaukee. He was tending bar at the Buckaroo and I liked the funkiness of the place and thought, "I'd like to work here", but there weren't any openings just then, so we had a beer and talked to the bartender for a while. As we were leaving The Buck we noticed a sign in the window of a building across the street. It was a classic, old two storey apartment building from the turn of the century. We called the number, met the landlord and found our home in Seattle right across the street from the Buckaroo.

The Last Waltz

Now that our home was secured I drove two final Tortoise trips between San Francisco and Seattle to fetch our belongings from storage. With our boxes tied to the roof of the bus I savored my last shifts behind the wheel. After unloading our boxes in Seattle and waving goodbye to the bus I turned with Jules to a new life in a new home.

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