Going home to Indiana

Our 10-year Arkansas adventure is drawing to a close.

We made the decision late last year that we want to go home to Indiana. It's where Maria's family is, including her new granddaughter, and most of our friend are in Indiana. And we have a sturdy old 1903 house waiting for us to come back and show it some love.

I swore I'd never do another Indiana winter, but I've decided Arkansas summers are just as painful.

We have tenants who have lived in the house for about eight years and we informed them of our decision yesterday. We're giving them plenty of notice - our Arkansas house isn't on the market yet and it takes 30 days to close, so we won't be needing our house in Thorntown until sometime in August at the earliest. We also pledged to give them a good reference if they apply to rent somewhere else.

A lot of our stuff is already in Indiana in storage and with relatives and we reckon we have one more 5x8-foot U-Haul trailer load before we can stage the house for selling.

We had U-Haul install a trailer hitch on the Lexus RX330 in late February and have made half a dozen trailer runs - one with my two bikes on a motorcycle trailer borrowed from a Jonesboro friend - since then. There have also been a few trailer-less runs with the Lexus or Morgan's Honda stuffed to the gills with boxes.

As a consequence, with so much of our stuff in storage 450 miles away, we're subsisting on just the essentials in household goods and clothing. I'm getting tired of the same old selection of t-shirts and jeans and I'm having serious motorcycle withdrawal. The project has pretty much killed my riding season. I had to pass on the European Riders Rally in Burkesville, Ky. at the end of May and won't be able to ride to Salt Lake City next month for the BMW MOA National Rally. It looks like the Falling Leaf Rally in Potosi, Mo. on the second weekend in October may be my only rally of 2017.

We've busied ourselves making repairs and improvements to get the Arkansas house looking good. I had the mower serviced and new blades installed that result in a much nicer looking lawn. We trimmed low-hanging tree branches that block the view of the house, spruced up the shutters, pressure-washed the exterior, painted the front door an attractive dark blue, replaced the dog-ravaged back door and porch furniture and replaced the broken-down ceiling fan on the porch.

Maria brought home a dry erase white board to list to-do projects and it's helped us both stay on track.

We also have a business property in downtown Jonesboro to sell and are hopeful for good news soon on that front.

The Thorntown house will need about 200 feet of chain link fence to keep the dogs in the back yard, we'll need to build a garage for cars and bikes, and the hot tub will need to be refurbished or replaced. There is plenty to do and now that we've been able to share our plans with our renters, I can report the progress here.