Temporary resident

Monday morning early I was off to the Portuguese consulate in Boston.  The person who had helped Anne first, and had then handled my application was sitting at the reception window and very apologetically let me know that the entire computer system handling visa applications and visa issuing was down in Portugal for two days because it was being upgraded.

The previous weekend I had decided to change my flight from the 4th of July to the 8th to make room for error because of how short the week was with the July 4th celebrations, but it was disconcerting to learn that the visa would not be ready for at least two days.

Of course when they told me that the consulate general was not in the office that day I immediately extrapolated from that he might also not be in the office on Wed or Friday due to American holiday festivities which ratcheted up my anxiety a few notches.

Some good news did arrive in the form of confirmation that our driving records from the RMV were ready for pickup at the mail handling facility so my plan was to go into the city to see the Secretary of State on the Tuesday.

I decided to take an Uber to avoid the stress of having to find the building and having to find parking nearby.  In Boston you can easily pay $30 for parking for several hours so the Uber fee seemed like a reasonable compromise.

The building is right behind the imposing State House with its gold dome that faces over the one corner of the Boston Commons.  I had read up on the process to get the driving records "apostilled" and had filled in the online form and had made a check out to the state department as described in the online instructions. 

In reality, the entire experience was pretty pleasant compared to what I'd imagined given the warnings about how many forms you could bring and how you might have to leave them there if they didn't get processed by 4pm.

The room was fairly chaotic because it turns out there are a lot of people looking for apostilled documents for many countries.  The desk clerks were rotating to the counter calling out country names for people to pick up already processed documents, sending people off to the cashier to pay if they didn't have a check or a money order (two forms of payment that the web-site said were the only ones accepted), and calling on people in a line to step forward one at a time to hand over documents.

Columbia, Guatemala, Bolivia and a few European countries were called before I got to say "for Portugal" to the desk clerk who called me forward.

She took my check and pointed to the wall behind me and said "wait there" after pushing my carefully filled in form back at me (not needed), and then she vanished to her desk in a small office.  About 10 min later she handed me my folder with the completed documents.

One the way back I decided to take the Boston T which was fortunate because I was able to spot a sign on one of the street-side entrances with a questionable interpretation

and also stop at some places that filled me with nostalgia.

The State House of course, followed by a walk through the common to the State Street subway station and on to the Blue Line train which took me past our old home station, Orient Heights where I'd caught the bus to our first rental in Winthrop.

Our friend Gene had said that she was planning to take an evening ferry ride into Boston with a friend of hers and I should join them if I wanted to - we ended up having burritos for supper on a somewhat chilly, windy deck but with views of the airport,

Gene in the foreground getting ready to photograph the plane as well!

 the water tower in Winthrop

and a massive luxury yacht on the wharf.

I had lunch arranged with a colleague on Wednesday but had a phone call as I was getting ready to leave.  America has so many scams and ridiculous marketing calls that few people, myself included, answer their mobile phones when unknown numbers call them, but some instinct made me take the call.  It was the Portuguese consulate letting me know that my visa was ready to be picked up.

I raced into town and parked across from the consulate building and managed to make the pickup and get to my lunch meeting in time, feeling very much relieved that I'd now secured everything that I needed to return to Portugal where I can stay permanently (subject to one more appointment to get my residence card).

After lunch I went to Gillette stadium for what was probably my last opportunity to photograph the New England Revolution soccer team.  A privilege that I'd been enjoying since 2005 when a fellow camera club member had invited me to stand in for him while he was working at a National Park in the North West.

The evening was quite eventful because the media pass I was given was accidentally for a sportswriter and not a photographer so it did not give me field access.  I had to get the help of the person in charge of media liaison and then the head of stadium security to hand-write a pass for me and then tell all of the security personnel that my media pass was not fake.  Both of them were pretty busy in the lead-up to the game and I felt obliged to apologize for being so "high maintenance".  

At the end of the game as I was walking around to set up a spot to photograph the fireworks planned for after the game at least two security people looked and my pass and said brightly : "oh we were told about you!" 

As we've discovered before, traveling with gear that is not packed in a familiar container led to me realizing the next day that one of my really expensive camera lenses was missing!  I remembered having had it at the stadium for shooting the fireworks but could not remember seeing it when I got home.  That and the fact that the car I was borrowing ended up with a nail in one of the tires almost ruined my enjoyment of the 4th of July celebrations, especially the fireworks which I'd been looking forward to photographing. 

Another camera club friend had invited me to his brother-in-law's 4th of July barbecue. When I told him about the flat tire he offered to bring his battery-operated pump the next morning to get the car into a state where I could drive it to have it repaired.   I went out later on to take a look at the car after sending a few emails to the media liaison person and two of my sports photography friends asking whether the lens had turned up.  I reached under a seat and found the lens had rolled in there.  It is a black lens but it would probably have been revealed if I'd been a little less panicked and had used a flashlight during my two previous attempts to find it.

In the meantime, Anne had gone to England for a week to see our daughters (and their families) and Nick, and she flew back on the 4th to our empty house.  I took a screenshot of the security camera recording of her at the front door and called her to say welcome home despite not being able to be there to welcome her.

I arranged to see Matt on the weekend.  We met at this awesome restaurant at around the midpoint between Boston and New Haven.  It has lots of signed photographs of famous authors and has bookshelves lined with books on all the walls.  You can take 3 books from select shelves if you have a meal there.  The only problem is how long it might take to select the three since most people there are stopping for a bite on their travels.  In the end I found one book which I thought (in vain as it happens) that I might read on the way back to Portugal.   After lunch we took a walk around a nearby lake.

With all the admin tasks and the trip to see Matt, I didn't get to see many of the people I would have liked to see this time around.  This was possibly the last trip to the USA for a while.  My errands mostly involved taking care of things to prepare to move my primary residence to Portugal.  My tax residency will move to Portugal as well which means that next year (and forever more) we will have to file taxes both in America and Portugal as ex-patriot Americans.

My last trip over the Nahant causeway was an opportunity to take one more photograph of that view with the evening sky and a plane coming in to land at Logan airport.  This last trip was tinged with sadness but I was very happy to be on my way back to Anne and my new home.

I discovered on my flight back from Boston that, probably because I had reserved an aisle seat early on, no one had taken the two seats next to me.  I thought this was fantastic but discovered that with the combination of my body clock (it was early evening when we took off) and the 5 and half hour flight duration I would have scant chance of sleeping even though I did lie down across the 3 seats for 30 min or so to try my luck.

I proudly informed the customs officer that I had a temporary residence visa in Portuguese after which I opened the passport to the page because he had no idea what I had said.  "Bit by bit" our Portuguese teacher says but this was not one of those bits, it was pure incomprehension.

But it was a big relief to know, once he stamped the page opposite the visa, that I was not going to have to leave Portugal every 3 months anymore.

I arrived in Faro at around mid-morning and insisted on staying awake all day which meant that Anne had to tolerate my zombie mode until 9:30 that night.

So on to the next adventure - settling in and exploring!

California: RV Life

In San Francisco I took an Uber to an RV park near to the airport to meet my friend Kees.

Kees had planned stops at 3 different RV parks to give me a flavor for the different options for RV camping.  We had chosen to find locations north of San Francisco.

I remember how I used to love driving our VW Kombi in Grahamstown, stepping up into the front seat and sitting more or less at the head-height of the other drivers on the road.  Stepping into Kees' RV to drive to our first campsite was a couple of notches above that.  The RV is as big as a single-decker city bus and is towing a small Suzuki Samurai jeep (also known as a Barbie jeep).

The road was mostly highway and we drove north through San Francisco over the bay bridge.  The fog was in and we could barely see the bridge until we were right on it.

The view from the other side was quite amazing - I did a double take at the floating city looking back after we had crossed the bridge.

The scenery north of San Francisco is beautiful.  I ended up taking many photographs from the RV - another advantage of sitting so high above the ground.

Our first campsite was purpose-built for RVs, but as much used by people with tents and other mobile camping arrangements.  We were completely off-grid which meant we had to use a generator for electricity (within the designated hours) and we had no water supply so used the on-board water tank.

After we had parked and pulled the Barbie jeep into the front of the RV Kees left the RV running while he extended the wall near the front which opens up to make a comfortable space for a sitting/cooking room.  The sofa in this section folds out to make a comfortable bed.

At the back is a similar slide-out that extends to make a comfortable bedroom with a double-bed.  There are two panel doors that slide out to separate the rear bedroom and the front of the bus - in between them is a toilet, basin and shower.

For those of you wondering - because I did too - the toilet is fully functioning but there was no way on God's earth I was going to use it in that confined mobile camper for anything other than my regular night-time trips for less serious business.  It turns out that this is a general rule given that most campsites have ablution blocks with toilets and showers and if you time your visit to just after they have cleaned them in the morning you have a fairly tame experience.

Kees promised that he would show me later in the trip how to empty the grey and black water.  No further explanation was necessary once he explained that grey water is from the shower and sink, and black water is from the toilet.

The campsites are populated by many happy people who were generally very friendly.  Kees makes it a habit of socializing with new people at every site and we stopped to chat to a couple of people while we were there.

The site is right in Bodega Bay situated on the San Andreas fault line and has beautiful views on both sides.  Facing across an inlet on one side

and across the bay on the other side.  

I was pretty jet-lagged for the first few days so I struggled to stay awake until 9pm but was wide awake at around 5am every morning so had a walk on the pre-dawn beach after our first night.

There was a fog horn out in the bay with some sort of timer on it that made a bhaa sound at fairly short intervals.  When Kees came through in the morning I discovered that I'd dodged a bullet in the middle of the night because in his semi conscious state he had reached the conclusion that the sound was my cell phone on vibrate receiving txt messages from family 8 hours ahead of us.  Fortunately the misapprehension was short-lived and he didn't come through to visit hell on me.

Our next stop was along winding narrow cliff-side roads that had been damaged by the rain and mudslides in recent months so we were stopped a few times to go on single-lanes with excavation and building equipment blocking the other half.

My jet-lag innoculated me because I didn't feel anxious at all but then again I wasn't driving.  I lazily remarked how close the RV was to the edge of my side of the road, not realizing at the time that it was very close to the edge on the driver's side as well.  

The Barbie jeep is attached to the back with a metal structure that forces the steering to move with the turns but Kees was concerned that the jeep was not turning as well as it should have been.  It is a very light vehicle so we wouldn't have felt it and it would have simply dragged the wheels.  Later in the trip I filmed the jeep from the inside as we drove around an RV park and it looked as though the wheels were turning just fine.

We arrived at the next campground (Gualala) in the late afternoon.  It was pretty incredible, nestled in the valley of one of the redwood forests that grow north of San Francisco.  

I remember reading how these redwoods are a single organism, joined together with their extensive root system.  They are majestic and magical.

The next morning I woke with a message that my temporary residence visa was ready at the consulate.  After all the anxiety about having to wait in the USA for them to complete processing I was free to return as planned.

I had one other admin task to do - that was to get the signed/apostilled driving records for both of us to replace our USA driving licenses for Portuguese ones.  Anne and I managed to apply for the certified driving records online and so it would be a waiting game to see if they arrived by mail in time for me to get them processed before the July 4th weekend.  Many companies close for a 4 day weekend if July 4th is on a Tuesday or Thursday so my worry was that we only had the 3 days of the week to complete the additional tasks.

In the meantime, though, nothing could be done and I was a lot calmer knowing that my worst case now would be having to book another ticket one or two days later rather that my earlier fears of being stuck waiting for weeks for the visa.

This second campsite had a hookup for water and electricity and we enjoyed a few bike-rides to visit the town and the coastal cliffs nearby. 

We also visited an art center near the campsite that had a couple of exhibitions.

We got some firewood for the second evening and Kees prepared a great meal on his outdoor gas griddle.  The next morning the coals were still hot so I stoked up a new fire for our morning coffee.
 

Our neighbors were from Mexico but have lived in the USA  for something like 30 years.  Kees and I both had separate pleasant conversations with them on our first night which was also their last night there.  They told us that they have been coming to this particular campsite for years.  They sat around their fire singing - the couple and their adult daughter - after I went to bed.

We drove back to a different campsite in Bodega bay after our two nights.  Kees decided that we might be able to drive more comfortably if we unhitched the jeep and I followed him in convoy.  I was totally game for that.  The little jeep reminded me of the clunky army jeep I had driven many years ago in the army so it was quite nostalgic. 

We stopped a couple of times and I took photographs of the interesting rock pinnacles that are remnants of collapsed cliffs in the sea along the coast.

Our last stop was in an RV park arranged more or less like a parking lot.

The aesthetics weren't great and we had a noisy neighbor (on the other side of the park) who was holding forth on his political views until I got the portable speaker out and drowned him into the background with some 70's hard rock.

The scenery outside of the park made up for the rather dull setting inside.  We went on bike rides to overlooks and hiked to and along a beach.

Something surprising to a new visitor in northern California is how generally cold it is along the coast.  There is a cold breeze (usually quite strong) blowing much of the time and I found that I had to have my mid-layer winter jacket with me most of the time.

On our last night there we were sitting outside and a family of hawks came to the nearby tall trees.  I was able to take a couple of photos of one of the parents coming back from scouting and calling to the chicks.

After two nights Kees dropped me in Santa Rosa where I caught a bus to San Fransisco only to realize after one stop that when I had changed my inbound flight at Kees' suggestion, I had not changed my original outbound flight from Sacramento!  When we were planning the trip we had originally thought I'd join Kees in Reno and fly out of Sacramento. 

I had to get out of the bus and order an Uber for a rather expensive 2 hour drive to Sacramento.  The alternative google-suggested route involved a bus, train, bus and then another bus via Oakland which would have taken me 5 hours.  My driver was a sweet Nepalese woman studying computer science at a local university and so we had a wonderful conversation about Nepal, Nepalese food, computers, AI and life in general.

My flight left at just after midnight so I was going to arrive in Boston like I had in California, exhausted and having to fight sleep all day to adjust to the new timezone.