INTRODUCTION I: WHY THE GRAND DETOUR?

In which the reader is invited to consider whether perhaps Phineas Fogg was on to something

As previously threatened, we are about to begin the Introduction proper.  I realize, of course, that this means the reader has now been subjected to a Preface, followed by an Introduction to the Introduction, and is only now arriving at the actual Introduction itself. This may seem excessive, but I assure you it is entirely in keeping with the ancient and honorable literary tradition of Making Things More Complicated Than Strictly Necessary For No Apparent Reason, and I therefore feel duty-bound to follow suit.

Why retire now?

The short answer to this question is that retirement became possible, desirable, and perhaps even sensible at roughly the same time.

This is not to say that it was part of some elegant master plan. I could claim that Shannon and I sat down years ago with a color-coded binder, a stack of actuarial tables, and a clear-eyed understanding of our future needs, then executed each step with the focused precision of Swiss watchmakers.  That claim would, of course, be a ludicrous lie.

In actuality, we've been talking about retirement for years in the vague, half-serious way people talk about things that sound nice but belong to some theoretically distant future, like a winning lottery ticket or the perfect Batman movie.* We talked about nice weather, and inexpensive restaurants, and places where public transit is fully armed and operational functional.

But then it became less theoretical due to a number of factors.

• The kids are grown and out on their own and doing as well as one could expect, considering they didn't end up following the “become tremendously wealthy and maintain your parents in the lap of luxury” route I tried to plan for them**
• My City Manager gig came to an end***
• My multiple sclerosis symptoms have crept forward a bit****
• I don't know if anyone else has noticed, but the US has become a tad dysfunctional*****

We are retiring a little earlier than most people do. That is partly because we can, partly because we want to, and partly because there comes a point where “someday” starts to feel less like a plan and more like a way of putting off decisions until outside forces make them for us.

We have a steady income. Not a vast income. Not a “buy a Caribbean island and install a pirate-themed flume ride” income. But a steady one. Enough, we think, to live well if we do some research beforehand and pick our location and lifestyle carefully.

And so when the question changed from “can we retire someday?” to “if we can retire now, what are we waiting for?”, we realized we didn't actually have a particularly compelling answer for that.

Why leave Oregon?

This is the part where I should probably clarify that we are not fleeing Oregon because Oregon is terrible.

Oregon is not terrible. Oregon is beautiful. The coast, in particular, is beautiful in that moody, damp, moss-covered way that puts one in mind of Sasquatch and the outdoor portions of just about every Vancouver-filmed television series of the last two decades. If you've seen The Goonies, you've seen it, and it's great.******  There are forests and beaches and dramatic cliffs and charming little towns where one can find excellent food, peculiar antiques, and very strong (but friendly!) opinions about hats.

We like Oregon.

The problem is not that Oregon is a bad place to live. The problem is that Oregon is an expensive place to live, and the Oregon coast is a particularly expensive place to live if one is hoping to spend the next few decades on a largely fixed income without eventually being forced to survive on barnacles, seagull eggs, and whatever loose change can be found in the gravel outside various festival beer tents.

Housing is expensive. Groceries are expensive. Utilities are expensive. Healthcare is complicated and insufficient for the population. And while the weather has a great deal of... uhh... atmosphere, some of that atmosphere does occasionally arrive sideways at highway speeds.  (Admittedly, I kinda like that last one.)

Could we stay? Sure.

But staying would mean dedicating a very large chunk of our retirement income to the privilege of continuing to live somewhere that, while lovely, may not be the best fit for the life we want next.

And that, I think, is the key point.

We are not looking for the cheapest possible place to exist. We are not attempting to win some grim contest in which the prize is a cramped studio apartment, a pot full of lentils, and a squeaky ceiling fan. We want to live well.

What “living well” means, exactly, will require its own post, because of course it will. But in broad terms, we mean decent housing, good food, reliable healthcare, speedy internet, enough comfort, enough safety, and enough room in the budget to regularly go out to dinner without having to worry about the rent.  Not to mention being in an interesting enough area to bribe encourage friends and family to come visit.

Oregon will certainly still be part of our lives; after all, our friends and family and Burgerville are here.  But for the long term, we're looking further afield.

Why not just pick a place and go?

We have done quite a lot of research. Possibly too much research. There are spreadsheets. There are lists. There are bookmarks. There are notes about visas, healthcare, climate, cost of living, tax rules, transportation, language, political stability, and whether a given location appears likely to contain enough board gamers to prevent me from becoming a weird, lonely shut-in muttering over solo games.

The trouble is that research can only get us so far.

A spreadsheet can tell us that one place is cheaper than another. A YouTube video can show us what the local landmarks look like. An expat Facebook page can reveal, usually within three posts, that several men named Steve are very angry about the local government, the local drivers, the local women, the local dogs, the local bread, and each other.

But none of that tells us what it would actually feel like to live there.  And that's the thing we want to know: what it's like to live there.

I mean, almost anywhere can seem wonderful for a week. The food is new. The scenery is new. Even the inconveniences are charming.******* Nobody has yet had to buy laundry detergent, find a dentist, refill a prescription, figure out public transit in the rain, or determine whether the mysterious clicking noise in the apartment is coming from the neighbors, from the refrigerator, or from OH MY GOD IT'S NESTING IN MY EAR GET IT OUT GET IT OUT!

This is the problem of vacation goggles.

Vacation goggles are powerful. They make everything seem more romantic, more charming, and much less likely to involve repeated interactions with insufficient plumbing.  But we're making a major life decision here, so the goggles are not going to be helpful.

So instead of picking one promising place from the research pile and moving there directly, we are going to take the long way around. We are going to visit the places that seem plausible. We are going to stay long enough, when possible, to get at least a faint whiff of ordinary life. We are going to buy groceries, ride buses, visit doctors, look for game stores, deal with the panoply of minor annoyances, and see whether we can imagine ourselves doing normal Tuesday-afternoon things there -- stuff beyond visiting the ruined castles and drinking fruity cocktails out of umbrella-festooned coconuts.********

Because that, we think, is the real test.  And that's what The Grand Detour is meant to discover.

We are not looking for the objectively best place to retire, because no such place exists. Reasonable people can want different things. Some people want beaches. Some want cities. Some want mountains. Some want nightlife. Some want solitude. Some want to be surrounded by other expatriates, while others just want to do yoga on a beach while being lightly trampled by goats.*********

We are looking for the place that makes sense for us.  And since we do not yet know where that is, we may as well go find out.

That's the plan.

---

* The Batman got pretty close, to be fair.

** I think the “NFL Quarterback” -> “Pediatric Surgeon” -> “Supreme Court Justice” career paths I had spent all that time designing for them would have been perfectly serviceable, if they'd just buckled down and concentrated on it between the ages of four and sixty-five.  I blame Minecraft.

*** City Managers work for elected officials, and are thus largely subject to the whims of the Council.  My Council changed membership three months ago, and whims were promptly whimmed.

**** Not terribly, so no need to panic or send flowers or anything, but enough to make it slightly more clear that I am not, in fact, immortal.

***** Is it just me?

****** If, on the other hand, you haven't seen The Goonies, someone has profoundly failed you in your upbringing.  Go watch it!  Right now!  This post will still be here when you're done!

******* The first time a monkey steals your sunglasses, it's hilarious and awesome.  The fifteenth time, on the other hand, will likely elicit somewhat different adjectives.

******** We're still gonna do that other stuff, but they don't score any additional points in the Retirement Regatta.

********* What can I say?  Some people juggle geese.