We've now settled with insurance and while we received everything we were insure for, given the magnitude of the devastation (5,200 homes burned in Sonoma county alone), the cost of contractors, the cost of labor, the cost of materials, especially now with the added tariffs we can not rebuild with the amount we received. Additionally, Beth has stated that its to emotional and to remote for her to live there again. So what's next.....not 100% sure, bit maybe we will simply sell the land and then figure out what to do next.
OK, this is enough on this subject....now some of the many positive things that have happened because of the fire.
Insurance is paying (for 2 years from the date of the fire) for a rental home. We chose a place a few blocks from Sonoma Plaza. The area is flat, we are close to the Plaza, that has many events. We are also close to food stores, etc. We'll see what happens!
February 22, 2018 - due to the fire we had to cancel a trip we had booked in October 2017 to go back to Valencia to see our friends and visit Morocco (the trip Beth was giving me for my 60th Birthday.)
SO this trip to Roatán, Honduras was our first trip post fire. Our intention was to be vegetables....read, lay on the beach, snorkel, scuba dive, eat, drink and basically do as much of nothing as possible.
Upon our arrival, while waiting for our transfer to the hotel I started with a Salva Vida beer in the Larry and Luey's "Fly High Bar" in the airport!
One of the many things we loved about our Kenwood home was our outdoor shower. Our room in the Grand Roatán Hotel had and outdoor shower!
We were in heaven....a wonderful location, we could snorkel right in front of our hotel which has an excellent beach....see some of the images below
I four scuba dives while in Roatán The Gibson Bight, El Aguila Wreck, Eddie's Trifecta (Jumping Jack-Punchers Paradise-Tabayann's) and El Aquario (below)
What did I see on all the dives? BTW I did all my drive with West End Divers
Fire Worms
Barracuda
Honeycomb Cowfish
Green Moray Eel
Spotted Moray Eel
HUGE Crab
Lobster
HUGE Grouper
Lion Fish
Black & White Trunkfish
Hawksbill turtle
Cuttle Fish
March 3, 2018
Right after awe returned from Roatán our friends Dory & Jim invited me up to their condo in Bear Valley Ski Resort just after a HUGE snow storm....it was fun skiing again!
March 17th, 2018
Well we moved into our rental home near Sonoma Plaza in December. Some of the benefits of losing everything in our home and renting here are our involvement with the local community.
Beth join the Free Spirit Gospel Choir at the Sonoma Community Center, which is about 5 blocks from our rental. As many of you know Beth LOVES to sing, her challenge had been that while she knew many songs, she only knew the first line of those songs....that has changed. The choir leader is an energetic women with quite a background, Cynthia Tarr. Cynthia has an amazing voice listen to this short clip. Plus her husband is Cliff Hugo, was/is the bass guitar player of Supertramp.
ME on the other hand volunteered to help as an assistant coach of a friend of mine's son in Little League. When I contacted the President to offer my assistance, he told me that Trent, was on his team and he didn't need anymore assistant coaches....BUT he had only 4 coaches for 60 kids in AA (ages 7, 8 and 9). He said having 15 young kids per team was too much and if I could MANAGE a team it would really help them, and reduce the teams to 12 kids per team. I told him that I did not have any kids, I did not know any other families in Little League and that I had only been an assistant coach on my niece's (Katherine) girls baseball team in Burlingame, 15 years ago. He said no problem we need you and we will help you get the support and help you need from the parents of the players.......SO I decided to take it on!
It was both tremendously rewarding, while at the same time very time consuming and quite stressful.
More to come about my Little League experience in my next post!
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