I have often been asked why we left beautiful northern California and moved to Athens, Georgia. It really isn't all that difficult for me to understand but since it comes up so often I thought I'd start this blog by explaining the why of it all and, at the same time let everyone who might care, know that I am "Alive and Well and Knitting and Spinning in Athens, GA".

It's necessary to go back, way back, in order to explain it all.

About 18 years ago I was living and working in the town where I grew up. I had returned to good old West Virginia to lick my wounds, regroup and start over. Serious life altering events had happened and I was waiting to see if I was going to get stronger or just die. I didn't die and did get quite happy for awhile. It was good to be home. It was exactly where I needed to be then. Over time, though, the attitude and tone of life in West Virginia got real hard to deal with. I still love the place but it is one depressed and depressing state. The power of positive thinking is not a concept that has ever reared its pretty little head there. I realized it was time to move on when I found myself crying each morning as I tried to put on my makeup and get ready for work and again as I walked home from work. Resumes began to go out far and wide.

In spite of my many years of good work on the east coast, I could not get even one offer there. I could and did get lots of interest from the folks on the west coast. I even traveled there. It was dazzling. All that sun and the palms trees and the ocean. But I just wasn't sure about it. I mean, we are talking paradise. After all those years of negative, depressing days, I just wasn't sure I was up to a stay in paradise. Finally fate gave me just the push I needed in the form of a failed and frightening relationship. I was packed and on my way to paradise in no time. California that is...northern CA.

I could not believe how positive people were. Eighteen years ago Sonoma County was just about the best place to be. Between the climate and the knock-your-socks off views, there was nothing to complain about. Sure, it was expensive but as the real estate agent said back then when I was house hunting "just knock the first $100,000 off the price and figure that is the cost of living in paradise and then the total won't hurt so much."

Sounded good to me and it was paradise and I have this overwhelming love for palm trees and they were everywhere. So, I settled down, bought that wildly overpriced home and anticipated being there forever.

Somewhere along the way, the county changed. First it was little bits of development and then things went wild. Little old Windsor was just a dot on the map...a few vineyards, and an old, run-down main street...not much to look ..when I moved there but in less than 10 years it had grown from a population of under a thousand to over 18,000.

Word spread of the beauty of the area and pretty soon some really well heeled Southern Californians were discovering the place and plopping down mansions all over that once wide open terrain. It is still drop-dead gorgeous but there has been gigantic growth and it all comes with a price.

The 12 mile commute from Healdsburg to Santa Rosa grew from 15 minutes to sometimes over an hour. The theory on the part of the powers that be was that if you built a road adequate to handle large amounts of traffic or re-established the existing rail line to handle commuter traffic, people would come. So, nothing was done and the backlog of traffic during peak hours and the tempers and angst on the road made it feel like a scene from "Road Warrior" and, guess what, they came anyway. And they got to be an angry group too. Gone were the mellow folks I met when I first got there.

Plans are in the works to make it better but not nearly soon enough. God help them all if there is ever need to evacuate the area in a hurry. With only one major road, 101, and a very few secondary roads, getting out in a hurry isn't even a possibility.

And, housing prices escalated too. Our humble house, under 2000 sq ft, was suddenly a little gold mine. The thinking was, and still is, that you sold that little gold mine, took the equity out of it and bought a bigger, nicer and even more overpriced house because you could. We did just that. After 10 years and way too many commuting hours, we sold that house in Healdsburg and moved to Santa Rosa. We were closer to where we worked and we loved that house a lot.

It does sit in an area riddled with earthquake faults but we were used to that by then. I mean whenever you buy a house in CA, you know from the information you sign at closing that you live in an area prone to earthquakes. After all, in 1926, wasn't it(?), that big earthquake did major damage to San Francisco but it practically levelled Santa Rosa.

And then one night we had a 4.2 earthquake about a mile down in the earth and less than a mile from our house. Yes, we knew all about earthquakes but, wow, that was a shaker. I had been living in CA when the Loma Priata earthquake knocked San Francisco bridges down and houses off their foundations but it did not really hurt our area and it had been a long time since that quake and you forget.

The quake we felt in the Santa Rosa house did no damge to the house but scared the heck out of us. It was incredibly loud and it shock the house as if it was going to explode. I guess it is a credit to the excellent workmanship of the houses in the area that no one was hurt and nothing was damaged beyond the usual canned goods toppling off shelves in grocery stores.

But, we remembered it and at about the same time it became clear that to live in Sonoma County meant to work until you died. Retirement was not an option with a mortgage that would never be paid off before we kicked off.

Sadly, it became clear that paradise, at least that paradise, was one we had only been visiting for awhile. It was time to move on.

And that is the end of chapter one...more later......