Bumps in the Road, Turbulence in the Sky

Hi everyone! Dan again. It's still warm and sunny here in San Diego - hope you all are surviving the continued weird weather over there in Michigan and on the east coast! (the basement of our old place in Grand Rapids probably flooded last night).

Our winter out west has been way different in the weather and in so many other obvious ways - but 2026 so far has also thrown some other, less predictable curveballs at us.

The worst news was something that I first learned about just after the new year began. The small lighting company that I worked for was going bankrupt. Furthermore, the reason why was incredibly sad, mostly unexpected, and so dramatic it hardly seemed real (that's all the detail I'll share in this public format). The bottom line was simple: the only source of income for our little traveling family of four had just suddenly dried up.

Soon after, the check engine light started turning on in my Subaru. After a slightly tense drive out from Tucson, I found a mechanic in San Diego and took the car in. The owner of the shop (best mechanic I have ever interacted with) examined it and explained that the engine was essentially deteriorating - and that it wouldn't make financial sense to get it repaired. At 230,000 miles, I knew this day was coming eventually. But it was tough to say goodbye to the only car I had driven since my college days - and tough to think about buying a new car with my new tighter budget.

What were we going to do? Lean into what got us here.

Over our last ten months living nomadically, a theme has emerged of "filtering and refreshing". Keeping and reconfiguring the best parts of what was behind us, while letting the rest of it go as much as possible. We first perhaps lived this while selling many of our belongings last winter, and packing most of the rest into a mobile storage unit (much of which - we now realize - will likely be sold too once the dreaded day comes that we have to open that thing again). Since then, the theme has emerged repeatedly.

We are very fortunate to have enough financial runway to keep traveling for the time being - and we have each had multiple job opportunities arise already in the past few weeks. As for a second car, we decided that we didn't even need one for now. Before we left Michigan a year ago, we debated taking one car vs. two many times - finally settling on two. Since then, we have gotten into a rhythm and efficiently done the whole trip with two cars - but there were situations where having only one car would have been preferable. So we're going to try it. We ordered a hitch cargo carrier and some new standardized storage totes to redesign our packing scheme.

We'll share a lot more about our San Diego experience in a future post, but in the meantime I'll end this one with a fun bit that happened recently. One of my close childhood friends asked me to be in his wedding - and that wedding was in Hawaii! In the midst of a February full of work-related drama plus the loss of my car, a long weekend on O'ahu looked like a dream antidote on paper. Even this tropical escape was not destined to unfold without drama though. San Diego is about as close to Hawaii as you can be in the continental United States, but my departing direct flight still managed to encounter a world of issues. The incoming plane for the flight was diverted to Los Angeles due to extreme rain and wind (yes, in San Diego) which initially delayed my flight by three hours. As the end of those three hours, it was delayed again another hour, and at the end of that hour delayed overnight until 9:00 AM the next morning. I had just spent seven hours in the airport for nothing!

Luckily, the trip went more smoothly after that. Hawaii was rainy as well, with flood warnings even being posted at one point. The clouds parted at the right times though - allowing us to stay reasonably dry and also create some incredible photography opportunities. In one highlight (during the pre-scheduled wedding party photo time), the golden hour sun was shining through a rapidly clearing cloud bank ahead of us and the dark green mountains were framed by a rainbow behind us - all while it was still drizzling rain overhead - you know what, I'll just show you:

Outside of a full itinerary of wedding-related activities, I had time to explore O'ahu a little bit. I particularly enjoyed a coastal route in the southeastern corner of the island with dramatic wind-blown views that reminded me of Iceland, the rainforest-esque foliage on the windward side of the island, and two unique rounds of disc golf (making Hawaii my 30th US state played). One disc golf course was literally AT a Ritz-Carlton on the northern tip of the island.

We'll be back soon with more on San Diego. As they say in Hawaii: Aloha and Mahalo!