Tag: Dumb Luck

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Relax to the Max

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Kate and I finished our jobs on the Big Island today. A standard 13 week contract for each of us that flew by in no time. This is typically the time that we start packing bags for a sunrise flight to visit family on the east coast or throw all the bags in the car for a couple-thousand-mile road trip. This is typically hustle-time. But it’s different this time. As I relax and enjoy my pau hana (after work) drink, the bags are already packed and traveling the brief 120 miles to our next assignment. When we get to Moloka’i in 10 days, our car will already be there with a few weeks worth of Costco supplies packed in the rear. What to do in the meantime? Vacation!

We are spoiled rotten. We get to drive all over the country every year. Usually we travel by car and see some awesome sights along the way. Last spring we drove from Colorado to Maine by way of Key West (Get a Haircut and Get a Real Job! 10/6/13), the year before, we drove from Colorado to Alaska and returned on 10 day ferry trip down the North Pacific Coast (Alaskan Ferry Trip 12/17/12). These trips are always cool and create awesome memories, but they aren’t relaxing. The road trips are many great things, but they are not a break. Logistics, highway food, cheapo hotel beds, and an occasional call to AAA are the common obstacles. In the next 10 days, we will deal with none of that. We will just RELAX. (don’t do it)

A song about relaxing by a band with a travel-themed name. Really the perfect vacation song.

I haven’t written on here much at all about our next assignment, which, by the way, is going to be fantastic. I’ve been keeping a journal on the side. I’m not sure if it will become some sort of blog entry on here in the future, but for now, I’ll offer this brief summary of what we’ve gotten ourselves into: Kate and I will be the two Physical Therapists for the island of Moloka’i when the current PT goes on maternity leave. The only hospital on the island of 8,000 people typically needs one traveler following the recent retirement of one of their two PTs, but with the pending maternity, they will need two travelers. Kate and I will run the show for three months while hopefully grabbing a chance to explore one of the lesser known of the Hawaiian Islands. Moloka’i is less than 10 miles from Maui, but much, much, MUCH more rural and quiet. Moloka’i is one of the last unspoiled areas of Hawai’i and will be quite the isolationist’s travel assignment. A huge majority of people who live in Hawai’i have never been to Moloka’i, but many of the ones who have visited have shared their stories with me over the last few weeks. From tales of hunting wild African antelopes left over from a now closed safari park, to being trapped on a remote deserted beach for days, to the incredible kindness of (most of) the locals – everyone who has been to Moloka’i has a tall tale to tell. Perhaps in the future I’ll share some of the other stuff I’ve written about preparing for our trip to Moloka’i. To be honest, I started out quite skeptical and thought Moloka’i might be TOO rural, but I’ve come around and am crazy-excited for the next 3 months.

People do love their canoes on Moloka'i. Unspoiled beauty.

People do love their canoes on Moloka’i. Unspoiled beauty.

But, work in Moloka’i is 10 days away. The work of planning, and scheduling, and packing is done. We’ll wrap up our time on the Big Island over the next two days with some serious beaching. Then, we take a TSA-free puddle hopper over to Maui for 5 days of camping, hiking, and relaxation. Saturday morning, we’ll take the <10 mile ferry ride over to Moloka’i to let the real adventure begin. My biggest worry over the week will be preparing for a fantasy football draft on Skype with a bunch of buddies from school back in Boston (oh those goons). I promise many pictures over the next week and some unique tales from the upcoming assignment.

I have to run, the sun has set on the last day of Big Island work and I have to get to cooking this steak. 🙂 Aloha!

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The Perfect Day.

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Big Horn Sheep near the end of Jasper National Park. There were dozens of the guys on the side of a cliff… more pictures to come!

Via Twitter and Facebook I recently promised a quick update… so here I am. I am going to try to keep it brief and to the point. In advance, please forgive any spleling or grammar errors, I’m in a little hurry to get off the laptop, and all the French road signs have fried my little American brain. 🙂 I hope that when this trip is over, I can motivate myself to write about some of the adventures we’re having. If history is any indication, I will lose motivation and this current blog will have to suffice.

Let’s set the tone. Tonight, Kate and I are tenting near the beginning of the Alaskan Highway, about 140 miles inside Northern British Colombia. We’ve avoided camping until this point, but today was milder than previously and the $110 “Motor Inn” across the street seems unappealing. We’re sitting at a picnic table munching at a road-dinner and I have a La Fin du Monde beer cooling in the remnants of a snow bank behind me. UPDATE! I have a La Fin du Monde beer in my hand. For those of you not familiar with La Fin du Monde, it’s a Canadian beer that is considered one of the better craft brews around and costs youan arm, a leg, and your first born to get a glass in the U.S.  Seriously, I bought a 750 ml (22 oz?) bottle of this stuff for cheaper than a glass of cheapo wine would cost back in the states. The beer, the tent, the road laundry going in the campground laundromat, and this picnic table all remind me of the incredible adventure we’re on. When we hit Mile Zero of the Alaskan Highway today in Dawson Creek, BC we had already drive over 2,300 miles to get there, after the 140 miles into BC, we have about 1,500 left! But, I’ve strayed from the point, I wanted to briefly write about yesterday, which was an awesome day.

Jasper National Park sign in Jasper. The Red and White flying in the background. There would be people in the picture, but they were all watching hockey.

To explain yesterday, I need to start the day before. We had intended to visit Glacier National Park in Montana and drive to Calgary where we would stay the night. Glacier, while beautiful none-the-less, was minimally-open. The local town, St Mary, MT, was all but a ghost town. We managed to grab a coffee and Power Bars in the local grocery store which had opened for Saturday only. Anyways, our scenic trip was cut short, but left us with some awesome pictures and a moose sighting. Because our time was short in Glacier, we arrived in Calgary early and decided the only logical step was to drive onward to the town of Banff. So, we did. Banff is one of Canada’s (and North America’s (and the world’s)) great ski towns. We expected to find it in off-season mode like we had found Aspen, Grand Targee, Jackson Hole, and Big Sky before it. Disclaimer: we didn’t actually go to Big Sky, but we were near it and I assume it was empty. Instead we found a large ski community gearing up for closing day at its biggest resort, Lake Louise, and expecting another 2 weeks out of another local mountain. There was only one choice: Ski. Nothing really mattered: conditions, needed travel miles under our belt, cost, nothing. We were going skiing. So after a mostly restful night’s sleep in the expensive ski town/YWCA’s version of a hostel, we headed out skiing. It was a great day of skiing that rivaled any spring skiing I’ve done. Huge open bowls, decent soft snow up top, and even a few fresh tracks. WOOOOO!

I swear this isn’t fake. Seriously.

The rest of yesterday was a beautiful drive through Banff and Jasper National Parks… a must for anyone passing through mid-to-Northern Alberta. Saw many glaciers, huge mountain peaks, moose, elk, caribou, and big horn sheep (not a single US plate). This post will have to do for now, future posts depend on internet availability, time, and motivation. We’ll be in touch!

 

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What a Difference a Day Makes

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Kate (my wife, also a traveling PT) and I planned to write daily on our search for traveling jobs over the next several days or at most a couple of weeks. That plan has been blown. Between 11:00 AM and 3:00 PM today, our recruiter called and said there was a potential job, set up a phone interview, got 2 jobs lined up, and emailed the contract paperwork. WHAT!?!? Yesterday I was chewing my nails nervously about the difficulty of finding a job, and today I’m happily employed. Such is the life of a traveler.

Since I can no longer tell tales of traveler misfortune, I’ll stick with giving you some of the details of our current arrangement. I stick by my motto that I learn something new with each job search, and I hope this story can be educational for a new or experienced traveler;

-We found ourselves, last Tuesday (8/16/11), without any decent leads on a projected 8/22 start in Maine. We had been searching through our two “go-to” recruiters. We went into a more urgent mode and called up several of our past recruiters and started the process of reinstating our Massachusetts licences. The strategy was to expand the pool of jobs that were available to us. This did uncover a couple more opportunities that fell apart before we could even interview for the potential jobs.

-As the weekend passed, we knew we weren’t going to make our intended start date, but continued with daily check-ins to each of our recruiters. We interviewed with a couple jobs that weren’t in our ideal location, but would serve the purpose if we continued with poor availability of jobs.

-Today, we got lucky. One of our original recruiters reached a hospital in beautiful, scenic Boothbay Harbor, Maine right after the hospital’s current traveler gave his 2 week notice. We were notified of the position and scheduled with an afternoon phone interview. What we ended up with was two different positions with the same facility through our recruiter. One is your typical hospital-based travel position, one is a more crafty arrangement as a prn that is able to be cancelled should a full travel position arise in the area. A second travel position is more desirable due to the higher pay, tax breaks, and guaranteed 40 hours, but given our DESPERATE situation… we love it.

It’s interesting how this one has panned out. Not your typical travel assignment, but perfect timing for us. Sometimes it is all about timing – in this particular case, 0 jobs turned into 2 jobs in a 4 hour span – sometimes, that’s the way it goes. Fun sidenote, Kate and I both grew up visiting Booth Bay Harbor. As kids we each made annual visits to the same condo complex – wierd, right?

We’ll keep you updated over the next week as we search for housing, attempt to upgrade to a second full-time position, and get ready for a short 10.5 wk assignment.

Cheers and Merry Travels,

James