Kind of sad today. I sold my Mini. Make that my beloved Mini. I shouldn’t be so sad, as I’ll be getting a new one when I get to the “other side” next week, back home to California. Still, some cars have souls, and I’ll really miss my baby. And that got me thinking about the cars I’ve had over the years. Some were special; some got me by — lots of memories with all of them.

I’ve heard it said many times that especially for Southern California, you’re defined by what you drive. Perhaps. For my first cars there, I drove things more out of circumstance than choice. But that, of course, did define me. Not much money and picking up whatever I could afford or get handed down to me.

My very first car was a 1972 Ford Pinto Wagon. If most of my possessions weren’t waiting for me in the Port Of Long Beach right now, I’d scan an image of her. She was a her — Elouize, as I eventually named her. I know, silly. But she made a kind of wheezing sound, and my friends and I took to calling her “weezy” for short. Then I found the personalized plate of Elouize wasn’t taken, so I grabbed it.

I think I paid about $600 for Elouize, all earned while working in high school in a Carl’s Jr. for $3.35 per hour. Eventually, I saved enough to buy some type of car. My father went with me to check out some at a local dealer. It came down to a choice between two. I can’t remember what the other one was. We went for the Pinto because, as I’ll never forget, he said “I can probably fix anything that goes wrong with this.”

Things did go wrong. All the time. And he did fix it many times, which is another story for another time about a son and father who were never very close at least bonding to some degree through this car. See, the rule was that if he was going to fix it, I was damn well going to stand there while he did it. I stood for a long time, never pointing the flashlight in the right places but picking up a few things about auto repair. Just a few. I even carried a toolbox for years in the various cars I owned, for small repairs I could do. But he was a natural mechanic while machinery to me still is largely a magic thing where repairs are better left to the pros.

At one point, she was out of commission for several months after I ignored the red engine warning light that was flickering. Something went wrong with the oil system, and I burned the engine out. More saving to buy the new engine; more waiting by my father as he and a friend eventually got it in. Along with actual gauges to show me oil pressure and temperature, rather than “idiot” lights that an idiot young teenage boy had ignored with all his “rippin’ and a runnin’,” as my dad used to say.

Well, me and my friends did go everywhere in my car. Late night drives; out to lunch during school breaks; ski trips to Big Bear; trips all over the place. It’s a miracle I’m alive, I think, looking back. I can remember passing another car on a trip back from the mountains but not really having the power to overtake it. Suddenly, we were side-by-side while an oncoming car went past me on the other side. Or the time I unknowingly drove through a red light, through a busy intersection. I count my blessings.

Elouize had these wood panels that probably looked great when she was new. They’d faded out over the years. But I’d make them all look new again for a few days by spraying Endust furniture polish on them. And I’d wax what remaining paint was left on her, to make her look good. She was beat up, old, but she was still mine.

Elouize had soul. I had many, many good times with her. I even lost something in her, cliché as it is, I know. But oddly enough, I lost track of what happened to her in the end. Around my second year of college, she started having problems again. I took her home and started driving my stepsister’s car, which she’d left when she started driving something new. I think my dad eventually sold Elouize to someone else. I’d be surprised if she was still going today.

Still, I’d stepped up. Now I was driving an Audi Fox. She was a sweet little car with a sunroof. A sunroof! Plus, my stepsister had left No Doubt’s Tragic Kingdom in the cassette player, so I had really good tunes.

The Audi had a big problem, however. Everything electrical started breaking. The starter switch went out. The electric engine fan when out. Assorted other things broke down. Eventually, I rewired both the starter and the fan. To start my car, you’d put the key in to unlock the steering. Then you’d push a button to turn the engine over (and when the button broke, I’d just tap the two bare wires together). Then you’d flip a rocker switch to turn the fan on, so the car wouldn’t overheat.

Once I loaned the car to a friend of mine. I forgot to tell him about the fan. He headed out and a short time later had steam coming out of the radiator. Oops!

Finally, the Audi died altogether. I remember having a company come to my apartment complex to tow it away. And it was on to another hand-me-down, an old Chevy Chevette that my dad used to drive.

I think the unique feature of the Chevette was how the passenger side door has been bashed in an accident (not mine!). It shut, but there was a small gap at the bottom, where you could see the road as you drove along. I once did an interview and lost all my notes because of that hole. The notepad slid off the seat and managed to drop through it!

The Chevette didn’t last too long — maybe about a year. The clutch went out at one point while I was driving, causing me to discover that the theory about being able to shift gears based on the engine revs was something you could put into practice. Another time, one a trip with a friend out to Tahoe, we broke down out near Placerville. With my father nowhere near, I discovered for the first time the liberating feeling of paying someone to fix your car. I found the part we needed at an auto shop in town. They installed it for like $60 while we ate breakfast. My days of holding flashlights largely ended then.

Still, the Chevette’s time had come. I was no longer in college. I had a real job working for the LA Times, and it was time to buy a new car. My first new car. Being a child of the oil crisis (you know, the 70s oil crisis), I thought we’d be out of gas by the time I was able to drive. So, I was relieved gas was still available, but I wanted to have the most mileage I could get. Plus, I still didn’t have much money. So I went for a Ford Festiva, a tiny little thing that got like 50 mpg.

If my first car was freedom, the Festiva was even more so. I was liberated from having to worry about car repair for the first time since I’d been driving, about 7 years at that point. I no longer needed to have a toolbox in the trunk. The car simply did not breakdown.

Probably my best memory of the Festiva was when my wife and I drove her to Alaska. We didn’t need a 4×4 to navigate the Alaskan Highway. The Festiva was so small that she drove around the holes!

Having gotten married, eventually we needed a second car. And that brings me to the same feelings I’m having about selling my Mini today. See, my second car was a Honda Del Sol. More sporty-looking than a sports car, it was still great. Just a two seater, with a roof you could remove and store in the trunk. And even when you did that, there was still room in the trunk for camping gear.

I simply loved that car. Taking the top down and shooting along PCH, shooting up the freeway, going along the coast to Big Sur. It was all great. Plus, it was a Honda. If the Festiva was dependable, the Honda was bulletproof.

It broke my heart to sell her when I moved to England. I was saying goodbye to Southern California, and I was saying goodbye to a car that was so suited to Southern California. I really, really did not want to give her up.

Over in England, life quickly changed with our first son on the way. Moving from London after about a year from arriving, we needed a car — and it couldn’t be a two seater. The Honda CRV was out, a 4×4, but an economical one. It seemed a perfect choice. And it was.

The CRV was dependable. And being out on the Salisbury Plain, I’d even occasionally take it off-road. In fact, one of my best memories in that car was when there was a huge traffic jam on all the roads in the area, due to an accident. The boys and I went cross-country to get to nearby Amesbury, me following some of the tank trails and being tilted at 45 degrees at some points. The Honda plowed on.

About three years ago, we traded the Honda in for a Volvo XC90. The best I can say is that it was economical and we often did use all seven seats. But ours had many mechanical problems, never really felt it had a soul like the CRV, and I wasn’t sorry to see it go.

Aside from the 4×4, we eventually needed a second car. The new Minis had been out for about a year or two by then, and I had my heart set on one. So did Lorna. And it was so close, until I showed her an article about a remake of the Citroen 2CV. Here’s what those used to look like, an old French car with a fabric roof that you’d roll up. The remake was the Citroen Pluriel, a convertible. She’d been in the 2CV as a little girl and got nostalgic about wanting the remake. And so we got it.

I never got over not having the Mini, though. To console me, I was given no end of Mini products. Hats. Remote control cars. A book about them. Nothing helped, and I grew to hate that Pluriel more and more. It was a plasticky thing with no power, no personality, just bleech.

One day I joked again about how we should dump that horrible car and get a Mini. “Yeah, we should,” she said. I was on the web by the time we got home. I’d found a Mini at a nearby dealership, and within a few day, she was mine. She fit like a glove.

My best times in the Mini have probably been driving very fast on the small, awful roads just around our area. They’re barely wide enough for two cars to pass each other, and this being England, the concept of roads going in a straight line only happens where “modern” roads intersect with those the Romans built 2,000 years ago. But we do have a nice long straight stretch where I could really open her up on. Plus, the Mini suits the curves here. She feels right on them. And over the past few weeks, the barest tap on the accelerator would make her jump for me. It was like she was saying, “Let’s go for it.”

OK, maybe overtaking an unmarked police traffic car a few weeks ago wasn’t the best idea. But at least we went out in style. I’m going to miss my baby, driving her on the road here. In the US, a Mini Clubman awaits me. I know I’ll love it, too, but I’ll miss my first Mini and driving her on the roads here just as I missed driving the del Sol when I left California.

And the big move back to California continues. Friday, a key step: booking the tickets home time. July 9 is the day. So it’s 30 days and counting down to getting back to the Golden State.

Booking tickets was a pretty funny experience. First I went through my regular travel agent. Get me four one-way tickets! Who books one-way tickets? So I felt compelled to explain why — that we were moving. I mean technically, we’re emigrating. That makes me a twice emigrant — to the UK and now back to the US.

And tickets are friggn’ expensive. I mean thousands compared to the same time last year when you’d be talking hundreds. Guess those gas prices mount up.

In the end, I used miles to get back. Four “free” one-way tickets. Quotes around the word free because each costs $400 apiece due to “an offline booking fee of GBP 60.00, a security and insurance surcharge and a fuel surcharge per sector levied by the carrier.”

Ouch. I can remember paying about $400 for an entire roundtrip ticket between the US and the UK. I’m old.

There’s nothing like a move to help you realize just how much stuff, and
unnecessary stuff at that, you accumulate over time. As our household goods now
head by sea to California, it’s life kind of out of a suitcase for the next six
weeks. And that minimalist life is pretty refreshing.

I often tell friends about one of the best times of my life. It was
backpacking through Europe in 1989, and one day in particular always comes to
mind. My friend and I had made our way out to Westport, Ireland — just above
Galway. We walked up the local mountain Croagh Patrick, had a night in the local
pub, then it was hitchhiking time.

We’d never hitchhiked before. Ireland, we were told, was the place to do it.
Feeling a bit nervous, we gave it a go. We started walking down a coastal road
with no particular direction in mind and for me, pretty much all I owned other
than my books on my back. Aside from my books, I had a few more clothes and a clunker
of a car I’d left behind in California. Being out of college, I was pretty
broke.

What I had on my back was enough. Walking to nowhere was great. Years of both
working my way through college, worrying about money, dealing with coursework,
pondering what I’d do after college — none of it mattered. I had a backpack
with a few clothes, a good book I’d picked up at used bookstore, a friend at my
side and all day to go anywhere or nowhere at all.

Of course, my trip ended. And back home, it was nice to get an apartment
again, a couch, a TV, the trappings of a "civilized" life. But when my wife and
I decided to move to England in 1996, many of those things were abandoned. Some
things were shipped — my growing book collection, some clothes but much was
sold. Shipping was expensive, especially when we still hadn’t saved much and
what we did have was going into a four month long trip before arriving in
the UK.

More than a decade later, the possessions have built up. Those who know me
are pretty familiar with my pent up consumer demand when I get back to the US,
hauling to the UK things you can’t get there — holiday items, books for the
kids about the US and other things. And the kids! How did I end up buying so
many toys they never seem to play with? And was I completely obsessed with
wooden Brio track for the boys (yes, I apparently was).

Unlike the move out, we don’t have to trim things back for financial reasons.
Actually, the shipping turns out to be much less than I’d expected. We booked
our own container, like something you’d see carried by a small semi-truck. It’s
all ours, to fill as we please.

While we could get most everything in, lots got disposed of. The house we’re
heading to is smaller, for one thing. But more important, the move was a good
time to dump the items we don’t really use.

Away went many of my ties. I had quite a collection from my newspaper days,
many of which were so out of style that you’d laugh if I wore them now — not
that I wear ties much anyway. And those jogging shoes I bought from when I lived
in Newport and briefly tried running for exercise along the beach? Yeah, not
going back — plus running shoes have advanced somewhat in the years. The old
wooden tennis racquet I won in a Read-a-thon? OK, I couldn’t let that go. C’mon,
it’s an antique!

I already wrote about doing the
car boot sale to rid my garage of
stuff that wouldn’t work in the US, like an old shredder or power washer plus
assorted junk. The Xbox 360 and Wii aren’t going. I could probably get them to
work on a US TV, and getting a voltage adaptor is pretty easy. But I’d still
have to buy UK games. So all the games went up on Amazon Marketplace this week,
and I’ve been thrilled to find how quickly they’ve all found a new home — plus,
you know, it’s still exciting to make a sale.

Lots of furniture is heading back. Some of it makes sense, some nice dressers
and tables that you won’t find easily in the US. I laugh to think they might be
excited about a new life in a warmer climate. Into the container went other
things, like some outdoor tables and a nice old bench. All the outside stuff
apparently gets steam-cleaned, we were told, to ensure we bring no bad plants or
insects in to the US. Sounds very efficient, but somehow I think it’s more to
make everyone think this will really work than actually effective.

Other things like two couches and a chair, we pondered selling them. But we
have the room, and we like them — who wants to go through the hassle of finding
a couch you like once again. Plus, I remember moving into the first house we
owned, when all our things arrived from our London apartment. Suddenly, it
really did feel like home to have our own stuff around us. So these items, I
know they’ll be reassuring to the boys as they end up in their new lives in
California.

The boys remain remarkably positive about the entire move. Like they’re not
worried at all. My oldest even said something about how he was going to live in
paradise, where school ends early on Wednesdays and he’ll get chocolate
milkshakes everyday after school.

Heh. I’m sure the first week of school, when it’s no longer seeming like
they’re on vacation, we’ll hear about them wanting to go back home. Maybe not.
But if we do, at least we can sit with them on the couch they’re used to.

Because our stuff is going by sea, it had to leave about six weeks ahead of
us. We’ll arrive in mid-July, so last week was packing day. The movers were
fantastic, covering seemingly everything with bubble wrap. Some pics, starting
with lots of boxes:

A couch, bubblewrapped!

This is my favorite. I have this leather pig footstool, which is a story for
another time. He hadn’t been wrapped when I shot this:

Later when I came back, he had — and the movers enhanced his wrapping with
eyes and a mouth:

Outside stuff wasn’t wrapped but kept out for that later cleaning:

Buried back in there are two bikes that originally were shipped out from
Newport. I couldn’t leave them behind. They’d be sad.

I also love containers. Plastic bins, big buckets — I’ve used them for
storage for years. It sounds crazy to take them, but there was plenty of room!
Plus, what, I’m supposed to buy them all again on the other side?

Then there are the books. A blurry shot, I know:

Those are just some of the books going back, but that’s a special bookcase,
containing science fiction novels I’ve been buying since I was a kid. Lots of
Heinlein. Asimov. Herbert. Steele.

Some of the books are really old, though not first editions or even valuable in any
way. But they’re my friends. They kept me company when I was growing up. They
came with me to college, from apartment, to storage behind a trailer (another
story), to apartments in Newport and then eventually to an apartment in London,
then a home in Wiltshire, then our current house. And now they’re going home.

Part of the move also meant going through my office. It was amazing the
collection of stuff that was so expensive originally (my old Zip drive or
SyQuest drive) that’s now worthless. Much went to recycling. And much was a fun
discovery. Take these:

Ah, yes, 5 1/4 floppy disks. I thought these were so amazing after having
used a tape recorder originally to load programs into a computer. I do have an
old 5 1/4 drive in among my things, more for nostalgia than in hoping to access
these disks. And the contents of them were long ago moved to 3 1/2 floppies,
then to hard drives, where they reside today.

Dump them all? Yeah, I got rid of a bunch. But this collection makes me
smile. When I wrote the foreword to
Philipp Lenssen’s Google Apps
Hacks, I talked about
how I "borrowed" software when in college. I originally wrote pirated because
c’mon, that’s what I did. But there was a little concern that even after all
these years, some software companies might come after me.

Bring them on. After years of paying for software and endless "upgrades," I
feel I’ve redeemed myself. There’s my copy of Lotus 1.0, lifted from our student
newspaper office. And Leather Goddesses Of Phobos, lifted from a copy that was
lifted and lifted again. SimCity I liked so much that I actually bought. And
just some backups of stories and letters I wrote, all safely copied to 5 1/4.

As for my office:

Most of that stuff on the right is electrical remnants. A huge number of
phone cords, from when I actually needed to run a modem connection around an old
house with two phone points. Many extension cords, again because those 18th
century cob house builders didn’t put in as many power outlets as I’d have
liked.

My desks have gone. So have my monitors, except for a 15" one that
I’ll take when we go (and currently being used to make up for my wife’s Macbook
crash). My wonderful chair! So where am I working?

That’s the hallway outside my office. We had an old cheap desk in the kids’
room that’s going on the bonfire when we leave (it’s barely holding together).
An old chair on its last (heh) legs. And my Macbook Pro, my wonderful Macbook
Pro. I’ve been on it since my Dell desktop crashed, and I haven’t looked back.
I’ll be on it until we arrive in California, and I might just stay with life on
a laptop.

Similar to my office, it’s not completely life out of a suitcase. There are
bits and pieces we still have, an old outdoor table serving as a kitchen table,
to be left behind. Some old chairs that will stay behind as well. Air
mattresses! Some plates and silverware that we’ve borrowed from friends.

I’ve got two sets of clothing. Some "good" clothes I’ve kept that all fit in
one suitcase. Then there’s stuff that will be donated, some old T-shirts,
shorts, sweats and jeans that have seen better days. Last week in town, I was in
"old" clothes and trying to find the entrance to the post office. It’s in the
same building as the Job Centre, which is the unemployment office to non-Brit
readers. A woman came out from a side entrance, saw I was confused, looked me
over and said "Job Centre? Around the back." I guess they really were old
clothes!

So not quite a suitcase’s worth of possessions, much less a backpack. Yet
there’s a light feeling not having all those other possessions around, of
realizing how much less you really need. I’ll be glad to see my books again,
though.

The moving plans continue. Later this week, a company comes to take away half our stuff. Later this month, the other half goes. So there’s a lot of cleaning and deciding of what really needs to go. And in Britain when you do a clear out, you don’t have a garage sale. Instead, you go to a car boot sale. That’s where a bunch of people gather to sell things out of the back of their cars — out of the trunks, or as the Brits say, the boot. Until now, I’d only experienced the joys of buying at car boots. This Sunday, a whole new world — being the guy flogging his stuff.

For my British readers, Americans don’t do car boots. We have garage sales, where at an individual home, someone puts out all their stuff they want to sell. On Saturdays, people know to drive or bike or even rollerblade around neighborhoods looking for sales. There are often signs on street corners telling you when one is happening.

I don’t know why Brits don’t do garage sales and instead gather to do car boots (and here’s a good introduction to them). Perhaps some houses lack front yards, which may have helped the tradition start. Wikipedia’s no great help, telling me only that car boots started in the 1980s, which I kind of doubt.

I did the car boot sale with my friend Nick more for the experience than hopes of raising moving cash. Our day started bright and early. We drove to a place outside Salisbury where car boot sales are held each Sunday. 7am, folks paying about $12 each for a “pitch,” a place on the damp grass to park their cars. The organized and regulars even have tables:

One plus in going with Nick is that when he’s not using his van to cart his mobile DJ stuff around, it can double to carry all the stuff he and I have both accumulated in our garages. Above at the top of this post, my Mini demonstrated how much it can carry, too.

Nick being organized had a table. I did not. I relied on a few tarps, and I shamefully failed to organize stuff in any particular way:

Actually, I did eventually get a little more organized. I was particularly proud of my “Country Life” section where the old dog cages were organized along with a million pairs of Wellington boots that so are not coming to California, topped off by that tractor photo.

I felt I was at an advantage against the others at the car boot, as I launched energetically into banter. It was a bright crisp day, and there was plenty of fun to be had. Why, when this man picked up that tractor photo and his baby gasped in delight, I told him he clearly had to buy it. 50p richer — that’s about $1.00 — we were both happy

Midway through, another classic car boot tradition — bacon sandwiches!

They tasted better than the looks on our faces. I think we were questioning whether Nick’s wife was working my phone the right way to take a picture. Clearly she did and was simply troubled by the material she had to work with.

Another highlight of the day was when a man buying my old rotary sander asked how well it worked. I told him about as well as any 3 pound sander would work. Seriously, $6 and you’re looking for a year guarantee or something?

Nick had told me the professionals would swoop in at the beginning to grab all the good stuff, and there were a few of those. Me, I was more struck by one family that carefully weighed up the decision on whether to buy my old stereo, as theirs had broken. At 4 pounds when they asked me the price (I learned you just make these up on the spot), they wondered how well it worked. I dropped the price to 2 pounds, and that still seemed a big gamble for them but one they took.

In retrospect, I wish I’d just given them the stereo with best wishes. You kind of lose your head in the deal-making rush. Two pounds doesn’t seem much to me and other people, but it can be depending on your circumstances — and it’s good to have that reminder at a personal level. I can certainly remember when I first came to Britain, deciding if I wanted to add an extra zone to my London Underground travel car for the day, and whether I could afford the 50p hit.

Just before wrapping up for the day and packing, someone came along to buy my old wind-up electrical cable. I found myself nostalgic as I handed it over, telling the man and his wife there were a lot of memories with it.

“Memories?” he asked me, somewhat amazed such a generic item could generate such a response, I guess. I explained that when I bought my very first home here, there was a lot of home improvement / DIY that I did. That cable was one of the first things I bought, a big investment at the time and used for everything from running my old borrowed electric lawnmover (a Flymo that is supposed to hover above the ground but doesn’t really) to running a power sander I used to restore the floors of my first son’s future nursery.

Yep, a lot of memories. Funny how those can be bundled up in objects you never expect. Funny how we can drag these personal items that have been moved from house to house to be displayed not just for public view but for sale for tiny amounts.

Twelve years after leaving Newport Beach, I’m almost back to living here again. The past three weeks we’ve been on vacation in Newport, getting the boys used to coming back and making various arrangements. And as part of that return, I’ve had the strangest sense of a needle dropping back down on a record after being lifted or a long movie starting again after an intermission.

I don’t have the right word to define the experience. It’s not that my life has been on hold in all these years away. Not at all. When I left, I had no children and no idea what I’d be doing for work. Now I have two boys and a career covering search. There’s been plenty going on.

Perhaps it’s more that the life I left behind, that I pushed the pause button on, is starting to move forward again. I drive past places that are still here after all the years of being away. The Outback Steakhouse on the corner of 19th & Newport, where I’d never go but respect for being the one business after many that tried that’s managed to survive on that corner. Lunch at Charlie’s Chili, an institution at the base of the Newport Pier that’s still going strong. Laventina’s Pizza — formerly Valentino’s then formerly Laventino’s until Laventina’s became a name no one would sue them over.

I’ve seen all these places on past trips, of course. But now I’m seeing them knowing I’m going to see them all the time. They provide a sense of continuation — of picking up where I left off.

Far more significant was seeing a good friend who had his 45th birthday party coincidentally down here at Newport at the same time we were visiting. My former roommate, former coworker at the LA Times, suddenly he was coming by in the evening, hanging out, and we were all talking like it was old times. Except it was new times, the first of many.

At his party, I saw number of other newspaper friends that I hadn’t seen for years. It was really nice. It’s been hard seeing many friends that we’ve left behind here, when trips back have been relatively short. Normally, this would have been one of those nice to see them but who knows when I’ll see them again visits. Now, I had a real sense of I dunno, excitement, relief, pleasure that I’d get to see them far more recently.

Again, the feeling of the play button being pushed, of the needle dropping back down on the album. It’s been good to be back. I’m looking forward to getting back for good. Plus, gas is only like $4.00 per gallon here, versus $8.00 in the UK. But the best thing of all is probably seeing the sun set into the Pacific each night. That says home in a big way.

Look forward to hearing more about Newport when I get back. Or I hope you look forward to it, because I plan to be writing a lot about it.

I figured it was time for an update on the Big Move Back To California. Before I start, let’s have a movie! Check out the clip below (sorry, I can’t get it to stop playing automatically), and you’ll understand some of the pain I’ve had in front of me the past few months:

Nice, huh? That’s an ad that has been airing on many of the programs I watch, to promote California specifically to UK tourists. Before making the decision to go home, it was like television was mocking me. Seriously, I’d see an ad like that — or the opening to Californication — and I’d just have an huge internal sigh. What could you do?

Fortunately, TV no longer mocks me. I’m coming home, baby, you taunt me no more. FYI, the ad drives people to this site, where there’s a video library I just discovered in writing this post. Costa Mesa is one of the featured clips:

So how’s it going? One challenge was our small domestic animals. Yes, I’d talking about her and one of her babies that we kept. Look, the boys don’t read my blog, but I’m still not going to come right out and say it. I feel bad enough, and I never even wanted one of them much less two. The animals, that is, not the boys.

OK, the truth is I don’t feel that bad. I feel relieved. When I was a kid, sure, I was a dog person. I even had one. But something happened when I went to college, and sorry dog-lovers, I just can’t stand them. Really, I’m sorry. In college, I became much more a cat person. I had one in college that sadly got run over. I had another when I was a young reporter that I had to give away when the fleas were too much. Fleas and cats are tough in Newport.

The rest of the family overruled me about three years ago on the dog front. Suddenly we gained one, and I never really liked having her. Yes, I have a heart of stone. But dog hair everywhere, dogs jumping up on me, dogs yapping, dogs, dogs, dogs! Did I mention not liking them?

My wife and I knew there was no place for them when we went back, not at the beach. Plus, you know the boys really don’t play with them that much. Having been gone on a trip, the dogs went into a kennel, and they didn’t even notice they were gone when we got home and they stayed in the kennel a day or two longer. They just came back from the kennel again this week, and again, their absence wasn’t noticed.

The kennel had someone that would give them a good home so off they went yesterday. We’re heading back to California for nearly a month next week when the boys are out of school, and we figure they probably won’t notice for some time. If they do, well — we’ll probably lie or make noises about seeing about bringing the dogs over. I know, it’s cruel, heartless and mean. But it’s for the best. And no, I won’t be getting a cat. Fleas, remember? But maybe a hamster. They’re nice, disposable pets.

Speaking of the boys, they continue to amaze us for being up on the move. This morning they woke earlier and were discussing how much more play time they’ll have in the mornings because they’ll have a shorter distance to go to school. I keep waiting for the pushback, but I’ll keep my fingers crossed they stay excited.

Meanwhile, there’s all these things to dispose of. I spent the weekend pondering the seven desktop computers I’ve accumulated over the years (three others I donated long ago). Two are ones I built from scratch and dragged with me to Britain when I first came. I pried an Intel Pentium chip out of one as a souvenir — it’s headed to recycling. I pulled the hard drives out of the other two, those massive 6GB hard drives, and they’re going to be destroyed before heading to the recycle place. I pondered putting another old hard drive back in my former Windows 98 machine, but what’s the point? I’ve got an old laptop with Windows 98 if I want to go back in time, plus I can always run Windows 98 as a virtual machine on my Macbook through VMWare. One Pentium 4 machine with Windows XP will get donated. My main desktop, a family desktop and likely an all-in-one machine will probably go back.

Ironically, though, I’ll be getting an iMac for the family when we get back for good. I already put my wife on a new Macbook picked up in New York last week (overheard in the Mac store from one of the acolytes, “Macs don’t get viruses or need firewalls.” Right.). Look at me, from Mac hater to a two Mac then later a three Mac household.

Furniture. I thought we’d sell everything. But apparently, you rent a big shipping container, and it’s not that much to send your stuff around the world. So lots of our furniture will go, which is nice — I do like the big comfy couch we had. But wardrobes and some other old furniture we bought here in the UK from salvage shops is being sold back. A few pieces will come, ’cause they’ll be unique in a new setting. You can almost hear the lucky pieces saying, “Really, we’re going to California?”

Our second biggest ticket item, our Volvo XC90, goes tomorrow. Didn’t exactly do great on the resale value, getting about half what I paid for it about three years ago. Ouch. But the dealer is making it easy to sell it back to them, and with Britain cracking down on 4x4s regardless that ours gets better gas mileage than many other cars, people don’t want them as much. But I console myself with the fact that cars are so overpriced in Britain that even selling this used, it’ll pay for a brand new Escape hybrid in California. You go dollar, for once, I don’t mind if you keep dropping.

The big ticket item is, of course, the house. It goes on the market next week. The estate agents that came looking (that’s British for real estate agent) were far more positive than we were. The UK housing market is slowing, but it’s still not as bad as the US. Apparently, we have a desirable house in an area with few properties on the market. Or they just wanted to say the right things. We’ll see.

It’s been just over a week since we decided to make the move back to Orange County from Britain, and I thought I’d keep blogging about how it is all going.

So far, the big relief is that the kids are totally on board. Like they want to be there now. It’s kind of fun, that anything they don’t like at school here means that California stands out as a shining new place to go. I know that they’ll have bumps when we get there, of course — and then I’m bracing myself for the “I want to go back to Britain” demands. But I keep my fingers crossed.

Personally, I almost want to pinch myself each day to make sure I’m not dreaming. I really hadn’t realized how much it had been building up within me that I just wanted to go home. I think back to when I left Search Engine Watch to start Search Engine Land. Friends I knew well kept telling me, “We knew you weren’t happy.”

I wasn’t? I hadn’t realized it up until the end, I suppose. I often joke about that, characterizing it to friends I know who have come out to being gay. Something wasn’t quite right with them when they kept their real feelings inside. but after they came out, they were transformed, blossoming into these more whole, happy individuals.

So I guess I’ve come out of the closet, in wanting to go back home. I can’t say enough how much I mean no slam to friends in the UK who love it here. It just hasn’t been for me, ultimately.

Leaving relieves me of so much that I would have magnified out of proportion. Today in the new UK budget, Gordon Brown pulled a new £30,000 fee (out of his ass, sorry) that he wants to charge against “non-domiciled” residents.

That’s me. There are about 100,000 of us in all of Britain. It’s a quirk of the UK tax system, where if you don’t consider the UK to be your ultimate place of permanent residence, you don’t have to pay tax on overseas earnings, because you’re considered non-domiciled.

Out of his ass? Yes. Because the choice will be to report your worldwide earnings and be taxed on them (as the US does) or pay this figure that literally appears plucked out of the air at random.

It actually wouldn’t have impacted me much. That’s because I’m even more special, “resident non-domiciled.” That means I pay tax to the UK on all my earnings as a contractor or consultant, since I do that work mostly resident in the UK. But any interest income (not a big deal) or capital gains (I have none now but maybe someday!). I don’t pay tax on that money unless I physically bring it to the UK. And make sure you don’t commingle it with an account where you do bring some money in. And be sure to track all your work days here, abroad and on both a calendar year and a fiscal April 6-April 5 year.

Sigh. I’m leaving all that behind, along with really expensive tax people who are supposed to figure all this stuff out. Ryan Carson who is another American expat just to the west of me in Bath and I were just twittering about how difficult it is to find good people who can keep track of this stuff. Going home solves it, since the UK won’t care about me filing any more.

Dealing with this stuff has just built and built and poof, now it’s gone. It reminds me of when I shifted from running a web development firm to working on my own. A huge load of stuff that had built up for me to do was no longer hanging over my head. Free!

Fresh starts are great. Savor them. And even better, it’s not just me. My wife who suggested the move can’t wait to get going herself. Shippers are coming in to assess what it will take to move our stuff over. Things are being divided into what we actually want to take versus what we should sell off. A painter is in to quickly tidy up our hallway, before the house goes on the market in just a couple of weeks. So fast!

I also find myself being useful. When it comes to school here, I’ve been an absentee father. She takes them; she navigates the system; she worries if they’ll get out of sixth form or whatever and into the grammar school. These things all mysteries to me.

Suddenly, I’m checking on what grade level the kids will be going into. And explaining how yes, there’s the pledge of allegiance that really does happen each day, and that I’ll teach it too them even though I find it weird myself and how no doubt in high school, they’ll realize they don’t have to take it and might refuse as I and others did, just to prove we were good Americans with the right not to take it. Heck, the UK might be getting one itself.

And high school. Wow, my kids will be going to high school! It simply was not something I ever considered. Years and years, I’ve assumed they would grow up entirely in Britain. Suddenly they’re going to have a high school experience as I did (for better or worse!). With football games and homecomings and proms. I pinch myself again to make sure this is all real.

I realize also I might have perhaps this rare, strange gift. My kids know they’re both British and American, but they’re very British. They live here. They’ve grown up here. And they talk like little proper English children (English accents, pretty posh actually). When we go back to California, I always remark to friends on how heads turn when they address me and I talk back. Who is this man that has seized children that in no way talk like him (my accent, I’ve fought to hold on to that over all these years, pretty well I think).

I love my little British kids. But I never imagined I’d have kids like this. I don’t mean that negatively. You just don’t grow up as an American thinking that your children will speak in a different accent.

OK, maybe some people feel this. My father was from the South, and like me, he kept his accent despite years in California — and he ended up with these California-accented kids. But still, a completely different country?

But now? We think there’s a good change one or both of the boys will lose their accents. Suddenly I’ll have children who talk like me. So strange, so weird. They can talk however they want, of course, as long as they stay talking to me. But such a change – I never expected it. I pinch myself again mentally. Is it really happening? Yes, it is!

After 12 years of living in the UK, I’m going home — back to Southern California, back to Newport Beach. This will be a fairly personal post about the decision my family has made, but my blog was supposed to be for more than writing about gadgets and computers and donuts. Good writing is often deeply personal, and I don’t do nearly enough of that type of writing.

Back in December 1996, I came to Britain with my wife so that we could start a new chapter in our lives, that of raising a family. I didn’t want to leave home. I simply love California. I love Orange County and in particular, I love Newport Beach. I take nothing away from the many other beautiful and wonderful places in the world. It’s just that this is where I grew up. It screams “home” to ever fiber of my being. I literally feel the difference in the air, smoggy as it may be, that I breathe when I get back.

Nevertheless, I agreed to come back. I knew Britain and had spent much time here. Indeed, that’s how I met my wife, who is British. And she wanted to be home for this part of our lives. I figured it would be OK. There was no way to be both places, and I knew she’d be more comfortable near her family as we started having our own. We’d get back to California and perhaps eventually return there.

We did start going back. With my travel schedule, I returned often for work. As a family, we’d get back usually once per year. I often tell a story about the first trip back with my son who had just turned two or so. I took him outside, and he looked up at the trees with a puzzled look. I looked up and realized he was confused at the trees — they were palm trees, and he’d never seen them before. Or maybe it was just gas, but it makes for a nice story.

As the years ticked by, people would often ask me how I liked being in the UK. “It’s OK,” would be my standard answer, and I’d cover the general things about missing the weather at home, the general expense of things in the UK but how we lived in a nice village and universal health care couldn’t be beat. “Will you ever go home,” was a common follow-up question. Sure, I’d reply — when my kids were 18, daddy was going back, and anyone who wanted to join him could.

Over the past year, it became increasingly harder for me to say the “It’s OK” thing. I was traveling back much more, and I was finding I missed home even more. I couldn’t help myself — my responses more and more came out as “I hate it.” To all my UK friends, it’s not that I hate Britain. It’s that I’ve hated being away from my home, the place I’ve felt most comfortable.

Despite really not liking it, I felt I had little choice. The kids, you know. You can’t disrupt the kids. Or the entire family, to make such a move. Just. Can’t. Be. Done.

Or so I thought. Talking is a good thing, and my wife realized how much happier I’d be at home. Many of the things I love — and love to do with the family — are at our doorstep in California. Sure, Big Bear isn’t the greatest place to ski or snowboard, but it makes for a fun day. My youngest who’s into skateboarding — as I’ve been getting into — doesn’t need to be driven an hour away only to find the park is so wet that you can’t use it.

Being back in California also means a lot of good things in terms of work. So much of what I do is helped by personal meetings, but I get little time for these being 6,000 miles away from the heart of the search industry. For all these years, I’ve also worked a schedule where I know my day will stretch late into the UK night, because that when the California day is just getting going. And any trip back, that’s always meant at least three days away from home — one out, one back plus whatever work days in between. Since I got out so rarely, I’d often try to bundle a lot in a trip, which means I could be away for two weeks at a time.

Now I can hardly believe the change that’s about to come. Later this year, if I want to get an update with Google or Microsoft, I can jump on a plane and spend a day to do it, no jet lag, no planning multiple meetings around an already exhausting conference that might be happening.

It’s scary in some ways, mainly because of not knowing how our two boys will react. Talking to them this weekend, the first reaction was of not wanting to go. I’d felt they’d be OK, because each year I semi-joke with them about going back, and after our last trip, they actually seemed kind of eager.

Tonight, my oldest came in very upset, worried about the many things we’d be leaving behind. But my wife and I talked with him more, and he seems OK now. The thought that I’ll switch my Mini here for a Mini convertible there certainly brightened him up.

The treehouse I built, of course, can’t come with us. Believe me, if I could deconstruct it and transport it over, I would. But in the end, it’s only a thing. Things can always be replaced, or you go on without them. Life is more than worrying about things.

We know that kids are resilient, and we think the boys will be OK, and we’ll surround them with love as we embark upon this new journey. And daddy will start taking them to school in the morning, rollerblading alongside them as they bicycle their way, until they’re old enough to tell daddy to go away

The plan is to be back by August. It’s going to be a busy and changeful next few months as we move to that, and I’ll be blogging about how we go through it. But California here I come, right back where I started from. Open up those Golden Gates!