Back to life as we know it

and a podcast.   We've been in BC for 16 days, realized if we don't return to Portland soon we may never leave, and packed our bags.  Actually that's not exactly true, our clothes were already in the closet of the bus and we had no bags...but you get the point.  It's not that staying in VAN would be a bad thing mind you, but i'm pretty sure they'd send a mounty to escort us out eventually.

And lets face it, there's unfinished projects waiting for us back home we have to get to eventually... and our livers could use a bit of a break from all the fun.  We got in one last day of volleyball on Kits Beach, one last dip in the ocean one last sushi and noodlebox and then headed out of town in the morning.

It didn't stop us from feeling sad and dejected as we pulled out, but the weather made sure we had to focus on other things.  It's been the dryest summer on record in the PNW, but of course we decide to drive home in a torrential downpour.  It was good to see the rain, but as most of you know we have no windshield wipers and with the safari windows rain outside means rain inside... we would have been happy to just be able to see the road.  We made our way home slowly and talked of ways to live in VAN a larger part of the year, of our to-do list back in PDX and of (given weather conditions) whether the bus is a wise vehicle to own if we keep driving back and forth.

Back in Portland we settled back in to our construction site with bed on the floor and started trying to make a plan for finishing it out in between guests next door.  We are thrilled to see each new guest booking but can't seem to find any days to finish our remodel... progress for getting out of debt but not so much for project timelines.  We'll take it.

Our first day back we met with a reporter who has an interest in writing about MakerFlat and our artists/makers, held a few overdo meetings with a zenbox clients with projects underway, signed up a new one and checked in on construction at the minihouse project. Not exactly a slow immersion to normal life.

Yesterday we finally did one of those things that scared us and sat down with Chris Ryan to record a podcast.  We met Chris months ago (actually, a year ago as i check dates) as we do many people...because he walked into our place thinking it was a bar or business and started up a conversation.  We had actually forgotten about the events of that day until he started describing our meeting during the podcast.  Turns out we met him as we were heading out the door to get stitches in my leg.  Otherwise i'm guessing we would have convinced he and his lady to stay for happy hour and more engaged conversation.

Instead, we had a brief meeting that turned into Chris asking us to join him for an episode of his podcast Tangientially Speaking.  We were initially skeptical to say the least.  Here's a stranger we met off the street asking us to broadcast our voices online.  Then we looked at his website and found out he's an interesting dude and kind of a big deal... what with writing a two time NYTimes best seller and all.  Then we checked out the actual podcast and ran for the hills.  Don't get me wrong, it's great...every episode we listened to is truly enjoyable and inspirational.

But his guests are, well, famous.  They're important and well educated people.  Most have letters after their name and are authors or experts in their field and we couldn't really figure out why this guy wanted to talk with us.  We couldn't possibly add value to this crowd of people.  We also saw (heard) a trend that most of his podcasts ended up with a pretty strong slant towards talking about your sex life (a topic we love but don't typically air publicly) and we were pretty sure this podcast thing wasn't for us.

We dodge, dip, dive, duck and dodged him as long as we could because the idea terrified us, but as we have discovered recently...that's a great reason to actually DO something. Yesterday we did, and as you might guess- it was a blast.  We walked over to the park with Chris, remembered how easy he is to talk to and why we hit it off to begin with; and then sat down on a picnic bench to have a quick chat that 50,000 or so people will listen to.  Gulp.

But it was fine.  It was fun actually, once we got underway.  In fact, we had a happy hour planned with MakerFlat guests (now new friends) and we were almost disappointed to have to wrap up the podcast and leave...right until happy hour delivered an equally fun set of new friends.   Another example of just how ridiculous fear is and how it prevents us from doing the very things we will possibly enjoy the most.  Will we never learn?

I'm certain we made absolute fools out of ourselves, but I'll be sure to pass along a link whenever he makes our episode live.  Maybe we'll get lucky and he'll chase us down for a second episode next time he's in Portland.

Update...here's the link to our first podcast.  Thanks again to Chris for breaking us in!