United States – The Escape Hatch

Travel in the Time of COVID

Part 1: A long time ago…

…on a continent far, far away, Lea and I took a very long trip. So long, in fact, that for a while we didn’t even think about traveling again. Time passed, as it does, and at last came the day when we felt that… maybe… it was time for another overseas adventure. But not a stressful one, no. We wanted to sit on a beach, or perhaps by a pool, and have someone supply us with copious amounts of alcohol as we emptied our minds of all things work-related. In other words, we wanted an all-inclusive resort: a vacation spot that would collect us from the airport, drive us to the hotel, and let us turn off our brains.

Therefore, dear readers, at the dawn of 2020, we used a discount travel site to book a stay in Cancun a few months later, in April.

Then a plague happened.

Though we’d already paid, in light of COVID, the travel company let us postpone our trip to Mexico—but not forever. By December 2020, the pressure was on to pick a date and commit, so we did, with much crossing of fingers and gnashing of teeth. We knew that COVID might surge again, new problems might arise, and cannibal zombies might start walking the earth.

We spent quarantine watching The Walking Dead on the assumption that it was a documentary.

Time dragged. We went camping. We both worked from home. I published some books and sold some short stories. Vaccines were released, which Lea and I got as soon as humanly possible. For a while, it even felt safe to go in public (masked, of course). Lea’s sister Lisa was scheduled to visit the US from her job in South Sudan, so the question came up: How much were tickets to meet her in New York, and did we dare venture into airports and subways?

We dared.

New York, May 2021

The cheapest flights to New York are really into Newark, followed by a leisurely forty-minute train ride from Liberty International direct to Penn Station. I say “leisurely,” but after working from home for over a year, this was by far the longest time we’d worn masks in one stretch. Since we were being extra-cautious, we each wore two masks on the plane and on the train.

Breathing my own air for hours on end was a COVID-related pleasure I hadn’t enjoyed yet. Medical and service-sector employees have had to deal with that since Day One, but Lea and I spent our quarantine as hermits. This trip was our first taste of “Here’s what your breath really smells like—all day.”

But you know what we call that, folks? Inconvenience. Mask up, people. Cover your nose and your mouth. New Yorkers seemed to understand this idea. Why do I have to explain this?

(ahem)

Trains arriving from New Jersey are consigned to the deepest bowels of Manhattan’s underground. Any New Jerseyite readers out there, let me know if that’s a personal attack against your state. Once we rode the escalator up from Penn Station, our very first sight of NYC was the Empire State Building. No giant ape, but what can you do? Our hotel was only a few blocks around the corner, so we checked in and did the first thing you do when arriving in New York:

We got bagels.

Holy Flying Spaghetti Monster, the bagels! After a year of home-cooked meals, exhausting ourselves of every recipe we could tolerate, those real New York bagels were sheer carb heaven. We bought enough for ourselves, Lisa, and our travel buddy Melissa, retreated to our room, and browsed for things to do that weren’t completely locked down.

Things that survive the apocalypse: roaches, Keith Richards, and food trucks.

It turns out that while New York was back in business, many of its people still chose to stay indoors. The subways, for instance, were never crowded. That is a sign of the End Times, my friends. Before COVID-19 and the subsequent plague of “Waaah, I don’t want to listen to doctors,” getting a seat on a New York subway was a thing almost unheard of. Another glitch in the Matrix was that it was never hard for us to find restaurants that didn’t require reservations. Some public buildings were closed, but businesses were open. Some put a cap on how many people could be inside at once, but most just required masks, a temperature check, and hand sanitizer before entering.

For those who haven’t been to New York, this counts as “not crowded.”

One of the first things I’d wanted to do post-quarantine was visit an actual brick-and-mortar bookstore, so we went to The Strand and spent money. We wandered Chinatown and Brooklyn, took a walking tour of Harlem, and went for the nighttime view from The Edge, a platform high above Hudson Yards (a futuristic mega-mall whose target consumers are probably Cylons from Battlestar Galactica).

Even masked, I could smell the fresh print.

Though vaccines were available before we went to NYC, they were still pretty new. We expected that everyone would get their shots sooner or later (har-har), but at that point it hadn’t been possible yet. We spent the whole weekend masking in public, maintaining social distancing when possible, but nevertheless enjoying ourselves. Once we came home (after another day of double-masked transit) it was a pleasure to peel the layers off my face and take in a few easy breaths.

Shortly after, the CDC relaxed its mask mandate for the fully-vaccinated. Which, of course, gave the hardly-maskers and anti-vaxxers permission to go around mouth-breathing at people. We already had another weekend trip planned, but grew ever more anxious about the inevitable rise in cases due to the swarms of careless people being asshats.

Totally cheating with a pic from 2017 because we didn’t take any photos in Florida.

Tampa, June 2021

The great thing about living a short ride away from the world’s busiest airport is that if you watch the sales, weekend getaways are a snap. Early in June, we took an extra-long weekend to visit our friend KT in Tampa. (We also took our computers so we could work while hanging out.) The number of incautious people were on the rise, so we spent more time “in” than “out.” It was great to spend a weekend near the water with some BBQ and first-class Cuban food, but as at home, we ate take-out or made use of outdoor seating. We went kayaking on the Homosassa, then spent an afternoon drinking cocktails in KT’s pool.

In the name of sanity and everyone else’s entertainment, and because there was no compelling reason not to, I got drunk. Drunk drunk, y’all. Me being intosic… insoxa… intoxicated is a sight that very few people have had the privilege to behold. Call me a lightweight: I never got passed-out, falling-down, hugging-the-porcelain drunk, but for Lea and KT’s edification, I made it my mission to clean out a couple unwanted bottles of rum. Lea says I get a little belligerent when drunk, but I rather think it turns off my inbred Southern inhibitions. And makes me dizzy. Real dizzy.

Meanwhile, COVID was back on the rise, quickly surpassing 2020’s peak. After returning to Atlanta, Lea and I put ourselves back into lockdown, especially once the Delta Variant kicked into gear. On top of all that, we lost our cat Miss Piggy to a series of medical issues. In August, going nuts in a cat-empty house, we decided to take a “working holiday” to visit Lea’s mom at her home in Myrtle Beach.

Myrtle Beach, August 2021

Instead of flying, this time we drove. Urgh. The advantage of driving is not having to wear two layers of masks for hours at a time. On the other hand, while the drive should have been five hours, it was made longer by torrential rain on the way over, and torrential Atlanta traffic coming home. The COVID rates in Georgia and South Carolina were dismal, and several vaccinated people we knew had come down with cases of Delta. Nevertheless, for better or worse, we had to get out of the house.

In Myrtle Beach, we worked, ate out, and sat on the beach in the evenings. I was glad for a beach chair and the sunsets by the waves, but in restaurants it was somewhat disturbing. It seemed that nobody was taking precautions. In one restaurant, even the wait staff weren’t masking. I cannot believe that we weren’t exposed to COVID; I can only assume that our vaccines did their job.

Get vaccinated, people! Why are we still talking about this?

(ahem)

About that Cancun thing…

Back when it came time to book a flight or lose our money, we rolled the dice and chose October 2021 as our vacation date of last resort. October was far enough away from 2020 that we’d hoped everyone would be vaccinated (cue hysterical laugher and/or sobs) and things would have returned to something close to normal. It was also the furthest date out for which we could purchase airplane tickets.

All through the summer, COVID cases crept up. We worried whether we could travel at all, or if we even should. The worst-case scenario was that we’d get COVID in Mexico and be stuck in Cancun for an extra two weeks. It wouldn’t be an extended vacation; we’d have to do our jobs (while sick) using a foreign hotel’s Wi-Fi and our tiny laptop screens while hemorrhaging pesos on room-service bills.

But as the date grew closer, infection rates inched down. We still didn’t trust it. We avoided going out as much as we could, but a mountain of necessities kept drawing us out of the house. A week before our departure date, we both got COVID tests to make sure we weren’t going to bring the bug with us.

At last, the big day arrived, the day we’d been planning for since January 2020. We packed our beach clothes and our work computers, took the train to the airport, and flew to Mexico. No matter what happened next, we’d at least have margaritas by the pool.

TO BE CONTINUED

Get Out of the House! – Camping 2020

Ah, 2020 – the year we went from traveling the world to not leaving the house. It seems that Lea and I took our Globetrotting Year not a moment too soon. Given the current COVID-transmission statistics and the fact that too many people still don’t know how to wear a f&%#^ng mask, it’s not even safe to set foot in a grocery store, much less get on an airplane. If we risked it anyway, what would we do once we reached our destination – confine ourselves to a hotel room and order delivery? But there’s still one way to cure cabin fever and get that much-needed change of scenery, that’s more or less the safest way to travel until the world gets vaccinated and it’s not irresponsible to leave our respective caves, and that’s camping.

Lea and I used to camp several times a year, then went through a phase when we hardly camped at all. This year has brought us back to camping in earnest, and from the packed-out campgrounds we’ve stayed at, many people feel the same way. While originally we’d planned to go to Mexico and England this year, instead we’ve stayed within a four-hour radius of Atlanta, visiting Chattahoochee Bend State Park, DeSoto State Park, and the Blanton Creek Campground. Blanton Creek usually closes in October, but due to popular demand remained open much later, which was lucky for us because Hurricane Delta scrapped our earlier reservation.

That being said, our experience has always been that there is a very narrow window in both the spring and fall when we are personally willing to sleep outdoors in a canvas box. In the American South, particularly in Georgia and Alabama, the temperate shift from freezing nights to summer heat only lasts for about a month, and planning a camping trip requires a certain degree of luck and/or precognition regarding the weather. Campground reservations fill up months in advance, so there’s no use waiting to see what the forecasts predict.

A little on the chilly side of “acceptable.”

Of course, the relevance of this window varies depending on where you fall on the “camping technology” spectrum. On one end are the primitive campers who hike to their sites with all their gear on their backs, and pitch their tiny tents far from electricity or water spigots. On the other side of the scale are the campers who show up in RVs the size of Metallica’s tour bus, with all the amenities of home: mattresses, kitchens, showers, big-screen TVs, and satellite hookups to watch the Big Game, can’t miss that!

Given that many of these RVs are more spacious and well-apportioned than some apartments I’ve lived in, I can’t help but think that these people are cheating. However, given that I crossed the half-century mark this year, I can’t help but see the benefits of bringing your whole house with you into the Wild. At Blanton Creek, in fact, Lea and I (and our friend and camping buddy Melissa, no stranger to this blog) drove around the campground to window-shop RVs. Our position on the caveman-to-RV spectrum has shifted over the years, and the day will eventually come when we’ll invest in a smaller pop-up camper. The plan, in fact, is to retire, sell our house, and spend a year or two roaming from park to park across the States. Maybe in something like this:

For now, we stick to what gear we can fit in our car. For years, that was a tiny Honda Civic, but our new vehicle of choice is a hatchback Honda Fit with seats that lay flat to make packing an awful lot simpler. We bring a tent, an air mattress, a propane camping stove, chairs, bedding (the thickness of which depends on how cold it will be at night), cookware, a cooler, lanterns (propane and electric), headlamps, toiletries, clotheslines, towels & washcloths, reading material, a selection of board games, twenty pounds of ice, and enough food for two dinners, two breakfasts, and one lunch (which we usually end up skipping in favor of chips and Little Debbies). This year we’ve added an extension cord to run inside the tent, from which to charge our phones, run a box fan, and power my C-PAP.

What never varies, though, is that we always forget something. Looking at the list above, I’m reminded that I forgot to pack my camera on our last trip, which I was supposed to bring to photograph the fall colors. Thankfully, Lea’s Olympus is better at making the colors pop than my Canon Rebel T3 (see below). When we went to Chattahoochee Bend in the spring, I forgot to pack our brand new stove and had to drive all the way back to Atlanta, or else we’d have eaten chips and cold cuts for two days.

Actually a better kitchen than we often had in South America.

What is there to do while camping? Cook, for one thing. As you’d imagine, when living like a caveman, a primary activity is heating meat and vegetables. After decades of bringing ingredients to chop and prepare on-site, this year it finally dawned on us to do the bulk of our prep-work at home (chopping up peppers and onions to go with eggs, mixing beef and sausage for patties, etc.) so all that remains is to heat everything up.

Cleaning without benefit of a sink or running water is a chore, but one we worked out years ago: Heat up clean water in a pan with a sprinkle of Dawn, use a rag and hot soap-water to wipe off dishes and plates, then rinse with whatever cold water is on hand. Often we’ll use the nearest spigot (which usually isn’t potable, just so you know) but at one of our sites this year that water was brown. (Let’s call it rusty and pretend that was all.) That site, thankfully, did have washing sinks down by the bathhouse.

Running water’s usually available somewhere.

Hiking is another activity one would expect to do while camping. We hiked a lot more when we were younger, sometimes wishing we hadn’t. Cloudland Canyon and Amicalola Falls are two that spring to mind where hiking down the trail was so arduous that hiking back up was near impossible. Lately we’ve traded hiking for kayaking, and found that much more suited to our enjoyment. (Kayaks, not canoes, which our kayak instructor cheerfully refers to as “divorce boats.”)

And of course, most campgrounds will have other attractions and activities nearby. In the fall, we went kayaking on the Little River above DeSoto Falls, near Mentone, Alabama (and raided the Tip Top Bake Shop afterward). In the past, we’ve gone caving, visited a diamond mine in Arkansas (waste of time) and Bill Clinton’s childhood home (fairly interesting). We’ve spent mornings on the beach and afternoons in shady pool halls. We’ve gone to museums, attended nature talks, and even went shopping at an outlet mall.

But in truth, our primary activity while camping is lounging. There are few things more relaxing than sitting outdoors in the shade with a good book, a pleasant view, a bag of Zapp’s potato chips, and no damn reason to do anything productive. Let’s be honest, much of camping is an ordeal: the preparation, setting up and tearing down your tent, fretting about the weather, shooing mosquitos, and dodging whatever acorns the squirrels above are throwing at your head. But once you kick back for a morning, afternoon, and evening by the fire, until your sense of the passage of time hangs up its coat and takes a nap beside you… That moment makes you wonder why we live any other way.

P.S. Fall Colors! We’ve been wanting to camp at Blanton Creek for years, specifically because of the brilliant red sourwood trees and the views across the lake.

P.P.S. Lea’s Macrophotography Returns!

Shelter In Place: Day 150

As you surely know, Facebook has this pernicious little gimmick where it’ll pop up old posts and pictures into your feed under the heading “Your Memories from xx Years Ago” – or, as it should be renamed during the Sharknado that is 2020 – “Hey, remember back when you were happier?”

This picture was taken two years ago today.

Case in point: Two years ago, Lea and I were in the first month of our South American odyssey. On this day in 2018, we arrived at the lovely eco-resort village of Mindo, Ecuador, and checked into the Hostal Melyang.

For my money, the Hostal Melyang was one of the most pleasantly relaxing places we stayed on the whole trip. The third floor is open to the breeze, with hammocks and rope swings and bird feeders galore for the countless avian species that swoop by to visit. After our short time in Mindo, we would head to the Pacific Coast, where I’d get to see whales and experience my first earthquake on the very same same day.

Facebook feels the need to remind me of this, and will no doubt do so daily for the next eight months.

Stop it!

Dear Readers, I know I’ve been neglecting you. My last article on this site was posted four months ago, and even that was hard for me to crank out. My motto on this blog is “The Escape Hatch will always be open,” but that hasn’t been the case this year, and I don’t think I need to belabor the reasons. Aside from some kayaking and a camping trip to Chattahoochee Bend State Park, Lea and I haven’t been able to go anywhere. This weekend we drove all the way to Taco Bell and parked under a tree to eat burritos, and in these times that felt like a far and distant land.

My point being: I haven’t felt motivated to write about travel. On the one hand, we haven’t gone anywhere to write about. On the other hand, I feel like I’ve already mined all the trips we took in the few years leading up to our South American sojourn, and would have to dig even further back in the murky depths of memory for new content.

On the third hand, the further back in time I go to churn up travel stories, the less accurate and relevant any information I relate will be to modern readers. On the fourth hand, and maybe this is only me, it’s felt like travel writing in these last few months would have been in bad taste.

Yes, I counted four hands. What’s your point?

But enough of my excuses. Even if we can’t (or shouldn’t) trot the globe, the blog must go on! I missed an opportunity with that camping trip we took, so when we go again (we’ve already booked the dates) expect an article on camping in general, as that’s the one way of getting out of the house and into the world that I can recommend during the current crisis.

Also coming soon: an article on how I learned to travel in the first place.

For many in my generation, our first travel experience was riding cross-country in the back of the family station wagon (or pickup truck; I don’t judge). Not for me: I spent from the latter part of the 1970s to the early 1990s seeing the country – and then the world – in the context of Choir Tours. Anyone who traveled with me, be warned: I have photos.

After that, there are plenty of natural wonders and sights that Lea and I have enjoyed in the U.S., so I’ll cover some of those. Until then, everyone stay as safe and healthy as you can. The Escape Hatch is back in business!

Homecoming: How To Move Back To the U.S. Part 3

It’s been a month and a half since Lea and I began settling back into life as estadounidenses. It hasn’t been without bumps or mental comparisons between life here and life in South America. In fact, the settling-in hasn’t settled all the way. It’s a slow process with flurries of activity and stretches of “What now?”

In my last two articles I covered two of the most challenging aspects of returning from a period of long term travel: finding a place to live and getting that all-important health insurance. Today I’m going to talk about all the other little things that we learned and/or made up along the way as we reintegrated into American society.

Since we’re no longer documenting our lives photographically, I don’t have pictures to share about our daily life in Atlanta – so instead I’ll entertain you with photos of South American birds. After all – they too travel far and build nests.

Where To Stay and For How Long?

By this I mean establishing short-term housing and not your eventual residence. Even if you can pick up the keys to a new apartment the day after you return (as we did) it’s still not going to be livable. If you’re not able to land an apartment from afar and are still engaged in your search, then figuring out where you’re going to reside in the meantime is priority one.

For us, we bridged the gap by booking a hotel for four nights in downtown Atlanta. We were able to do this cheaply because we’d built up a ton of Holiday Inn reward points and only wimped out twice to use them on our actual trip. A hotel isn’t a long-term solution, unless you get a room in an extended-stay. Even so, the costs build up and you may have to do that which we so often find difficult: ask for help. We have friends who extended an offer for us to couch-surf at their place while we got ourselves settled, and we have others whom we might have begged so as not to impose too long on any one relationship.

As I did in Part 1 of this series, let me reiterate that it is of vital importance to understand the turn-around time of the housing market where you plan to live, so you can know in advance how long you should expect to need other arrangements before moving into your permanent abode.

Movers

If, as I suggest you try your hardest, you’re able to line up an apartment while you’re still overseas, you’re going to need to move your belongings out of storage. While you’re still overseas, and if you don’t mind an international phone call or three, I encourage you to peruse the discounts many moving companies offer on Groupon.com. When researching movers, make sure to verify that both 1) where you have things stored, and 2) where you’re moving to, are in the moving companies’ operating territory. Prices go up steeply the farther you ask a company to drive.

If you’re relocating a longer distance than a moving company can handle for a reasonable price (such as from one city to another) you may want to use another tactic of ours: rent and drive your own moving truck, but hire the professionals to pack your belongings on one end and another group of movers to unpack on the other. Believe me, you’ll be glad for the investment.

Transport

Here’s another tricky issue. When you first move back to the States you’re going to have a lot of running around and buying stuff to do. If one of the first things you try to buy is a car you’re going to be in a world of hurt. Buying a car takes an awful lot of time and energy that, honestly, would be better put to use getting through other aspects of your move. We sold both of our ancient Honda Civics before we left the country, so we had no immediate transportation at hand except for Atlanta’s public transportation.

Enter our friend Melissa! I can’t say “thank you” enough – Melissa stayed for four days and drove us around as we made trips to our new apartment, our storage unit, and the Heart of American Darkness (Wal-Mart) for supplies. After she went home we still had a lot of moving to do, including a trip to Louisiana to pick up our cat, so we rented a car for ten days. This ended up being a hefty but necessary expense. It was made even more expensive by the fact that since we no longer owned cars, we didn’t have our own car insurance. Unless we wanted to take our chances and assume nothing bad would happen, we had to go with a company that would let us buy liability coverage along with the normal damage waiver on the car. This narrowed the field to Enterprise and Sixt. Sixt would have been the cheaper of the two, but their policies would only allow us to drive to neighboring states. Louisiana was outside the allowed territory, so our money went to Enterprise.

If you’re wondering if we’ve broken down and bought our own car by now, the answer is still No. We’re hoping not to – Atlanta’s MARTA system can take you nearly anywhere so long as you learn how to navigate the bus lines in addition to the subway. This is a lesson South America taught us well, and if we can keep it up it will save us a ton of money in the long run, as well as reducing our carbon footprint. (Because yes, we care about that. But mainly about saving money.)

Owning Real Furniture vs. Camping Out

Of course you want furniture. Our problem was that to fit our belongings in a smaller storage space, we got rid of a lot before leaving on our trip. This included the couch that our cat destroyed, the mattress that was ready to be replaced anyway, and both of our computer desks. (One was $15 from a yard sale and the other was rescued from a dumpster, so no big loss.) Once we moved into our new digs, though, we had to pull out our camping gear in order to sit or sleep. We made do on a cot, air mattress, and a camping chair until we could rectify the situation.

While we still had our rental car, we went to various furniture stores looking for items in our price range. We were disappointed to learn that what had once been a good discount store had in our absence doubled their prices. In the end we made a trip to Ikea for a couch, desk, and pantry cabinet (because whoever designed our kitchen didn’t think that food storage was important). While we kept our purchases frugal, the item we skimped on the least was our mattress – after ten months of concrete hostel beds we were pretty damn ready for comfort.

Grocery Staples & Cleaning Products

On the topic of having a kitchen (at last!) we now needed to stock it. Perishables like meat and veggies we’ll buy as we need, but while we still had a car we stockpiled non-perishable staples that we weren’t able to put into storage – flour, sugar, spices, noodles, rice, chili oil, soy sauce – all the things you keep in a pantry and use a little bit each time you cook. Likewise, we couldn’t store cleaning products –detergent, bleach, cleaners, hand soap. In addition, there were items that we knew we’d use in abundance – paper towels, cat litter, T.P., and the like.

Since we suspected it might be a long time before we had access to a car again, we bought enough pantry staples and cleaning supplies to last two months or more. This cost well over $1000 in Wal-Mart and grocery trips. In one instance we filled up a shopping cart, paid for it, took it out to our car, then went right back inside to fill cart #2.

Jobs

Unfortunately we have to pay for all this. I mentioned in an earlier post that while saving for long term travel you should also save for your return. We’re using those savings now, as slowly as we can help it, but the specter of gainful employment looms nigh.

The good thing is that like apartment hunting, your job search is something you can start while still overseas. Update your profile on LinkedIn, for example, while making your long-term break from employment into a positive. Lea did a wonderful job at this by setting specific goals for herself and keeping track of how well she met them. Read about that here and follow in her footsteps.

You can also apply for jobs and do interviews while abroad, as long as you have a decent internet connection or phone signal. Reach out to people in your professional network and let them know your return plans, so they can keep you apprised of employment opportunities. Again, this has worked well for Lea who had a few companies actively waiting for her return.

As for me? I’m taking the scary road of pursuing a total career change. I was a librarian for twenty years, always with stable government employment. Now I’m a self-employed writer, having to discipline myself to work every day as if I had a boss looming over my shoulder. So far that’s working out, though whether I can actually make a living remains to be seen.

Get By With a Little Help From Your Friends

Reconnect! This is the fun part and one of the most important. It may also take initiative, but the psychological dividends are enormous. When you travel long-term, you lose that sense of belonging to a community. Sure, you can “like” posts on Facebook, write articles for your travel blog, and send emails to friends and family, but as long as you’re gone that distance between you and those you care about grows and grows and grows.

When you return, be proactive. Call people. Tell them you’re back. Arrange to have lunch. Invite people over once your place is presentable – or even if it’s not; you can sometimes conscript them into helping your move. (I’ve been suckered in this way myself more than once.) But most of all, don’t get so wrapped up in the logistics of reassembling your home and career that you forget to reach out to your network of friends.

Here in Atlanta, Lea and I belong to Sunday Assembly, a secular community. Its big monthly meetup was the day after we returned. It would have been easy and understandable if we said “It’s too early, we’ve got too much stuff to do, we’ll wait and see folks next month.”

But we didn’t. We dropped everything we “needed” to do, which at that point was a pile the size of Denali, to spend time with a bunch of friends all at once whom we hadn’t seen in forever. Could we have been moving items out of storage or buying necessities at the grocery store? Sure. But it was better to nourish our hearts instead. As we’ve persevered through all the other tasks of jumpstarting our new/old lives, we’ve kept spending time with our friends as an essential part of that process.

Besides, while we’ve been away on our own adventures, so has everyone else. It’s as meaningful to hear their stories as it is to tell our own. And without the warmth of a community of friends, you can never truly feel “home.”

P.S.

This will be the last weekly installment of The Escape Hatch, at least until Lea and I flee the country again. But fear not! I’ve still got much to say on the subject of travel, and there are many other places we’ve been in the world. Expect a new article every two or three weeks, or sooner if inspiration should pounce. The Escape Hatch will always be open.

See you on the road!

Getting Health Insurance: How To Move Back To the U.S. Part 2

This topic pisses me off. I was reluctant to write this article and have been putting it off because I know it will leave a foul, foul taste in my mouth. To mitigate the negative headspace that thinking about applying for health insurance in the United States will put me in, I’m going to populate this article with cat photos.

Like so:

Okay. That’s better. First, a little backstory. If you’re not interested, feel free to (tl;dr) skip ahead to the next cat photo for the moving-back process. When we left on the trip, we didn’t want to be insurance-free for ten months in which anything could happen, so Lea researched insurance plans for expats. The one we settled on was the GeoBlue Xplorer Essential plan, but I highly encourage anyone taking a long-term trip to investigate the options for yourself. For the GeoBlue plan, there were two options – one that would provide health coverage in pretty much every country in the world except the United States, and one that included the U.S. in the package.

There were two problems with the latter option: first, the plan wasn’t ACA compliant, so if we opted for U.S. coverage through GeoBlue we’d still get hit with a tax penalty at the end of the year. Second, adding the U.S. to our coverage would double the cost of our premium. That’s right: health coverage in the United States would have cost us just as much as health coverage in every other country in the world combined. We chose not to take the U.S. coverage and stick to hospitals overseas if anything bad should happen.

So then our options then were to either 1) sign up for an ACA-compliant health plan good in the U.S. that we would pay for but not use, 2) eat the tax penalty, or 3) somehow get an exemption from the tax penalty on the grounds of being unemployed and in another hemisphere. We were able to work out option #3 and get the exemption, but it involved applying for ACA coverage just to confirm that it was unaffordable, filling out a lengthy form buried on the ACA website, mailing a physical copy of the form to a hidden HealthCare.gov bunker, then making several phone calls from Peru months later to get our form out of the junk file and have someone actually process it.

GRRRRRRRR.

Luckily (or not, depending on which way your political views lean) the “Individual Mandate” was stripped from the ACA for tax year 2019 going forward, so there’s no need for anyone else to worry about this until the pendulum swings the other way and the Individual Mandate gets reinstated. If you’re moving back to the U.S., though, you still need to get insurance or run the risk of letting an unexpected illness or accident bankrupt you in the emergency room.

Cat photo:

Our return to the United States was scheduled for May 17. Our GeoBlue coverage was good through the end of May, but since it only covered care in other countries we would have to get ourselves medevacked to Mexico City if anything bad were to happen. We had to get American insurance, and once we had a signed lease with a physical address to show residency, I tried to do so in advance of our return.

I did not succeed. Perhaps my problem was trying to get health insurance from the HealthCare.gov marketplace and not directly from an insurance company, but being scared of what the premiums would be on the open market I went for HealthCare.gov and ACA coverage instead.

Here’s the problem. In order to apply for insurance through the ACA marketplace outside of the open enrollment period (Nov. 1 – Dec. 15) you have to fill out a questionnaire to determine if you’ve had a qualifying life-changing event to justify your need for insurance and to grant you a “special enrollment period.” You would think that moving back to the country from somewhere else in the world would be such a qualification – and it is, but with a catch.

The key question on the questionnaire for expats coming home is one that asks “Have you moved within the last 60 days?” Nowhere does it ask “Will you move in the next 60 days?” When I filled out this application while in Colombia, I had to answer “No.” When I competed the form, the website informed me that my wife and I did not qualify to apply for insurance.

Cats:

I picked up the phone and called HealthCare.gov’s helpline. (Another goddamn international call.) I explained the situation and the person on the other end let me know that as soon as we got back to the U.S. we should apply for the special enrollment period again, this time answering the question “Yes.” (We would, of course, have to upload proof of our new address and start date.) I said OK, shrugged my shoulders, and made it a priority to sign up for healthcare the day we got back.

(Which I actually did the morning of our flight, before we left Colombia. After all, assuming our plane didn’t crash, that would be the day of our return.)

What the person on the phone didn’t tell me:

Health insurance plans bought through the ACA marketplace always begin on the 1^st of a calendar month. The deadline for submitting an application and the necessary paperwork to begin your plan (on June 1^st, for example) is the 15^th of the preceding month.

I applied on the date of our return, the 17^th. See the problem?

I answered Yes to the “Have you moved?” question and we were approved for a special enrollment period. We selected a health plan from the ones offered – not the cheapest, but not the most expensive – and waited for information on our new coverage to arrive.

When we learned that our coverage would not begin until JULY 1 we were livid. How were we to go six weeks without health coverage in the country with the highest health care costs in the world? First we called our new insurance provider to see if there was anything they could do to bump up the start date on our plan. We were informed that since the plan was purchased through the ACA marketplace there was nothing they could do on their end, but they could transfer me over to the HealthCare.gov people so we could speak to them.

The HealthCare.gov helpline informed me that there was nothing they could do either; that was the policy and there was nothing they could do about it. When we asked what we were supposed to do if we needed healthcare in the interim, the HealthCare.gov person told us she could “send us a list of clinics in our area that might be able to help out” – as if we were destitute or homeless. When we pushed further, expressing that that answer was unacceptable to us, the HealthCare.gov helpline hung up on us.

Llama throwing shade:

We called our actual insurance provider back. This time, they were able to help us out by providing information that the HealthCare.gov helpline either 1) didn’t have, or 2) didn’t care enough to mention: There are companies out there that provide 30-day short term medical policies to fill in gaps in your health coverage. They don’t cover much, and don’t cover any pre-existing conditions, but at least they’ll help you not go bankrupt should you get run over by an S.U.V. or have a sudden heart attack from spending too much time on the phone talking to health insurance providers.

Our provider transferred me directly to a sales rep for one of these companies, and within thirty minutes we had a policy to cover us for the month of June until our regular policy took over in July. We still didn’t have any coverage for the remainder of May except what was provided by our rental car company. The joke I told people was that if either Lea or I had a health issue during that period, we would have to get in our rental car and crash it before going to the emergency room.

Cat, or specter of death:

So, to summarize, if you’re a long-term traveler returning to the U.S. and don’t have a job lined up with employer-provided insurance, here are your options:

1. Buy a plan on the open market, and damn the premiums.

We didn’t research this option, so I can’t list any pros or cons. I can say that I fear what those premiums might cost, given how high the “Affordable Care” premiums are.

2. Apply for a plan on HealthCare.gov before the 15^th of the calendar month before the month you plan to return.

In order to do this, you may have to bend the truth about your return date in order to answer “Yes” to “Have you moved in the past 60 days?” knowing that you’re going to have to provide documentation that someone may or may not actually look at. Whether you’re comfortable doing that, I leave to you. If lying to the government isn’t your style, then you’ll also want to get on board with the next step:

3. Purchase a 30-day short term medical policy to close any gaps in coverage you may experience.

In the U.S. health system, any coverage is better than no coverage at all. Unless you can meet the criteria for option #4:

4. Be so filthy rich that you don’t have to worry about paying for health care out of pocket.

While overseas, Lea and I did on occasion use our health coverage and the healthcare systems in other countries. What we learned from the experience is that healthcare in South America, as far as we could tell, is just as good as it is in the U.S. while being an entire order of magnitude less expensive.

Now we’re back. We’ve got “cheapie” plans that don’t cover much and have high deductibles, so we’re still reluctant to see a doctor for anything less than an emergency. But at least we’re covered until we get something better.

It ain’t the best situation, but for long-term travelers it’s something to definitely keep in mind as you plan for the end of your journey.

Next week: Fun With Furniture! And now, one last kitty for the road:

Apartment Hunting from Abroad: How To Move Back To the U.S. Part 1

So, as reported last week, Lea and I returned to the United States and have settled back into our old lives. Easy-peasy, right? Heh. No.

In truth, the “settling” is still going on, though our activity has slowed down from its initial frenetic pace to something more manageable. There’s still much that’s up in the air and uncertain, but we’ve got the basic necessities covered and a few of the comforts as well. There are still some anxieties remaining re: health insurance and jobs, but that will shake out in time.

I mentioned last week that we arranged for some elements of our return while still overseas and I promised to go into a little more detail for the benefit of those who might try a similar long-term travel stunt. This article assumes that even if you’d like to own a home upon your return, your first place of residence is going to be an apartment because no way can anyone house-hunt while backpacking on another continent. Some of the issues I mention may only apply in the state of Georgia, but could also crop up elsewhere. So here goes:

In a room up the street from this church in Salvador, we applied for a lease in Atlanta.

Save enough money not just for your trip, but to live for an extended period without a job upon your return.

This should go without saying, but in addition to being a common sense survival strategy, it will also affect your housing search. In order to rent an apartment, you nearly always have to prove that you have income before they’ll let you sign a lease. Some backpackers earn money while traveling to pay for their next hostel, we had no income and no guarantee that we would at the time of our return. Some apartment complexes will allow you to rent if you can show liquid assets in lieu of a steady paycheck. Some will not – this ended up crossing one of our choices off the list. Thankfully, at least two of the places we liked would allow us to apply as long as we had a certain amount of money available in the bank or other liquid financial products. We did and could prove it; this was the basis upon which we were able to rent from afar.

Do research on housing options before leaving the country.

If you’re planning to leave everything behind to travel long term, but still intend to come back, take time to look at apartment complexes before setting off for another hemisphere.

We did so, but to be fair we were looking for places to move because we hated what our current complex was turning into. (We hadn’t yet committed to the overseas trip and were considering staying longer in Atlanta.) However, this early scouting served us well – once the date of our return approached, we already had a list of apartment complexes where we would be willing to live.

In Bogotá we were still waiting for a “Welcome” letter with the correct rent and deposits.

Know when to start looking, and apply for apartments as early as possible.

Working from our list, we watched for available units well in advance of our expected return date. Since apartments in Atlanta require tenants to give 60 days’ notice before moving out, 60 days was the target period in which available units would appear on the market. Our goal was to snatch a good one, sight unseen, before anyone else snapped it up. This required a leap of faith – we’ve never been comfortable renting without seeing what we were getting. In this case, all we had to go on were online floor plans and our memories of the “model units” that we toured over a year earlier.

The next step was to communicate with the leasing staff from 4,415 miles away (the distance from Atlanta to Salvador, where we officially started the process). You can fill out many apartment applications online, given a decent internet connection (which you can’t take for granted). We ran into an extra roadblock when we discovered that our #1 choice of apartment homes was changing management companies right when we were trying to apply. All of their application software was down, so we called the complex’s leasing office and, over a scratchy international phone connection, explained our situation, had the paper forms sent to us electronically, filled them out by hand, then scanned and emailed them back to Atlanta. This back-and-forth with the leasing staff worked, eventually, though the difficulties drew the process out for several weeks (another good reason to start early).

In the house at the bottom of this dirt road, we slowly examined our rental agreement.

Read every word of the lease. Leave your Escape Hatch open.

When we finally received the lease it was Easter weekend and in Salento, Colombia our Internet was painfully slow to nonexistent. During one of the windows when we could access the lease, we pored over it clause-by-clause. While doing this, we discovered that there was no provision for early termination by the tenant. In fact, with two specific exceptions that wouldn’t apply to us, early termination of the lease was expressly forbidden.

This was a deal-breaker. We’ve had to exercise an early termination clause in the past (when we’d moved into an apartment that turned out to be a Roach Motel) but we also needed the option because of many other scenarios we could imagine. Sad, angry, and frustrated, we sent notice to the apartment complex that we couldn’t sign, were backing out of the deal, thanks for their assistance, have a nice day, then started the whole process over with the next apartment complex down our list.

Guess what? After applying at Apartment Complex #2 and receiving their electronic lease, it had the exact same No Early Termination clause – in fact, in this case it was worded even more strongly. Apparently this is now a thing in Atlanta, as set forth by the Georgia Apartment Association. Research that I’d done the one time we did have to terminate a lease revealed that the State of Georgia has the weakest renter protection laws in the country. I’ve no doubt that groups like the GA Apartment Association have a hand in keeping it that way.

Anyway, rant aside, both complexes came back to us with amended policies that set terms that would allow us to break our lease early. We said “thanks” and asked them both if they would insert these polices into the legal documents that we would sign. Apartment Complex #2 said No – the early termination option was only a “courtesy.” Apartment Complex #1 said Yes – they were happy to add the early termination addendum to the packet of documents that we and the leasing agent would sign.

Guess who we went with? Once we had a signed lease we were finally able to set up utilities and other necessities. This was a tiny bit of a hassle but not overly so.

In Medellín we signed the lease and set up utilities.

Renters Insurance and Utilities

Getting Renters Insurance was no problem at all. While in Medellín, over the space of a few hours. I was able to get online quotes from five or six companies, pick one, and pay for it.

Electricity was a little trickier because Georgia Power will not let you create or log into an account from an IP address outside the U.S. (We learned this way back in Ecuador when we tried to pay the last power bill for our old apartment.) To set up new service I had to bite the bullet and make an international call to the power company.

Thankfully for this apartment we didn’t have to set up water, sewer, or gas, though it would have been a similar process – try to do it online first, then use the phone as a last resort. The only hiccup, and one we didn’t solve until we actually moved in, was setting up Internet access. We wanted to go with Google Fiber instead of Cursed Comcast, but the brain surgeon who rented our apartment before us never turned off their account and we had to prove to Google that yes, we lived there now.

Enter freely and of your own will.

So at last, on our first day back in the States, with a check for the first month’s rent and butterflies in our stomach (because what if the apartment was horrible?) we arrived at our new home and picked up the keys.

And the place is fantastic. It’s much more spacious than we imagined from looking at floor plans. There’s plenty of room for our belongings and space left over to walk around without feeling cramped. After many years of sharing a single sink, we now have two in our bathroom. We have lots of windows and natural light galore, so much that Lea’s sewing blackout curtains for our bedroom.

The place isn’t perfect. When we took possession, for example, one of the closet doors was missing (oops) and we’re still having trouble getting maintenance to fix a dripping shower head and leaky bit of caulk. During Prime Time every night, some interesting characters make a lot of noise outside the convenience store several floors below. But for the most part, the place is wonderful and with a few added touches it will truly be a home.

P.S.

In the next post, the cloud to our silver lining: Trying to get Health Insurance upon our return. How dare we?

To be continued.